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4:04 AM
0/
Hello?
 
4:58 AM
So... when are we kicking of the first new wave FTC? I've got a Restricted Title puzzle 90% done already. :)
 
What is FTC? I keep seeing it, and I don't know what it means
 
@EricTressler Fortnightly topic challenge - puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6339/…
 
Sid
Fortnightly Topic Challenges. It was A Thing earlier but it kinda had fizzled away
2 days ago, by ManyPinkHats
Anyway, end of this week is probably a good time to call the votes, and it looks like the previous FTCs were Monday-Monday, so maybe Monday the 28th?
@Alconja ^
 
Thanks
 
@Sid That seems arbitrarily fair enough. I can be patient.
 
5:50 AM
I've written a new cryptic that I like, but I'm not sure whether it's fair. I'm torn between using it later sometime, or just putting it here for feedback.
 
What? Just put it here and risk ruining your reputation as poster of FTCs (Friggin' Tough C4s)? Are you kidding? :>
 
I guess I could just use it and give hints at an accelerated rate if someone doesn't get it quickly.
 
Yes, that wouldwork, but first things first. We still have the golden ring to solve.
 
That's true. I've given a couple of hints. I'll add to that a little bit now
 
(For what it's woth, I first considered the def to be "by the sound of it" with auditory or something like that as answer, where the Au comes from gold. I couldn't make it work and the not-in-the-dictionary hint makes it moot anyway -- these words may be obscure, but they are all in the dictionary.)
 
5:58 AM
C4 hints: Crazy Horse's dream almost articulated (8); neither cryptic's solution is in the dictionary (but they don't have the same solution); they're related.
 
My current angle is that "by the sound of it" really is a homphone indicator and the word end in -nia ("near", imminent), but I feel that the solution isn't really imminent, by the looks of it. Hm.
Oh, and now that I look at it, -nia also works for "almost, articulated".
 
Sid
@MOehm How? I don't get it.
 
Well, "almost" is also "nearly" or "near" and a homophone of that could be the suffix -nia as in California. I think. (I'm really bad at homophones, because I often don't know how English words are prionounced properly.)
 
Sid
Ah, that could work...
 
 
1 hour later…
7:35 AM
0
Q: Function that returns 1 for all numbers equal to or above 1

AlexanderWhat's a good function (intended to use in a Python program) for returning 1 for all numbers that are >= 1 and 0 for all numbers that are < 1? Example usage: >>> f(0) 0 >>> f(1) 1 >>> f(-0.3) 0 >>> f(999) 1 >>> f(0.9) 0 I have tried implementing a solution inspired by this question, but the r...

 
@Sphinx lambda n:0+(n>0) should work :P (also wrong site >_>)
 
 
2 hours later…
9:14 AM
@Sphinx would that question be on topic at PPCG as-is?
 
9:27 AM
Judging by the accepted answer, that question seems to be about finding a closed mathematical formulation of the function rather than the shortest code. (Perhaps that's a good fit for the PP in PPCG, I don't know.)
 
Not being in the dictionary makes me think that Crazy Horse and Golden Ring are defs for some proper name, but I don't know horses or rings, or horses related to rings
 
@MOehm Agreed; I'm loath to close or migrate it because it's really asking for a creative math function that solves a specific need, and the fact that it's wanting the answer to (eventually) be expressed (or expressible) as Python is only ancillary to the question.
 
It's a bit weird since the OP already has a working solution but is looking for a "better" one, "better" not defined
 
Crazy Horse sounds familiar.
 
@Rubio no, what does "better" mean
 
9:32 AM
you know ... more ....... gooder.
 
ok, so if I shape the code like a python would it be better? :P
but, what python?
This is a list of all genera, species and subspecies of the family Pythonidae, otherwise referred to as pythonids or pythons. It follows the taxonomy of McDiarmid et al. (1999), which is available online through ITIS., updated with additional recently described species. Antaresia Antaresia childreni, Children's python Antaresia maculosa, Spotted python Antaresia perthensis, Pygmy python Antaresia stimsoni, Stimson's python Apodora, Papuan python Apodora papuana, Papuan python Aspidites Aspidites melanocephalus, Black-headed python Aspidites ramsayi, Woma Bothrochilus, Bismark ringed pyth...
 
Spotted, obviously.
 
10:16 AM
Reviewers: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/66085/… probably warrants too-broad closure. the wording is so non-specific that all kinds of answers will fit it.
 
and a dupe...
like, a millionth dupe
 
it's actually not a dup, based on the answer. that doesn't make it a good question.
 
I'm not sure if the answer can define whether it's a dupe or not
 
@ffao @EriktheOutgolfer So OP is now defining "better" as "shorter". I don't know much about PPCG but I assume there's some minimal standard questions are expected to meet to be posted there; OP seems to want it migrated, and I don't know if it is migratable in its current state. Any suggestions?
 
@Rubio I would VTC, but I can't because SE is silly
 
10:23 AM
heh
 
in this state, I would have VTC-ed it as unclear
> returning 1 for all numbers that are >= 1 and 0 for all numbers that are < 1
what does this mean?
should it take a list/tuple of numbers or a single argument?
the "example" here is what would be otherwise called "test cases"
those shouldn't be necessary for you to clearly understand the challenge
@ffao you seem to have 151 rep over PPCG, which is too low to VTC
 
@EriktheOutgolfer ffao was talking about the other thing I called out for too-broad VTCs.
On the function question I've retracted my "this is on topic" comment and told the OP more or less that they just shot themselves in the foot.
Alexander can't get out of his own way :)
 
(@Alexander - this question would not be welcome on PPCG as-is, for exactly the same reason it's a problem here, except that PPCG by default assumes the "best answer" criteria is "shortest code". I'm not sure that's at all what you want. In any event, you'd have to improve it for it to be migratable: just asking for a "better" function is entirely too broad.) — Rubio ♦ 45 mins ago
@Rubio that's wrong, there's a custom off-topic reason for omission of an explicit objective winning criterion
 
And yet I see many posts that don't specify a win criteria, just code submisions vying for shortest solution.
It may not be kosher, but it's the de facto default, insofar as I can tell :)
 
it should technically be in the challenge body, but I don't think a challenge has ever been closed for putting the criterion only in the tags (and this specific policy is relatively new)
well, you can see that most challenges are tagged , and it's stated that the shortest solution wins
this is an objective winning criterion
 
10:36 AM
Ok, then fair enough.
 
those restrictions still seem really arbitrary to me -- is what he wants a math function, or really a programming solution without ifs, booleans or list comprehensions?
I'm afraid they will move the goalposts again when someone submits something like def f(x): return len(range(0,int(x),int(x)*int(x)+1))
if something like this is OK, I think it's on-topic for PPCG, though Erik would know better
 
oh, there have been a couple or more cases where, over PPCG, people have started golfing their solutions to a challenge without an OWC, but those were mistakes :P
@ffao mass downvotes ensue
 
I think he's really looking for a programming solution, but found something close on Puzzling to model the question after by asking for a "better" math function, and thought he could ask that and get what he wanted.
 
hm, let's inform him of our Sandbox and chat room before it gets moved there...
 
unless he specified "shortest function" in terms of number of operations or something, which he hasn't done, I'm left to assume he's asking what it really really looks like he's asking: shortest Python code. and we don't do that here.
@EriktheOutgolfer I suggested he look around PPCG to learn how to ask it there. I am unfamiliar with what more specifically to point him at; if you wanna do the honors, please do
 
10:42 AM
yeah, I will
we just don't want yet another case of "I posted my incomplete challenge on main because, whoops, I didn't know the Sandbox existed"
 
 
1 hour later…
12:10 PM
C4 hint: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ R (both cryptics)
 
There goes my -nia assumption.
 
I don't think you should abandon your line of thinking
 
Could still be -nier or something of the sort, though.
ha, ninja-ed by the actual clue setter
ah, I think I have the crazy horse one
and the golden ring one should be do-able given that
@EricTressler The golden ring is DRAUPNIR and the crazy horse is SLEIPNIR.
 
correct. They're pronounced (almost exactly) "drop near" and "sleep near"
 
perhaps a little on the obscure side
it was correct to use the crazy horse one as a clue rather than the other way around because Sleipnir is less obscure than Draupnir
i..e, I'd heard of Sleipnir and only had to look up what it was, whereas I had never heard of Draupnir and had to put something like "norse mythology golden ring nir" into Google :-).
 
12:20 PM
Yeah, I didn't realize it would be so unknown to the people in here. I've seen a lot of evidence in contact that people here know more mythological figures than me.
 
I've heard of them, but I don't do CCCCs
 
anyway, nice clues
 
thanks. I'm glad I didn't have to upload a picture of Odin as a hint.
 
Oh, so that's it. I knew about Sleipnir, but not about Draupnir. (And I would have pronounced them Slipe-near and Drowp-near.)
 
12:29 PM
@ffao or lambda n:round(min(1.5,max(.5,n))+.5)? :P
 
@MOehm sorry; I checked an online audio clip of "Sleipnir" to make sure it sounded acceptably close to "sleep near", and it did, to me. I wouldn't be surprised if people disagree on its pronunciation, though.
 
FWIW, (1) I would have pronounced them the same way as M Oehm but (2) I know approximately nothing about Norse mythology so there is no reason to take any notice of how I would have pronounced them :-).
 
Oh, I couldn't find any useful information on the pronunciation. Wikipedia usually has IPA symbols. I think Seep-near is a correct rendering of Sleipnir -- in English.
 
but I have no idea whether it's in any way trustworthy
 
In my mind, I pronounce them as if they were German words. But they are (old?) Norse words, so my pronunciation isn't necessarily any better than Eric's.
 
12:37 PM
That is also my procedure :-).
 
Fun fact: I googled "Golden ring fantasy", because I thought that the ring might be an artefact in any of the numerous fantasy sagas out there. Searching for "golden ring mythology", even without specifying any mythology in particular, would have given me the answer immediately.
 
I didn't do any of that until after I'd figured out Sleipnir, because I assumed that having "golden ring" be the definition was too obvious and the structure was probably something else. But Eric double-bluffed me :-).
CCCC: Corporate communication tool for coordinating action (6)
 
1:06 PM
@GarethMcCaughan CO+SIGN (def. "coordinating action")
 
1:51 PM
or maybe instead it's CO+PING (same def.)
 
is COSIGN even a word?
can't find an entry in any of the respectable dictionaries
 
Yeah, as in you can cosign a loan for someone
 
It may have a hyphen: co-sign.
 
ah ok
so literally sign with someone else
 
"cosign" is a coordinating action, in the most obvious sense of "coordinating" with another person. "coping" would need to stretch "coordinating" to the point of "negotiating a difficulty for oneself"
 
1:54 PM
TIL
 
And I assume Gareth would have chosen another word instead of "coordinating" in that case, maybe "balancing".
But the tense bothers me. Should it be "cosigning"?
 
That would at least make it a noun, like action.
 
Yeah, that's why I came back here to waffle. :|
 
I wouldn't have noticed the verb/noun mismatch if you hadn't brought it up, though.
 
I didn't notice it at first either. I originally thought "coordinating action" meant something like "assign coordinates to" or "plot on axes". Maybe it does, and both of my guesses are wrong.
Either way, I need to get to work, so if anyone can make hay out of this, go ahead.
 
2:11 PM
It could also be ddef. "corporate communication" and "tool for coordinating action", REPORT
 
VTC too broad
 
:)
 
it's clearly ddef. "Corporate communication tool for coordinating" / "action" → REMEDY
as Remedy is a helpdesk tool
 
COSIGN is not my intended solution. I'd have thought "co-signing" would be a coordinating action, but not "cosign".
All these other suggestions, though, do make me worry that it's too-broad; neither REPORT nor REMEDY is at all what I had in mind.
 
and COPING?
 
2:16 PM
also not COPING (I don't see why that would be "coordinating action" at all, sorry)
 
Sid
@EricTressler They seem too close in definition for a ddef.
 
I'm shocked (... shocked!) that REMEDY isn't it ;)
 
Sid
I have a question: Can I use, say "Pedants pick it" as a def for NIT?
 
I'd probably toss a "?" in there, but I think it'd be ok
 
2:32 PM
could it be AD+VICE? Doesn't fit the "coordinating action" def. very well, though
Scratch that. It fits the first half very well, but the second half is too much of a stretch to defend.
 
Sid
@Rand You have 6 questions unaccepted now. Maybe accept some answers?
Actually more than that, but you get the point
 
@GarethMcCaughan PR[corporate communication] + AXIS[tool for coordinating] = PRAXIS [action]
 
Ah, nice.
 
2:57 PM
@Sid I've given up. I generally won't upvote a question until an answer has been accepted, and I watch questions that have likely-correct answers posted on them to remind the OP to accept an answer if they haven't done so within a few days. If they haven't accepted an answer after a certain duration (which varies depending on a couple of factors) then I leave my reminder in place but no longer track that question—so they'll never get an upvote on the question even if they eventually accept.
Rand is well beyond the threshold intervals. I've abandoned reminding him, as he knows better and as he seems to resent it when I do it. So, whatever. It just means he doesn't get upvotes from me for his questions.
 
@ManyPinkHats Yes! Well done.
 
3:16 PM
I'm beginning to think ManyPinkHats is actually an AI Neural Net extensively trained on Deusovi and Gareth data.
 
Next to come is ZeroPinkHats, trained entirely by self-play, which will be better at puzzle-solving than any human being but solve them in really weird and surprising ways.
(I think ManyPinkHats may already be better at puzzle-solving than any human being, though)
in fairness, so is Deusovi
 
Sid
May 15 '17 at 16:08, by Rubio
Deusovi is ... more machine now than man (twisted and evil). He can solve these things in a moment's thought.
Deusovi is a Machine...
 
If any of the stuff about me was true, then I wouldn't have to ask for more time to fix my next clue, since I just realized it doesn't work as well as I hoped
No comment on Deusovi, though
 
Well. There's no doubt about Deusovi being a machine.
 
 
1 hour later…
4:29 PM
0
Q: My first simple ridle

Q̞ī̯X̶͇͇͇͇͇͇͇͇͇͇͇͇͇̯̯̳̳͈͈͈͆͆Note: My first riddle ever , i think it's so easy to solve. When small, my tail down. When big, my tail is up. When small,I can not be seen. when big, I look small in big.

 
 
1 hour later…
5:35 PM
0
Q: I'm not a fan of hedgehogs

Joe-You-Know Many have tried to beat me, many have failed. The earliest to succeed, is long-tailed. If you break me, silence is all you'll hear. The thunder will make the others fear. Others will tremble at your might, As you break me in their sight. The flash of a whip kills me as it ...

 
Icelanders would pronounce them droyp-nir and slayjp-nir, with a short I as opposed to the long sound in near, but I doubt you can get any closer using English words
Not a fan of homophone clues in general since they tend to have a lot of this sort of "eh, kinda", but that's not Eric's fault
Plus that is one of the few horses I actually knew the name of u.u
Adding MPH, Gareth, M Oehm and Deusovi, we might have more AIs than humans here at this point
Also one of the other regulars is a dog
 
i dont know if i count as a regular, but im a dragon
 
5:55 PM
@ffao Allegedly.¹
... ¹ citation needed
 
6:17 PM
CCCC: Silver clips – they may be hidden? (7)
 
@ManyPinkHats 7 characters? must be pancake :P
 
Oh, yes, the famous Hidden-Pancake diet.
 
hm. i kinda think I have the answer but not a clue how it works.
 
Let's hear it, then!
 
AGENDAS = AG + <wordplay giving ENDAS somehow from "clips">
 
6:28 PM
Yes, everything screams "agendas", but I don't see how it works either.
 
My thoughts as well
 
Sid
@Rubio Probably Clips as "End as"?
 
but that doesn't parse properly
 
Is it possible that the def is just "may be hidden?", and "they" is part of the wordplay...?
 
I've been toying with that for quite a while :)
 
6:32 PM
Or "clip s" = "end a s"
 
ew. I hope it's not that.
 
Sid
@GentlePurpleRain that's as bad as nod=no d.
 
Yes, AGENDAS is correct; no parsing posted so far has been what I intended, though
 
Oh! It's AG (silver) + EN-DAS(h) clips --
 
That's the one!
 
6:36 PM
hah
nicely done
 
Sid
I am not sure I get it...
 
Hopefully, that's better than the 'nod' or 'end as' suggestions
 
And remember, kids: Punctuation can be ignoted.
 
But misuse of an en-dash. (Should be an em-dash in the surface reading.)
 
@Sid the – is an EN-DASH. A longer dash is an EM-DASH
 
6:36 PM
- is hyphen, – is en-dash, and — is em-dash
 
Okay, I usually don't em-dashes as dashes in a sentence. (But that may again be my cultural bias.)
 
En-dash is used for ranges, like, "He was 22–24 years old."
 
I either do - well - something like this—or this.
 
@GentlePurpleRain prescriptivist!
get him
 
I don't distinguish these uses and my dashes have spaces around them.
 
6:38 PM
@Rubio I don't &mdash; I do - at least something similar to - this.
 
he just has a different spelling of AGEMDAS than you do.
 
Okay, it's my turn, I guess?
 
Sid
@EricTressler Oh. So, they are called that? I kinda ignorantly have used hyphen, short dash and long dash till now. :P
 
@Sid i use dash, dashier, and dashiest
 
Sid, em and en are typesetter's measures, the width of a small n and m respectivels.
 
6:40 PM
@Sid yes, and it's because (at least historically???? ask Wikipedia), the en-dash was the width of an "n", and similarly for em-dash
 
@Mithrandir (I generally don't &mdash; anymore, I use the unicode directly. Because keyboard bindings.)
 
I'm okay with people using hyphens in place of an em-dash, when typing an em-dash is difficult. But put a space around them, please! Otherwise-when there is no space-you end up with a bunch of randomly-hyphenated words.
 
Even worse, a prescriptivist who's trying to sound reasonable! (just kidding)
 
I used to do -- something more like this -- but then again, I used to slavishly follow "period and two spaces" also.
 
Sid
@MOehm Ah. Understood. Thanks!
 
6:42 PM
@EricTressler Thanks, I got that, even before the edit. :)
So is it Rubio or M Oehm up next?
 
I am. Rubio was barking up the wrong tree, obviously. :)
 
@MOehm why was he barking up a tree? the c4 had nothing to do with trees
or barking for that matter
 
@EricTressler Do note the fifth word in my Puzzling profile.
 
sure, it had to do with trees; in the end–ashes were central to the parsing of the clue
7
 
@Dragonrage It was supposed to be a cheap joke about the allegations that someone here is really a dog. Very cheap, I admit.
 
Sid
6:46 PM
@Dragonrage Because dogs... :P
 
@GentlePurpleRain why isnt you name PeacefulPurplePrecipitation
 
Rubio is a dog, of course.
On the internet, everyone knows you're a dog because you tell them.
 
Okay, if Rubio doesn't mind, I'll post one. Otherwise the C4 chain will be stalled for days again ...
 
@ManyPinkHats That was terrible. Clever, but terrible.
 
CCCC: Vagrant holds last two letters against Greek city (9)
 
6:49 PM
@MOehm BYZANTIUM = B(YZ + ANTI)UM
 
@GentlePurpleRain Ha, that was quick!
(But I can still claim my clue was more Byzantine than MPH's.)
 
CCCC: Corruption follows end of promotion to novitiate (6)
 
2
Q: Help me solve this...where is it?

Stephanie Silva As I have gone alone in there And with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret where, And hint of riches new and old. Begin it where warm waters halt And take it in the canyon down, Not far, but too far to walk. Put in below the home of Brown. From there it's no place...

 
7:07 PM
NO<+VICE?
@GentlePurpleRain [-promotio]N+[-t]O+VICE
 
Yep, that's it!
 
CCCC: Demijohn holds singular means for retreat (5)
 
@EricTressler [-jo]H(AVE)N
singular means being an average, or ave for short
 
@Apep correct. This is one I was wondering about, both for "DEMI" applying to the latter half of the word, and the two-step "singular means" -> "mean" -> ave.
 
Hm. I suspected the demi- thing (and think it is kosher), but the "singular means" was over my head and probably one level of indirection too much.
 
7:21 PM
Alright, noted
 
CCCC: Exhaustive rear indeed. (8)
 
@Apep DE(TAIL)ED, where indeed must be split into "in deed".
 
@MOehm correct
 
in Contact, 1 min ago, by GentlePurpleRain
Defending: I
 
CCCC: Flat writer, followed by those embracing deconstructionism at heart (9)
 
7:33 PM
PEN+THO[_U_]SE
 
@ManyPinkHats Bingo!
 
1
Q: Confused... why?

TwoBitOperation Finish of bronze or finish of gold. Uncurse my bluff and the way will be told. In fiction and fact, at the edge of the grave. I'll fit in a tux if I see where you pave. I'm a dragon part—a circus split up. We're at the term's start—to pass, sum it up! Confused... why? What am I?

 
7:53 PM
3
Q: This Riddle Should Be Easy

kedarguru I am a word with rhyming parts, Each part a word if spoken aloud. The first is to bully The last is to steal And spoken together, a pleasant meal. What am I?

 
8:45 PM
0
Q: Muddled movie titles

ferretA friend of mine has a really (selectively) bad memory, and often gets things muddled. He's trying to recall the titles of these movies / series, but all he can give me is a very brief synopsis of each. However, he remembers exactly how many words are in each title. Can you help us out? A ...

 
8:56 PM
CC attempt: Shallan's disguise revoltingly evil.(4)
 
There's a Codenames game going on, if anyone is interested...
 
@GentlePurpleRain looks interesting, but i am unfortunately at work
 
@Dragonrage No worries. It was a general announcement; not aimed specifically at you.
 
9:40 PM
@Dragonrage Not knowing who or what Shallan is, I'd guess "VEIL" - and offer a bit of an improvement to the surface reading
"Shallan's disguise is revoltingly evil. (4)" sounds better.
Possibly, "The twisted, evil disguise of Shallan. (4)"
 
9:57 PM
@Rubio wasnt sure how much you can add filler words to improve the surface reading, but yes it is veil
Shallan is a main character from the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson
 
@Dragonrage you can use "filler" words so long as they contribute to the grammar of the cryptic interpretation of the clue. In this case, Rubio's version is "<def> is <wordplay>", which makes grammatical sense. Similarly, you could do things like "<wordplay> for/gives/leads to/makes/etc <def>" or "<def> from/via/etc <wordplay>" (you can also use "and/or" between wordplay & def in either order, since they both lead to the solution word)
 
@Alconja ah i see. makes sense
 

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