The Sphinx's Lair

Q: How to ask a lateral thinking question without it getting downvoted into oblivion?

7:13 AM

I think yes. It has too many possible answers.(if that is what makes a question too broad)

Puzzling Meta

8:24 AM

0

I posted this question earlier today: Leave a room without entering it first and it has already attracted 5 downvotes and no upvotes. Each time I've tried to improve it I've received more downvotes. It's now got to the point where I practically have to explain the answer in the question, despite...

discussion

10:40 AM

Confession: When people post riddles which are expressed as rhyming couplets (almost always, for some reason), I always spend a few minutes rewriting them in my head to fix their poetic metre.

I never know whether to post the reformulations as comments or anything. Seems like it'd be rude. But so many of the things get posted by people who don't understand basic verse, and they're often painful to read. :/

10:55 AM

@TrevorPowell Can't do anything in my opinion, if the riddle is not really good, even bad, then it's the OP's problem

@TrevorPowell If the OP doesn't have 1 or 101 rep when posting, I don't see any problem with posting criticism in the comments.

Because if it's their first post, chances are high they'll never come back to post another riddle. so you would just waste your time trying to help them.

Possible, yeah. I don't exactly do it to help them, really; it's more of a weird compulsion I have to follow to keep my own brain happy.

(Which is why I haven't actually done anything with them in the past)

My main worry about posting them is that if one changes the wording of a puzzle after it's been posted, and the author feels they need to declare whether the re-worded version of their poem still leads to the correct answer, that has the potential to really point toward the correct answer through comparing the two versions, instead of through examining the original poem.

boboquack

Regarding the CCCC, it may help to think of the acronym as an unknown, and not to try to work out the acronym from the start. The answer is a faculty in education in many countries, though sometimes it is merged with another faculty.

You could try to do it on a few questions and see if the OP improves his next riddle (maybe encourage him to not edit his current one). Maybe an official post regarding how to post high-quality riddles would help, and we could link to it in the comments of a question (kind of like MCVE on SO or "Code Puzzles: What (Not) to do" here on Puzzling).

11:11 AM

Example: the front page currently has this riddle on it: *"I am black as night / If you want I can take watch until first light / I fit in every crevice and every hole / After I get hot I then quickly get cold"*. Which seems to be trying to use rhyming couplets (although the 'hole/cold' rhyme is a bit shaky), but has an extremely broken meter.

In my head, I've rewritten it to *"They say I am as black as night, / And take the watch until first light / I fit within each gap and hole / When I am hot I soon am cold"*. I've evened out the meter, but not knowing the intended answer I don't k…

11:28 AM

Maybe only do it for riddles which already have accepted answers. So it doesn't distract from the solving.

Gareth McCaughan

1:18 PM

I think many people just have no ear for rhythm -- their brain doesn't have the necessary syllable/stress-counting machinery, or something.

Gareth McCaughan

2:08 PM

Blimey, @Randal'Thor is alarmingly close to getting a gold badge for [riddle] answers.

(For context, only two silver tag badges have been awarded. One is Rand's for [riddle] and one is f'' 's for [mathematics].)

2:42 PM

wow, those take a ton of answers

2:58 PM

Now is probably a better time to ask:

Is it OK to link to a free resource I made in a puzzle? It would make the puzzle more "comfortable" to solve (saves some time and probably is more fun this way)

what sort of resource?

application program

Ankoganit

IIRC people have linked to code snippets hosted on SE with no problem (in one of the MathJax puzzles)

Anonymous

@Ankoganit Those elegant not elephants are super awesome. From where you're finding those super cool puzzles? (And why the weird title.?)

Well, 1) Puzzling.SE doesn't support code snippets and 2) it's an actual desktop program, not a JavaScript snippet

I tried to do it in JavaScript too, but had some issues.

3:09 PM

Hmm, a downloaded executable hosted externally is probably not ok

Ankoganit

@ArbitraryKangaroo From random places :D PSE, AoPS, books etc

@Sconibulus Why not? It's not required to solve the puzzle, it just helps.

Ankoganit

(The title actually is a reference to an in-joke which is difficult to explain right now (I myself don't remember completely how that was born)

I imagine there might be security concerns? But I'm not a mod

There also might be concerns about the hosting falling through? But if it's not actually required to solve the puzzle, that mightn't be a deal breaker

Gareth McCaughan

I would not under any circumstances run an executable file linked from a PSE question.

3:15 PM

yeah, I probably wouldn't either, at least not on one of my primary devices

I'll just include a link, most people won't run it anyway (and make sure it's hosted on a somewhat well-known site)

3:31 PM

@LukasRotter I remember seeing a post on a SE site where it was explicitely stated that linking to an external program was not OK, but I can't find it at the moment.

I have a question.

@IAmInPLS Sure, but here we bend a lot of SE rules.

Hm?

Can we post a puzzle where we give the encrypted text and expected plain text(in spoiler) and ask people to decipher it?

Oh, to figure out the cipher?

Off course with encryption method hidden in some form like steganography or cryptic clue

3:35 PM

Sure, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Figure out the cipher and apply it to produce the required result

Hmm.. Okay.

Wait, I'm not quite sure I understand.

@IAmInPLS All posts I found say it's OK as long as the post is still helpful without it. 1, 2

You mean you get the ciphertext and plaintext and have to figure out the ciphertext?

(@Techidiot)

A: Should we disallow "capture the flag" puzzles where the user has to install software?

38

Heck yeah. We the users probably have no idea what we have just decided to download until the download is finish. The file(s) could be filled with viruses or malware that we do not need on our precious computers. Files that are needed to be download cannot be trusted unless approved by someone w...

3:38 PM

Will it be normal to let people figure out the cipher? I guess it would be difficult.

that's the highest upvoted answer by more than 30%, which pretty unequivocally says no

@Sconibulus It's not required to solve the puzzle in my case.

the second highest upvoted ignores the question in favor of a self-contained argument

@Sconibulus That's if the user has to install software.

I will basically put the encrypted text and plain text. And will hide the cipher used in form of steganography or cryptic clue. If someone figure out the cipher, he will need to use it on the cipher text to produce the plain text.

3:40 PM

I understand the distinction, but linking to that question to say that it's ok is misleading at best

Reason being - the cipher is rarely used

@Techidiot I don't see any problem with that. You might want to not spoiler the plaintext though, because it seems like it's necessary to solve the puzzle.

Okay

Sounds interesting though!

@LukasRotter If it is not required to solve the puzzle, why put it in the first place?

3:43 PM

@IAmInPLS Because it makes the puzzle more fun & less annoying to solve.

@Deusovi We sure do bend a lot (hum), but in this specific case, I think the policy should not change

@IAmInPLS I don't see any issues with that, actually. If it's (say) a sliding puzzle, there's nothing wrong with providing a small applet to play around with it so people don't have to solve by hand.

A puzzle that required it would definitely not be acceptable. But just having a helpful tool? I don't see anything wrong with that.

@IAmInPLS I didn't find any official policy in the help center except this regarding answers. puzzling.stackexchange.com/help/behavior

In the section "Avoid overt self-promotion."

@Deusovi As a side tool, I can agree, even though we still need to check what we are downloading (not that I don't trust you @LukasRotter :-) )

@LukasRotter I did not mean official policy, more an unofficial one (see the link shared by @Sconibulus)

@Deusovi The problem that arises is as follows: Let's assume @IAmInPLS is honest and above-board, and the applet does exactly what it is supposed to do, and helps people solve the puzzle. Then people get used to the idea of external tools being provided with a puzzle. Then the malicious IAmNoGood comes along, and posts a puzzle with an external link to malware. The precedent has already been set, and many people assume that external programs linked on Puzzling are legit.

Then everyone gets infected by malware and they all blame IAmInPLS, or Deusovi, or StackExchange, and chaos ensues.

3:51 PM

@GentlePurpleRain (Well, it's Lukas doing this, not IAmInPLS.)

Oops. Same argument applies. Except the malicious user would be called EvilRotter.

Also, imagine a program running exclusively under Windows. What about our dear Mac users, or mobile users?

Well, Rotter isn't really a name that implies trustworthiness, lol :D

I don't think people will assume "all external programs linked on Puzzling are legit". Maybe post it in the comments so it's not an "official" part of the puzzle?

@Deusovi Yeah, that might work better. And I would suggest a disclaimer as well, that people should use at their own risk.

4:06 PM

damn, we've still got the same cryptic?

I was hoping someone would figure it out over the weekend

5 hours ago, by boboquack

Regarding the CCCC, it may help to think of the acronym as an unknown, and not to try to work out the acronym from the start. The answer is a faculty in education in many countries, though sometimes it is merged with another faculty.

> French and co. sound like they have no high tea (4)

Wondering if it has something to do with TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language)?

(Although it is apparently more often called TESOL now: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)

ffao

The first part is more likely to be the definition, so it must be some sort of faculty of languages

Though both the first and second parts sound quite culturally specific :/

4:22 PM

Yeah...

Where is boboquack from?

Hmmm... Australia. Interesting...

I suspect the "no high tea" is probably a wordplay clue, saying to remove the initial T, or something similar.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too (at first). But what could we be removing it from?

A word that sounds like "they have"? <shrug>

Honestly, I'm kinda ready to give up on this one.

There seem to be a number of universities that offer a MFLE specialty in Education (Modern Foreign Language Education). Any way to make that fit?

@Deusovi Maybe if we all put our heads together...

4:30 PM

@GentlePurpleRain Isn't that what we've been doing for a week?

There hasn't been a lot of discussion about it.

@boboquack If "the answer is a faculty in education", which part of the clue is the definition? Nothing there seems to define anything like that.

French and co is a company. frenchandco.com Realtors specifically. Not sure if that helps here.

Nov 29 at 19:56, by boboquack

@GentlePurpleRain French and co. doesn't refer to a company, though I do know a company called French and Co.

Ahh. Ok

CCCC Answer: LOTE (sounds like "low tea") and stands for "Languages Other Than English".

4:38 PM

Never heard of that in my life.

>:/

Neither have I, until Google helped.

yay, you did it!

Do I need to wait for confirmation, or is everyone confident that is the intended solution?

it sounds plausible, but I've never heard of it before...

I think you're fine. If not, we can just get @boboquack to tell us the answer.

4:41 PM

Ok

I already used that.

SCHOOLED

My clue was "Trained to weave stiff footwear (8)".

Nice.

Must have missed that one.

Nov 16 at 2:26, by Deusovi

CCCC: Trained to weave stiff footwear (8)

Ok, then.

:P

4:42 PM

CCCC: Intersperse confused initiatives. (11)

Shouldn't take long.

ENTERPRISES*

Didn't think it would be quite that quick... :P

(Or SERPENTRIES if you're part of a snake startup. :P )

Okay, give us a good one, then.

Ok, give me a minute to think one up.

Sid

4:46 PM

So, boboquack's clue got solved?

@Sid about 10 minutes ago.

Sid

LOTE? Strange acronyms..

CCCC: Troubled group left you out in returned letter – text missing one (8)