It's not a terrible puzzle, it's just the usual HNQ+puzzling mismatch where an easy enough question (and/or one with multiple possible answers) grabs a few votes and a few answers very quickly which instantly puts it into HNQ by virtue of the way the algorithm works.
Then (again given the type of question) it becomes a positive feedback loop
A difficult/complex puzzle just won't get (m)any answers early, so it is very unlikely to hit the HNQ
If I remember correctly, the way the formula works, the first four hours of activity (answers, votes) are "free", time-wise - it puts a floor of four hours on the time factor. If you don't get any votes or answers by then, time starts working against you. A difficult/complex puzzle is fairly unlikely to get anything significant in its first four hours of life, alas.
(personal opinion: I don't think it quite falls under the plagiarism rules, since there's no obvious "original source", but they should at least state that it's not their own idea)
Sometimes these are a case of a friend challenged them to it, they thought it was interesting, and so they posted it here. There's no "source" they can cite, and saying "my friend asked me this" isn't particularly useful. It's effectively public domain, and it's not a dup here, so ... I see no issue with it
It's like the "measure out exactly 4 gallons of water, but you only have a 5 gallon and a 3 gallon jug" problem. But a little more ... challenging. hehe
GaMen, @Techidiot! I'm not a good typist to start with, but it's getting worse. Sorry about that. (I'll let that one sit in ordre not to bring the question to the front page again.)
Oh, yes, although after I've prematurely claimed that victory is near yesterday, I haven't gotten any further. The more I look at it, the more open questions I find.
That's what you get for boasting. :)
I like a commenter's idea that UP TO is the solution to "planning and including partner". I can see the "Hat are you planning/up to" connection, but I can't make the wordplay stick.
I'm not quite convinced by Rubio's explanation that the symmatry only applies to the used cells. In my opinion, there's an "opposite" word for every clue, and there are some opposite pairs that make sense, but where both are unclued, e.g. (A)GENT / STAB(S), TREAT / COOKS and MACE / SATE. (That last one coneniently fills the large spaces in the NW and SE corners, but it's the only one that are down clues.)
This is what I have so far, which is a tidier version of Rubio's solution. The dark blue words are symmetrcal to a clued word and the purple words are symmetrical, but unclued.
But maybe I'm reading too much into it. the STABS/AGENT combo runs into its neighbours, for example, so that doesn't look likely. And the MACE/SATE are vertical, not horizontal, which seems to break the pattern.
I like Rubio's observation that the flavout text insists that there isn't anything important in it and that it may well be a ruse. Maybe even the title "A Puzzle Whose Answer Is A Single Word" has hints of the infamous (but superb) short, butal riddle.
I'm currently wondering if I should give a hint here... Also, I'd like some feedback on these clues, other than the ones you're having trouble with. — edderiofer23 mins ago
@Sid just meant to imply emoting, to make the surface reading work. I.e. there's the warning about a leak, so I'm taking shelter. Don't read too much into it.
@MOehm I think that covers more words than Rubio had which makes more sense, not sure why you'd leave out words... Unless each word in the word search is supposed to match up with the presumable CCs below.
GAmen!The jury's still out on whether UPTO shouldn't be the solution to the "planning and including partner" clue, although the definition is loose (Are you up to/planning something?) and the wordplay eludes me. There's no real evidence that the purple words should be included.
I don't think so. The near-symmetric pattern is no coincidence and all answers can be found in the grid. We've suspected WEDDING, which is downwards in the SE corner, but discounted it, because it breaks the symmetry. It also runs into OWED.
@BeastlyGerbil can you ping me when you're around? I'm working on the follow up puzzle to Who Took My Car, and I want to change it to "Who Took My Friends Car", which won't really change the puzzle, but will make sense in the one(s) to come :)
But will mean you need to make a small change to your answer
@n_palum Nearly all CCs in the list have a matching answer on the opposite side. Only REMISS, ARAB, GASP, HAZE, TESLA and ACREAGE haven't, but the words you listed are opposite
And over-aggressive pattern matching has made us want to include COOKS, STABS, AGENTS and so on, too. Maybe the WEDDING is a red herring, because the theme of the puzzle seems to be ruses or distractions.
Hmmm Reward with endless ruse (8)... A reward could be a TREASURE. which has RUSE* in the ending, and if you had an ENDLESS TREAT in that clue instead, you'd have TREA.. maybe cooks is also there to give an anagram for RUSE?
That sounds plausible actually... Wow I surprised myself
But you can leave that out. It sounds somewhat stilted, but still is good English, I think. (And crossword clues often read a bit stilted, because you shouldn't include excess words.)
What does "Sabhi bhaiyo aur bahno se guzarish hai ki aaj aap ganga me zaroor nahaye. Apko sabhi manokamna purna hogi.# Ganga Mariya ki jai # har har mahadev." mean?
@dcfyj I might not be the best guy to ping for Hindi translations. Although that was fairly easy and I could have translated that, but better ping Tech for those things.
The translate: tool available to mods in chat seems to be broken. It refuses to translate things for me:
(this was in the sandbox)
This has been confirmed to not work very often for other mods in the TL as well. Can we please fix this, if it's not a problem on the Bing side?
Only these two edges are misplaced. Any algorithm to solve this?
The translate: tool available to mods in chat seems to be broken. It refuses to translate things for me:
(this was in the sandbox)
This has been confirmed to not work very often for other mods in the TL as well. Can we please fix this, if it's not a problem on the Bing side?
Let's try to find out the numbers satisfying the conditions below;
$ab=(a+b)^2$
$abc=(a+b+c)^3$
$abcd=(a+b+c+d)^4$
There are only 3 unique answers!
