The Sphinx's Lair

2:00 PM

Technically, REM sleep is what's required to function properly mentally. Beyond that the body needs downtime to rest and repair, but meh. Bodies. Who needs those.

dcfyj

Need is a strong word :P

TheGreatEscaper

Oh, I hit REM way too early.

If I have a 15-30 minute nap, I'll still have dreams.

Rubio

REM sleep is overrated anyway. I never remember my dreams so what's the use :)

TheGreatEscaper

Aw. I lucid dream and it's more fun than real life

dcfyj

Until immersive VR is a thing :P

TheGreatEscaper

2:09 PM

hmm

dcfyj

?

TheGreatEscaper

But dreams are cooler

And, if you're lucid, you get control over what happens next

Immersive VR experiences would've been made by someone else

dcfyj

Possibly. I'm sure VR will match up to it eventually (It's getting pretty close as it is)

TheGreatEscaper

And plus, the strangeness and randomness of dreaming, in terms of the actual content, is much more interesting than any coherent experience

If you do it while you're conscious, it ain't your subconscious talking

dcfyj

I'm sure someone somewhere will make some chip (or something) that can read your subconscious.

TheGreatEscaper

2:11 PM

That'd be scary. And I highly doubt it

Once we reach that point, we'd have understood the human brain

And then, there'd be nothing left of us
We'd just be strange machines

dcfyj

hehe, you never know

TheGreatEscaper

Unless, of course, that understanding of the human brain proves the existence of souls or something or other

In which case, it's a scary thought too

It's nice not to have confirmation about some things

dcfyj

Lol, just had a thought. Immersive Pong VR :P

"Grab that paddle and RUN!"

Rubio

2:26 PM

All gaming gear revolutions begin with PONG, it's the obvious first thing to implement.

dcfyj

It's pretty much the easiest to make :P

TheGreatEscaper

Welp. I'm heading off for the night!

Once the masyu gets solved GRID-THIRTY-SIX will be over in a matter of minutes, possibly

elias

i just had some breakthrough with it

but don't wait for me

still a lot of work to do

thanks for the puzzle

it's a really nice one

and good night

TheGreatEscaper

(I lied, I'm probably going to be around for a bit)

(I do the usual thing of setting a bedtime, then not sticking to it)

dcfyj

Yeah, I'm pretty bad about that too. I have an alarm to go to bed at 9 but then I usually go to bed at 11 or 12 >.<

Matt

2:39 PM

digging out of the snow yesterday + a couple of drinks makes Matt a tired man. went to bed at 10.

rumchata is amazing in hot chocolate

Will

It's amazing in a lot of things.

Matt

i literally dug out my car to go get it so I could put it in hot chocolate because it was snowing...

dcfyj

rumchata?

TheGreatEscaper

Wow, dcfyj, 9pm? That's dedication. Well, obviously not, but you know what I mean

dcfyj

I get up at 7, I usually aim for going to bed at 10, but clearly doesn't pan out lol

Matt

2:43 PM

its a cream liqueur

TheGreatEscaper

Well, I got up at 5:10 am this morning

Matt

made from rum

TheGreatEscaper

it's 10:43 pm now, and I'm going strong

Go figure

dcfyj

@Matt So probably something I'd find gross then.

Matt

lol

it makes a lot of things delicious

but doesn't really taste like alcohol when mixed

Will

2:52 PM

^
Honestly, put it in root beer and you would never even know it's rum.

dcfyj

@Matt Every single alcoholic drink I've tried, all I could taste was the alcohol, it's rather unappealing.

Matt

indeed, it's not for everyone

alcohol in general even

Deusovi

Hey!

Rubio

Hey yourself! mornin'!

You've got a masyu to solve. Lucky you!

elias

morning

Sp3000

2:55 PM

Deus is up. That tells me I should have slept 2 hours ago.

Deusovi

It's 9am my time.

Ooh, just in time to solve the Masyu!

Sphinx

0

Q: Two words crossing

34 white squares to be filled with a letter each

Sp3000

Yeah and it's 2am here, but I'm procrastinating :P

Rubio

^ Things that make you go .. humnnnn.

Deusovi

@Rubio Yep, that's definitely one of humn's puzzles.

I could tell immediately, even without seeing the name/avatar.

Rubio

2:57 PM

Hehe

elias

@Deusovi, do you want to make it a race? I've spent quite a lot of time with it, but I'm not experienced with masyus, so you've got all the chances to finish it earlier.

Deusovi

Sure. I'm barely awake and not all that experienced with masyus either, so this should be fun.

elias

or alternatively I can share my progress

Rubio

And not a clue how to work on that one. Or the masyu. So I guess I can safely go do that which I need to do for a bit without worrying about missing out on something.

Happy Masyu'ing.

elias

thanks

Deusovi

2:58 PM

Sure, sharing progress would work too. Whatever you want.

Matt

added more to the hint on my wandering about riddle

Deusovi

Also, @elias, could you explain what we did with purple 5 and everything below that?

TheGreatEscaper

You missed some juicy parts of the puzzle, Deus!

Deusovi

D:

See, this is why I didn't want to sleep.

elias

sure

TheGreatEscaper

3:01 PM

Anyway, I'm sure a quick glance over the answers to the unindexed cryptics will give you an idea of what happened

elias

that was all part of solving purple 5

as black4 suggest, green-red-yellow-blue tiles should be grouped together

Sp3000

(humn's seems pretty simple but I'm a little uncertain about two of the words...)

elias

so we had to make 6 groups, all containing one tile from each color

Deusovi

@Sp3000 (yeah, I got the two in the sign easily)

Soha Farhin Pine

Hey!

Ankoganit

3:04 PM

Hi!

TheGreatEscaper

Hiya Soha!

elias

red-green can be paired easily: the triple letters in the top left corner of the green ones match de first letter of the clues on the red ones

Sp3000

@Deusovi Yeah and #2/#5 on the left are pretty simple, little uncertain about #1 and #4. But it's #3 and #6 that are a bit iffy

Deusovi

ahh, I see

Soha Farhin Pine

Check out this brand new riddle by me:

-2

Q: The Queen's Orange Curd

Her yogurt is orangish. The initialities form my two slices, boycotting trivialities. Why 'Oh!' from you comes not to you? The queen's queue is immaterial; its successor ends me. I shewed myself in full unity added with unity times. What am I? HINT: NOTE: If you have ...

riddle word wordplay lateral-thinking

10

Q: Put me before new

Put me before new I make it too new! My root is burning wood. I identify! Every company needs me, that's why. Mark me, but how? I am one! Now, what am I? Worry not—I will help you; I am a word that defines all of me.

riddle word

Deusovi

3:06 PM

So you group green to red, red to yellow, yellow to blue, and then the green-blue associations let you assemble the Masyu

elias

yes

red-yellow was based on the solutions of the 3rd clues on the red ones

which were contained by the solutions of the yellow ones

for example irate - pirate

TheGreatEscaper

Or Noon, in Notion

Deusovi

and the answers were... just random strings that you had to find in one of the purple grids?

elias

yes, that's how we had to solve purple3

TheGreatEscaper

Nah

Well, the leftovers are found in purple

Sid

3:07 PM

@dcfyj I am honored that you posted a puzzle on my laziness. :P

elias

but they all have different lengths

TheGreatEscaper

but you don't use purple to solve the cryptics!

elias

p, ti, ked, lear, ...

Deusovi

Right, I mean the leftovers

dcfyj

@Sid It was laziness on my part too :P

elias

3:08 PM

and this allowed us to link them to the blue ones

TheGreatEscaper

That's why I put MULPI at the top of that purple grid

Sp3000

To be fair, I had to backsolve some of the unenumerated reds from the orange :P

TheGreatEscaper

once the red/yellow connection was made MULPI should have looked very familiar

elias

p to ichi, and so on

Sid

@SohaFarhinPine Why hasn't an answer been accepted yet?

Deusovi

3:09 PM

what about purple 5?

TheGreatEscaper

That's the meta meta ish one

elias

once you have the pairing

you have to sort them

put the red tiles in order

Deusovi

ah, I see

elias

and just do the same with the letters in purple 5

move them analogously

Deusovi

makes sense

elias

3:10 PM

then read them in order green-red-yellow-blue, as hinted on black4

Deusovi

then they spell out those five letter words missing a letter, and missing letters become BRANCH

dcfyj

@Sid On which one?

Sp3000

Only slightly disappointed about MEDI(A/C) but the rest were pretty unambiguous :P

elias

exactly

TheGreatEscaper

Hey, Media fit the theme :P medic, not so much

Deusovi

3:11 PM

What's that "funny purple squares" thing?

Sid

@dcfyj This: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/48881/…

elias

they had a subject as well, @Sp3000

TheGreatEscaper

plus, at least the 6 letter word wasn't ambiguous hahaha

elias

in which medic does not fit too well

TheGreatEscaper

@Deus that was bobo reading into the weird rendering of the small purple squares in the instructions

elias

3:11 PM

that's a gimmick

some interlacing error i guess

dcfyj

@Sid That had an accepted answer (your's in fact) I guess it got removed?

TheGreatEscaper

it was unintentional and some annoying byproduct of how I made the image

elias

or how do you call that

Deusovi

Oh :P

TheGreatEscaper

But yeah, I think you're all caught up now

elias

3:12 PM

anyway, i scanned the masyu in the meantime

Sid

@dcfyj Both mine and Sconibulus' - at different times

elias

should i post the status here or edit the community wiki?

TheGreatEscaper

Possibly into the sheets?

if you're on a computer, you can put images onto the sheets

elias

ok, i will add it to the sheets

Sid

Doesn't San mean "Sir" or something similar in Japanese?

Rubio

3:15 PM

@Deusovi before @the forgets to ask, I'll ask for him - he wanted your thoughts on his "000-ish"-ish cryptic. "Notes..."

dcfyj

@Sid Sort of

TheGreatEscaper

Oh yeah! I did want to know what Deus thought of that

even the German clue maybe

dcfyj

-san is a polite way of addressing a peer that's more of acquaintance level. It's unisexual (if I remember right) but typically used for males.

Rubio

Hah! @humn's puzzle showed up on "Low quality posts" review, for short length. I, of course, promptly agreed - it's definitely low quality. We need 4k resolution next time. Slacker!

dcfyj

@Sid this wiki goes into far more detail.

elias

3:20 PM

image attached into the sheet

Sp3000

Also bear in mind of course that Japanese too has homonyms :P (So "san" on its own could mean a host of things)

elias

@TheGreatEscaper, can you maybe check the image, if I made any errors, please let us know

it would be quite awkward, if my deductions turn out to be false

and everyone uses them as a base

thanks!

TheGreatEscaper

That's looking pretty good, I'll fully check in just a sec

Yup all good!

elias

thank you!

Rubio

Sorry @dcfyj, I think I got that one done

Sp3000

3:24 PM

Since Rubio's posted anyway, was pretty certain about TWO/ONE but had trouble reconciling the fact that DOWN <-> Behind seems a bit odd (even though it really looks like it should be DOWN)

dcfyj

@Rubio hehe, never even thought of "accross". I definitely wouldn't of thought of "down" for behind.

I had back :P just in the wrong place haha

Rubio

If you're behind by 2 touchdowns, you're down 14

Got that from the theme.

dcfyj

Theme?

humn

@Rubio , maybe more grayscale would clarify a missed clue

Rubio

The first three made it pretty clear it was giving the clues as eg. one down, two across

Sp3000

3:26 PM

I also don't feel as though the answers are correct - having an answer be BEHIND while using "Behind" as a clue is odd, and the two filled in answers on the right aren't quite the ones I'd have expected...

Rubio

I don't like DECADE, and BACK feels weird. going to look at the image now, since I didn't before

dcfyj

Back makes sense for behind, down doesn't (to me)

humn

@Rubio found the right definition for behind=down

dcfyj

Also, @Rubio you should format your answer so it's not all spoiler tag.

@humn Still sounds like a stretch to me

Soha Farhin Pine

@Sid I unaccepted the answer which wasn't the one of Sid.

Rubio

3:28 PM

Yeah I should. I'll fix that in a bit

Soha Farhin Pine

How was my riddle?

Rubio

I... um... don't really see anything in the image, but then again I'm lousy with that stuff

Ankoganit

I guess the squares below the windmill are ACROSS and DOWN

Soha Farhin Pine

Many people downvoted it

dcfyj

@SohaFarhinPine At the moment you have not accepted an answer for your queen riddle

Sp3000

3:29 PM

Yeah, ACROSS/DOWN was also what I had in mind (and I'm assuming Deus too, from his earlier comment)

Soha Farhin Pine

I did accept it, but soon unaccepted it.

humn

@dcfyj , it is a stretch. Every crossword needs at least one clue that is obvious and at least one clue that only makes sense once the word is filled in.

dcfyj

I guess?

humn

(All opinions stated here are meant to be stated as opinions.)

Soha Farhin Pine

Why does my riddle has a lot of downvotes?

Is it because of the huge number of edits?

Since someone from here downvoted it,

he/she should know

why

Rubio

3:34 PM

Oh. So X -> TEN -> Across ... heh. ok that actually makes more sense, the self-referentialness is strong with this one

Sp3000

I was thinking that, which I guess would mean "not a head" would have to be BEHIND... but o_O

humn

@SohaFarhinPine , I often wonder if the votes are counted correctly by the system. Clearly some of the positive votes for answers were meant for your puzzle.

Rubio

@SohaFarhinPine - the huge number of edits are an issue regardless - one of the help pages spells out why, thusly: "Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you observe." Your mass stream of edits, while not individually necessarily tiny or trivial, definitely don't correct all the problems at once; some people view that sort of edit usage as constantly pushing the post to the activity board.

Ankoganit

@SohaFarhinPine as for the riddle itself, I mostly liked the key idea, but some of the wordplays felt somewhat stretchy, requiring to guess what the OP is thinking rather than making intuitive sense.

Rubio

Having said that, I personally downvoted because the riddle as it currently stands is very hard to understand or to sensibly resolve with the intended answer, unless you already know the answer and are trying to find ways to stretch the riddle to match it. It feels forced, and you mentioned in a comment on (I think?) Sid's answer that two of the lines were added in (I'd say shoehorned in) as almost an afterthought—and it shows a bit, as they aren't as coherent or cohesive with the rest.

My suggestion would be to pause before posting to review what you're posting and make sure (a) it's what you want to post, to forestall having to edit it 12 times in 9 hours, and (b) it can be solved, not merely found after the fact to fit the answer. There's a huge difference between those last two things - remember, your reader isn't in your head and can't see how the riddle obviously fits the answer; your reader has to, instead, figure out how to get an answer from the riddle.

I'll briefly note too that I don't think anyone has yet figured out what your hint means, and we all know what the answer is. Hints ideally make some obscure part of the puzzle, or some unintuitive leap necessary to solve the puzzle, more accessible; your hint doesn't seem to do that at all, and in fact raises more questions than it answered.

I hope you take that as helpful advice, rather than critique, for that is the spirit in which it was offered. It's always nice to see new puzzlers join the fun. Oh, and by the way, welcome to TSL :)

2

Ankoganit

3:52 PM

BTW, it'd be nice to post feedbacks to a puzzle as answers (possibly as CW); is there any consensus on that? It would be greatly helpful for puzzlers, especially newcomers.

3

TheGreatEscaper

Oof, too tired, I'm off for the night, won't see grid36 solved till tomorrow morning

gnight all

Ankoganit

good night @TheGreatEscaper

Rubio

@humn I don't see anything at all here. Am I missing something obvious?

elias

good night, @TheGreatEscaper

Rubio

Seeya @TGE

Ankoganit

3:54 PM

Ah, I found an old meta post:

7

Q: Where to put puzzle feedback?

I've been writing feedback for puzzles and wondering I should put it. I've been doing this in the comments (like on this question), as that's what feedback is: commentary on the puzzle, rather than an answer to the challenge it provides. But I can see an argument to normalize making it an answer ...

discussion challenges answers comments

methinks we need to formalize this process (similar to what we did for wrap-ups), who's with me?

humn

@Rubio , "grayscale" was laughing along with your 4K quip. One clue is still undetected. Does "ten" really = "across"?

Rubio

Ahh. :) I missed that connection with the 4k joke.

And apparently not, or you wouldn't be asking that :)

I don't like either pairing I've tried very much, but ACROSS/DOWN seemed a popular answer here that at least made sense thematically

humn

I suspect "ten"

Rubio

TEN -> ACROSS by way of "X" is, I guess, too much backtracking

dcfyj

roman

numeral

10 = X

humn

3:59 PM

almost there!

Matt

for very large values of X

humn

I couldn't find a long enough value of X to allow "Two words Xing" as the title. (Actually "Word Xing" was the attempt)

Deusovi

@TheGreatEscaper: That "notes" clue was fine, apart from the fact that I've never heard "dot points" in my life.

"Bullet points", yes. But not "dot points".

Rubio

Yeah - once they let me know that "dot points" were a thing down under, it made sense and I liked it

There's another bit of regional specificity with the rebus for BACTERIA

dcfyj

Sort of like ankle-biters?

Deusovi

4:07 PM

Yeah, that's definitely regional. I always have to keep in mind that TGE is Australian when solving

Rubio

"RE(tear)" is read backwards, for 'BACK TEAR E R"

I had a bit of a laugh about that pronunciation, I would have never gotten that and I was literally looking at "back tear" already

Sp3000

I never really thought of "dot points" as a regional thing... interesting...

dcfyj

I don't think anyone solved my random cryptic from yesterday :(

Rubio

@dcfyj I'm not sure I saw it.

Deusovi

Which one?

dcfyj

4:09 PM

21 hours ago, by dcfyj

random cc popped into my head lol. not sure if it's valid.

Savior? I, ah, removed. Made mess. (4)

Rubio

huh.

dcfyj

Enumeration on that might need to be 6...

Rubio

ummm.... lolwut?

Sp3000

Is the answer actually just MESS(iah)?

Rubio

Seems likely, but why would (6) be even a question then?

dcfyj

4:11 PM

Yeah, Like I said, it just randomly popped in my head ( I was working on my steganography cryptic)

Deusovi

Yeah... what's going on there?

You're using "mess" as a definition for "mess"?

And why (6)?

dcfyj

I wasn't sure sure if I should switch it to messiah instead (thus the 6) oops, should be 7

Rubio

That would make it part of the wordplay, so you couldn't do that.

Ideally you'd just replace "mess" with something synonymous and call it a day

Matt

is it legal for the wordplay to work backwards?

dcfyj

I did say I wasn't sure it was valid lol

Matt

4:13 PM

no, I, too, am curious

dcfyj

Savior? I, ah, removed. Made chaos. (4)

Rubio

I'd go with disaster, but same diff

dcfyj

I think you mean same def :P

humn

from Life of Brian: "There's no Messiah in here. There's a mess all right, but no Messiah."

Rubio

@dcfyj ba-dum-tish.

Matt

4:15 PM

or "chaos|disaster remains"

dcfyj

Never seen it

humn

He's Not The Messiah - Monty Python's Life of Brian

►

Rubio

@Matt Only if going for (7) backwards; otherwise you just embedded the def inside the wordplay

dcfyj

&lit?

Rubio

I'm curious too if you can set up a wordplay that works backwards. I'm guessing no.

Deusovi

4:16 PM

A wordplay that works backwards? In what sense?

dcfyj

No idea, the master isn't giving feedback :P

He's referring the "iah removed made chaos"

Rubio

If "Savior?" is def, and "I, ah, removed, left disaster" (or similar) was the wordplay intended to show "mess", worked through the wordplay backwards, gives the answer

Sp3000

If you had "Savior - when I, ah is removed, this makes disorder (7)" that would be fair in terms of wordplay, ignoring the horrible surface

Deusovi

I think some cryptic publishers would allow it, but I wouldn't. That wouldn't work with the split rule.

Sp's version is better.

elias

@Deusovi, I have to leave now, so please take over the tasks with the masyu

Deusovi

4:19 PM

Yeah, I haven't made any progress on it

I'll try though

dcfyj

Well, you should get on it then :P

elias

I've added my new findings to the sheets

dcfyj

What is masyu anyhow

Deusovi

It's a grid deduction puzzle type

nikoli.com/en/puzzles/masyu/rule.html

dcfyj

Never heard of it

Matt

4:22 PM

oh no, the slideshow makes noise

dcfyj

Oh, ok. Never heard of that name for it, apparently

Deusovi

oh yeah, whoops

Matt

CLICK AWAY

Deusovi

Oh. What name did you know?

dcfyj

I don't remember lol

Sp3000

4:23 PM

I'm going to take a guess and say "Pearl", because silly Simon ruins all the puzzle names :P

dcfyj

The only pearls I know of are precious ones and a language (perl)

Rubio

and Perl was, for a few brief and shiny moments, called Pearl.

dcfyj

Then it became dull

Rubio

Pathologically eclectic rubbish lister.

Rubio

4:48 PM

Another shower to the rescue. Solved Humn's./

dcfyj

lol

Deusovi

Answer to Grid36 is SEXTET!

dcfyj

Nice

Rubio

Nice @deus! That diagram is kinda hilarious with all the 3D connector lines hehe.

Deusovi

Yeah, I tried. :P

Rubio

4:57 PM

I couldn't have visualized it at all - I'm hardly making fun of it, just think it looks awesomely hilarious / hilariously awesome.

dcfyj

How'd you get SEXTET? the only letters I'm seeing left over are SEXTAR

Deusovi

It was hard to visualize. I considered just waiting until I got back to my dorm and making a physical copy of it with scissors and tape.

@dcfyj those are EXTRAS

dcfyj

ah ok

Deusovi

take the path, decrypt as Vignere with grid of purple answers

you get KUDOTHGRIDTHIRTYSIISRULYSOLVDGREAJOB

or kudoS thE grid thirty siX is Truly solvEd greaT job

with some letters added in

dcfyj

heh

Anyhow, I'm off. (I know earlier than usual) I may or may not show up later. :P

Deusovi

4:59 PM

I'll do a writeup tonight

Alright, see ya!

Rubio

Wow.

I just glanced at the leftover letters and thought they were SEXTET from your answer.

The actual, er, path to that solution ... awesome.

Deusovi

Well, the purples had to be used somewhere.

Rubio

Well yeah. I sort of lost track of the puzzle after I left last night. I still don't get some of what was done there. (P+ICHI etc. are meaningless to me)

Deusovi

Like I said, I'll do a full writeup tonight

Rubio

6:08 PM

What's the name/word for e.g. "one" "two" ... as opposed to 1, 2 ...

Ah. Apparently these are properly called "cardinal numerals".

Sconibulus

I thought cardinal just meant 1 rather than 1st

Sphinx

1

Q: One of these words is not like the others, one of these words just isn't the same!

Can you believe it? I had a great list of words that all go together, and someone stuck in a word that doesn't belong. Can you take it out for me? addict affect conflict extract inject object perfect project reject subject suspect

english word-property

Rubio

cardinal number means that, yes

Apparently "cardinal numeral" distinguishes the word form specifically. Who knew?

I think I finally *really* solved Humn's puzzle. hehe

weird. I thought that should work.

Rubio

7:11 PM

@Techidiot Is "FIIGHT" intentional? (Also, those aren't scores, they're results hehe)

unless a country name is itself a score, in which case, well, ok then

Sphinx

1

Q: Nadal vs Federar

Recently, while traveling via air, I have been watching some weird dreams. The dream starts with a tennis match between the two legends Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer taking place at the country I am traveling. One of them just tosses up the ball and the dream ends with the score. Oh one more t...

pattern story

Techidiot

7:28 PM

@Rubio Being a cricket fan, I call them final scores. But, you can call it results. Doesn't make a lot of difference.

Also, yes, its intentional and hence bolded

Rubio

ok. thought as much; that's why I asked here instead of cluttering up the puzzle with comments.

Thanks

Techidiot

Np :)

Sconibulus

7:43 PM

@Techidiot how about the spelling in the title?

Techidiot

@Sconibulus Done

Thanks

Matt

7:54 PM

@Techidiot is it coincidence that Nadal wins the European countries and Federer wins the others, or did I just solve it? :P

Techidiot

Haha,, Coincidence. Let me clear that for you :)

Matt

okay, I didn't expect it to be that simple ;)

that's why I asked before answering haha

Techidiot

No problems. Updated with another example @Matt

Matt

thanks

Sconibulus

What happened to Djokovic?

Matt

8:01 PM

he choked hard

Sphinx

8:21 PM

-5

Q: UFC 208 Live Stream Online

UFC 208 Live http://ufc208i.net/ Stream, ppv, start time, fight card, tv channel, UFC 208 2017

english

boboquack

9:09 PM

By the way, does anyone know how Grid-36 was finally solved?

Sphinx

9:46 PM

0

Q: wierd chessboard

Two players(player1,player2) are playing a game on a (15*15) chessboard.The coordinate of the upper left cell is (1,1) and the coordinate of the lower right cell is (15,15). The rules of the game are as follows: The game starts with 5 coins placed on the board at (15,4),(8,12),(14,14),(10,3),(1,...

logical-deduction logic-grid game-theory

Maria Deleva

OK. I am officially going crazy. I am pretty sure I started seeing things that aren't even there. ]]

in boboquack's puzzle, I mean.

boboquack

@MariaDeleva Probably not

You might be having a sudden flash of inspiration!

What isn't there that you see?

Gareth McCaughan

10:20 PM

Does anyone else have the uncomfortable feeling I do that the "wierd chessboard" question is being asked by someone who actually needs the answer for a contest or homework or something?

I have the details of my answer all sitting in the edit box and ready to post, but I'm not going to be someone's do-my-homework service.

Aha! "a coding competition", says the poster. Let's see whether he admits that it's an ongoing one...

Ah. Nope, not ongoing. Merely plagiarized. (Though there's nothing super-original about the problem, and simply changing the text up a bit and not reusing the diagram from the original source would I think make it OK.)

Flagged for mod attention; we'll see what happens to it.

Rubio

Yeah, seems fine to me. The mechanics of the puzzle are simple enough, and assuming he didn't just copypasta the original problem text and diagrams as his own, seems like it'd be perfectly reasonable PSE material.

Gareth McCaughan

10:36 PM

He did just copypasta the original problem text and diagram, that's the trouble.

So the question is whether un-copypastaing it is an acceptable solution at this point, or whether once something has been identified as plagiarism the only way to be sure is to nuke it from orbit.

Sconibulus

out of curiosity, does that answer change if you assume that coins can't overlap?

my gut is saying it doesn't

Gareth McCaughan

Actually I'm not sure. It seems like it could complicate the theory enormously because the different games no longer proceed kinda independently.

The answer in general has to be that yes, the answer changes, because with lots of coins they start to pile up near the top left corner and change the can-no-longer-move condition for later-arriving coins.

boboquack

Already with 5 coins, the 2x2 box would be filled up

Sconibulus

well, ok, my gut really says that the first player to move almost always wins games like these

boboquack

I can't see a clear SSA for this one though...

Gareth McCaughan

10:50 PM

@Sconibulus Your gut is correct.

Well, I rewrote the question. We'll see what the mods decide to do with it.

SSA?

boboquack

Strategy-stealing argument

Gareth McCaughan

ah

Whoa, boboquack, is that "Winning Ways" link legal?

Or did you just make it look like I posted an answer with a link to a pirated copy of a book in it?

no, it's obviously pirated

DO NOT DO THAT TO ME AGAIN

or toanyone

boboquack

Sorry

Gareth McCaughan

I am not actually quite as angry as I (deliberately) probably looked there

but that is really, really not OK

(I rolled back the edit)

boboquack

I saw

I didn't realise - I'm still young and naïve

Gareth McCaughan

10:55 PM

anyway, AFK for at least the next 45m or so

yeah, I understand, the Young People Of Today have a different attitude to intellectual "property" from old farts like me

and I have a lot of sympathy

but Winning Ways is not unreasonably priced, it's the product of a lot of work by first-rate brains, and I think the people who wrote it deserve their royalties.

anyway. AFK. Sorry for shouting at you.

boboquack

Bye

By @the way, do you think you could post how you would go about making a grid deduction puzzle?

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