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12:03 AM
Something wrong? The cat works but the internet connection is silent. Perhaps just a blown fuse in my neighbrhood.
Signed, mother hen.
 
@Rubio here now, finally got access to a working computer
 
Something wrangled.
It's okay now.
Back to troll, at full volume.
 
12:25 AM
@puzzledPig Oh hi
I was actually curious about this: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/59886/…
Is there some reason you had to believe that isn't an original puzzle? (Your comment is on point, of course, if it's not original — but we generally don't press people unless there's fairly clear evidence something is taken from elsewhere, and here the usual indicators aren't smacking me in the face)
 
@Rubio I saw that the OP was relatively new, and that the style of the puzzle looked similar to those I'd seen copied from somewhere online, so I was curious. That may well have been too hasty of an assumption on my part, though.
 
Fair enough. I wouldn't want to put new puzzlers immediately on the defensive of "PROVE YOU WROTE THAT!!!!11!!1!" without pretty good evidence they didn't. "I found this" or "I can't solve this" or the like are their usual giveaway phrases; blatant copying, like sending in a screencap or a photo of a paper or printout, is also pretty clear. Absent those, I'd rather err on the side of welcoming. :)
 
Very true, and it's an intriguing puzzle either way. Does Puzzling generally advocate for deleting comments? The OP has ignored it, but I'm happy to remove it as a matter of principle
 
I'm not going to hasten to delete it; any harm it might have done has already been done. If it never gets answered then so be it. If it does, we all learn something.
The puzzle is on the verge of closure for being too broad anyway, given the arguments in the answers and the lack of anything in the question to say otherwise
 
12:41 AM
That works! Well, thank you for bringing it up; I will try and be slower to jump to conclusions in the future :)
 
No prob - I wasn't actually wanting to call you on it, I was actually wondering what I'd missed! :)
 
1:44 AM
in The troll, 3 mins ago, by humn
I could teach you English in the worst way,
in The troll, 4 mins ago, by humn
I could teach you English in the worst way,
 
2:34 AM
Language is universal!
What matters is intent.
Tone of voice speaks aloud.
. . . Thought i'd behave, but, . . . .
 
language is not universal though
 
i'll trip over my own words.
i'll tumble my own meaning while honing others'.
 
2:52 AM
@DestructibleLemon I speak music - do you?
 
3:22 AM
I haven't learned solresol
 
3:59 AM
@ffao Yeah good point. That's probably bad in some way but doesn't seem unfixable...
 
 
2 hours later…
6:00 AM
@Deusovi, i have something to say at The troll.
 
6:38 AM
@DestructibleLemon good
 
 
4 hours later…
10:19 AM
0
Q: "I can be what this puzzle is in" (2nd of a riddle series)

user_194421 "I can be some amount of time, and I can be what this puzzle is in. But not only this puzzle. I can be used to look at 'yourself', when it's bright enough. But that's usually not the purpose I was produced. When I'm 'many', most of you use me. In a more literal sense, I can conta...

 
10:32 AM
@user_194421 what was the "fourteen" if I may ask? I'm now burning with curiosity hehe
 
10:49 AM
Silicon.
@Rubio Did you forget?
 
Oh sorry, I typed that in here before you'd added that comment to the post hehe
 
11:14 AM
0
Q: "Where's my wife now?" (3rd of a riddle series)

user_194421 "Hey there, this is the third riddle, the sequel to the first and second ones. I may not be bright like a candle, but I have been shining once. When young I was, a long time ago, I had a wife and many children. We were travelers, many places we did go, for many years, we had...

 
11:41 AM
fourth C4 hint: the word "but" is simply there to make the surface nicer, and the clue would still work in the same way without it
 
1:01 PM
0
Q: A Good Dream Puzzle

A Cool GuyThis puzzle is from my friend whom Arthur I don't know [really idk why but he gave me this from a book] (ill call my friend Arthur). As this was a long riddle, he wrote it on a page for me. The riddle was: Mr.Adam looked up from a book he was reading on the famous dreams and said to his wife:...

 
1:14 PM
@Doorknob you can do that in a c4? add words that only are there for surface?
 
0
Q: Old 6-piece wooden cross puzzle

Michal KrejčíI found this old puzzle and have no idea how to get it together. I have been trying to complete it for several hours now but to no luck... Also sorry if it has incorrect tag, correct me if needed, I couldn’t find any appropriate.

0
Q: What am I? (Answer may be superfluous)

ChronocidalI start with a fight, or a chance to relax, And end with a cut, and am but you what. In between I am quite average, But overall you hope I am never required. What am I?

 
 
1 hour later…
2:26 PM
0
Q: Always and never (riddle)

Me myself and IIt's always 1 to 6, it's always 15 to 20, it's always 5, but it's never 21, unless it's flying. What an I?

 
Sid
3:17 PM
@Sphinx Dead Men tell no tales dreams
 
 
1 hour later…
4:27 PM
0
Q: Longest autological loop?

Patrick NA word is said to be autological if it describes itself. This can be a property of both nouns and adjectives; for example, "noun" is a noun and "pentasyllabic" is pentasyllabic. We can also construct what one might term "autological loops"- closed sequences of words that describe each other. As ...

 
5:06 PM
1
Q: A rebus with only letters

Bachrach44Solve the following rebus. THINBOXKING

 
 
1 hour later…
6:35 PM
@thecoder16 to be clear, the wordplay still works both ways
like how, say, "Execute first green scary animals (4)" and "Execute first of green scary animals (4)" are both valid clues for DOGS
 
6:48 PM
-2
Q: What word... (riddle)

Me myself and IThere is a common English word that is nine letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains an English word - from nine letters right down to a single letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing one letter at a time? Hint 1: ...

 
7:36 PM
that last hint probably just confirms that "but not quite" is a single wordplay element (remove last letter, usually)
I'm more worried that I don't know who this anchorman is, so I'm not really thinking about the C4 at all atm
 
yeah i have no clue about this anchorman
 
8:05 PM
I will say (hint 4.5?) that it's theoretically possible to arrive at the answer with reasonable certainty without knowing anything about the person being referenced, although you'd have to figure out the person to check for sure
 
8:21 PM
in particular, with all the hints combined it should be solvable with near-complete certainty without the
 
 
1 hour later…
tackled
 
You probably bowled right over them, didn't you.
 
10:15 PM
0
Q: Minimal-length curve guaranteed to intersect all secants of circle

MaiauxConsider a unit circle C. The goal is to find a curve L such that: all secant lines of C intersect L; the length of L is minimal among those with property 1 above. Any closed curve containing C (for example a circle with the same center as C, but larger) clearly satisfies property 1, but is n...

0
Q: A magical operation

UntitpoiA magical operation on a particular number (not ending by 0) is the addition of this number with his symetrical number. For example the magical operation for 2018 would be 2018 + 8102 = 10120. Let us choose a number with first digit (left one) strictly inferior to his last digit (right one). We...

 
10:44 PM
@Mithrandir nthron ?
 
looks like a puzzle to me so far
 
Well. Then the solution is disappointingly elementary and proving it feels like, well, a math exercise more than solving something that feels clever
 
well, I said so far since I don't know what the solution is
I'm fairly sure it's really easy to do better than C though
so if you're basing on the comment
 
I arrived at the conclusion in the comment independently, and don't think there's any way to get smaller than C
I'd be happy to be wrong :)
 
how do you escape from the red curve?
 
10:56 PM
I, um, climb out. Carefully. And find some other game to play. hehe
 
I don't even think that solution is optimal
but it's already better than C
 
Yeah. Well played.
You can probably lose one arm entirely
stop it at the point where it became tangent
Hm maybe not
Ok you talked me off the ledge.
 
I'm going to retract my claim that it's probably not optimal since I can't do better
(doesn't mean it can't be done better by someone cleverer than me, of course)
hmm, or not, maybe you could shorten one of the arms
 
@ffao Rubio already mentioned you can chop off one of the arms
 
yeah, but he went back on that with "maybe not"
I'm "maybe notting" his "maybe not" because I think he was originally right
 
11:05 PM
I was trying to decide whether I thought you could do it with a set of measure 0, or else an arbitrarily small set, but I don't know. It would just lead to an amended question anyway
Yes, you need to include the point that lies on the equator, and then you can stop
there's a comment on the problem now with an alternative attempt. It's a fine problem, IMO (though there are some problems with this flavor that are famously unsolved)
 
@Rubio ... this conversation is really confusing without context
 
oh, that is a cool alternative attempt
a similar question was actually asked before on PSE (it had some upvotes because it had a framing story so people didn't go "ew math" on sight), but that one required the curve to be connected
 
11:29 PM
@Doorknob same, I have no idea what’s going on
 
11:50 PM
Nevermind, someone posted the answer I was thinking of.
I just remembered that this was connected to Steiner trees
 

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