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12:22 AM
i was just watching a video of someone playing a game
and heard a noise and looked over
but realized the guy in the video reacted to the noise, so it was coming from the video, not real life
and the he goes "wait a second, did that come real life, or was it from the game?"
too meta
 
12:59 AM
@Gareth, was just typing this when I saw your comment on a certain question: What are peoples' thoughts on whether we need an official policy on how much content a "partial" answer needs to contain? (and if/how to handle that don't meet that threshold)
 
1:16 AM
well there is always downvotes
 
Yeah, that makes sense, but I guess the question is if we need some official policy that we can point to when people inevitably complain about getting downvoted for "correct" information. At the moment, I don't think there's anything actually written anywhere, and thus people could rightly argue they're not doing anything wrong and don't deserve down voting...
 
and then they have a good guideline for next time
 
 
2 hours later…
3:43 AM
i guess we should try to settle on some sort of guideline first
 
4:30 AM
C4 hint I guess: clue is split Abandoned / indecent period
 
what's good
oh where oh where has my little skog gone, oh where oh where can he be
 
Sid
4:54 AM
@GarethMcCaughan No. You may still attempt the puzzle
 
 
2 hours later…
6:55 AM
@Alconja the downvote description says "not useful", not "factually incorrect"
now the $1e6 question is what counts as a useful answer on a site where questions are the primary goods.
 
@JohnDvorak Fair play. That's good enough for me (and I guess how high you set the bar for a partial answer to be "useful" can be left to the voter).
 
Sid
7:31 AM
Gah. I am stuck with this C4. I have been thinking and now even searching for that same construction for a while now
 
 
3 hours later…
11:08 AM
@Mithrandir All gone.
 
 
2 hours later…
1:29 PM
0
Q: Weird ciphered note

CSharkMy nerdy friend left me this memo yesterday and told me to follow its instructions. But I have no clue what he wants from me... #F00:47 |6? 2E D@>6 E:>6 2C6 >2DE6CD @7 E96:C DF>>65 72E6D β _64 U+2295 [aA0] KSQdMgMFHU1BQh0HWVMgEAsxB1VBJRlTQxsYHhYPMVMvGzINQT...

 
2:05 PM
0
Q: The Dollar Bill

TSLFBill was ask to form as many triangles on top of a flat table using his 5 pennies (3 coins on the table where centers are connected by imaginary lines to make a triangle). And his teacher told him that for every triangle formed Bill will be paid a nickle (5cents). But for every triangle that do n...

 
2:21 PM
1
Q: Words with Puzzlers

ChowzenMy "friend" (who has absolutely too much time on his hands) made me a DIY Scrabble™ board. He's nice like that. He cut, sanded, painted and even routed out little cradles for the letter tiles. Oh yeah, and he made letter tiles! He left it for me as you see below, all filled in and scored on a...

 
2:39 PM
is someone working on that one at the moment? ^
 
I was thinking of working on it
 
I was fiddling with it
 
2:58 PM
!
 
0
Q: I don't want to let my friends down

Joe-You-Know This is an entry into the Fortnightly Topic Challenge #36 I was supposed to do something, but I can't remember what it was. I know it was supposed to be fun or funny. In a typical effort to hide my plans from my friends, I made a word search that was scrambled using a Keyword Cipher. It seems; ...

 
3:52 PM
anyone know of a way to prove if a Sudoku has only one unique solution?
 
Solve it without guessing.
 
brute force :P
 
as you can see, PPCGers have very different approaches to puzzles
 
@Dragonrage Baring some off the wall logic, there are websites that can check for you.
 
@EriktheOutgolfer yeah, i might have to write up a program to brute force it, as it will be a non-traditional sudoku that i am creating
 
3:55 PM
If you can solve it without guessing, then it's unique. If you can't, then it might not be a good idea to use it in a puzzle.
 
the thing is, if you can't solve it without guessing, it might be some lack of skill of yours and not the puzzle's fault
that's why I suggested brute-forcing
 
Sid
I am glad Twisted Connections got completed soon. I might make a puzzle based on the whole Only-Connect game soon. I liked their ideas.
 
if i have a program to brute force it, i can make tweeks to the puzzle easy if i find that it doesnt have a unique solution
 
I thought of a twisted puzzle, but it would be a pain to make, so I changed my mind on making it.
 
yup, only connect is great
@EriktheOutgolfer problem is that if you assume that, it may very well be impossible to solve using reasonable tactics, like the famed 17-clue sudoku
better too easy than too hard
 
3:58 PM
true
 
Sid
@Deusovi is that "The Hardest Sudoku ever" thing?
 
yup
 
@Deusovi hm, that might explain why nobody has yet solved some of paramesis's masterpieces...
 
Wouldn't Killer sudoku technically be a twisted classic?
 
had killer sudoku not already been an established genre, I'd say so
 
4:02 PM
Although you could do something similar, albeit difficult, with letters
 
0
Q: The right answer..?

Lisa GroenhofWhat is the right answer for the riddle: Divided by a wall? (written by Doorknob and/or Mc Kevin) I remember hearing this riddle when I was young. Divided by a wall, N and S. Tunnels in between, but no one pass. The West has more, and the East has less. Less is more, but More is less. What a...

 
Box certain regions on the board that must make a word while maintaining letter uniqueness in each row, column, and 3x3 square
 
@dcfyj 26x26?
 
@EriktheOutgolfer that sounds incredibly painful
 
Uh, no, that'd be insane
 
4:04 PM
@Sphinx Best use of a dupehammer ever.
 
yeah, it does sound excruciatingly deadly
 
@Randal'Thor You just wanted to use your riddle hammer :P
 
We don't get many dupes.
 
true
The weird thing is, the poser even mentions the original post (with the author and last editor) in their post
 
@EriktheOutgolfer how would you have sub boxes? wouldn't they be uneven?
 
4:06 PM
@Dragonrage Look up killer sudoku
 
@dcfyj They're new to SE: I guess they just didn't realise that asking for the solution to an existing question isn't a valid new question.
 
Dangit! I plugged plugged "words with puzzles" into wolfram alpha, but it won't solve it for me. sigh
 
@Randal'Thor oh, I see why they posed that question, the original doesn't have an accepted answer.
@Randal'Thor True
@Tumbler41 lol
 
Yeah, but who reads that before posting.
 
4:09 PM
true story :/
 
@dcfyj I gave the original OP (redundancy alert!) a poke in comments.
 
if you come over PPCG, almost every second question has a reason to get closed very quickly
 
@Randal'Thor Yup, I saw
 
@EriktheOutgolfer if you come over to Arqade, 95% of all new minecraft questions that arent off topic are dupes.
 
Somehow, I don't find that too surprising
 
4:11 PM
when I say every second question, I mean out of all questions, not out of a specific tag
 
pokemon go used to be like that as well, but once the hype died down, it went back to normal. all the rest of our tags are pretty ok
 
closed vs. open (not accounting for locked/deleted ones)
 
@EriktheOutgolfer Something's wrong. Both of those pages tell me "500 results", but the site has more than 1000 questions.
Still beaten by Christianity at nearly 50%.
 
@Randal'Thor i get 1250 for the first, and 8474 for the second
 
4:18 PM
If anyone has mathematica I can give you a string that should solve the fist step of "words with puzzles" lol.
 
who has the $$$ to pay for it :/
 
right?
A student with a discount maybe?
 
yeah...I'm no student with no discount
 
Gareth's already solved the first step, as much as possible at least.
 
so, i have well over half the score needed for a silver tag badge for on MSO and i only have one answer lol
 
4:19 PM
oh
 
I have Mathematica, but no skill with it.
 
... I used Mathematica. :-)
 
@Dragonrage also, that answer happens to be on a post about something I'd love to have implemented in every SE community...
and...how did you garner over 200 upvotes in one day O_O
 
@EriktheOutgolfer uh, its MSO and its a featured questions. get lots of views
 
people must've been waiting for that like hundreds of packs of hungry, drooling wolves lol
 
4:24 PM
@EriktheOutgolfer SO's numbers are ridiculous.
Look at the number of questions in the top tags, or the amount of rep the top users have.
 
also i posted within like 20 minutes of the question being posted
 
yeah, Jon Skeet has over 1,000,000 >_>
 
now i have more votes on that answer than i do rep on SO
 
unfortunately, meta sites don't contribute to rep :P
 
no, but i did get a mortarboard badge for it
plus the 3 badges for upvoted answers
 
4:26 PM
only on meta
badges over main are separate
 
yeah, but i still got lots of imaginary imaginary internet points for it
 
But the product of two imaginary numbers is real ... does that mean you're going to get real swag for it?
Jun 6 '17 at 13:49, by Rand al'Thor
It's not useless if it contributes to a badge. There's more to life than just points. For instance, there are other kinds of points. — Engineer Toast Jun 4 '15 at 19:10
 
@Randal'Thor if i can answer a couple more featured questions like that, then go post a bunch of other random answers, i could theoretically get a gold tag badge from it
 
"a bunch" = 197?
The hard part of getting a gold tag badge is the volume.
Over on Science Fiction & Fantasy I've got the scores for 3 gold tag badges and another 6 silvers, but not enough answers for more than 2 silvers total.
 
@Level51 Tenuous but possible CCCC answer: I'm guessing it might be an indirect anagram. "Abandoned" = ISOLATED, and "indecent" as anagram indicator gives us DIASTOLE, which is a certain phase of the heartbeat, which could be defined as a "period".
 
Sid
4:38 PM
@GentlePurpleRain they said the split was Abandoned/indecent period. If I understand correctly, that means Abandoned is the def, no?
 
Interesting, but I don't know if I agree with indecent being an anagram indicator.
@Sid Could be ddef, no?
 
Sid
@dcfyj could be, yeah.
 
Would certainly explain the lack of apparent wordplay
 
 
2 hours later…
6:36 PM
0
Q: Find the true one

Sergei PetuninThere’s lots of words here, but only a single true one. Find it. Hint:

 
@Sid I hadn't seen that hint, but this could still work that way. "Period" is DIASTOLE, "indecent" indicates an anagram, and the def is "Abandoned" = ISOLATED.
 
6:53 PM
2
Q: Do they have to be integers?

jkl3699$A^2$ + $B^2$, $AB$, and $A + B$ are all integers. Do both $A$ and $B$ have to be integers? If not, what is an example where they are not?

 
7:52 PM
3
Q: I am hated by the world

SuperWild1 They say I am evil: a corrupt influence, a monster. But while it's true that I have many hands and faces, I am no more evil than those around me; I reflect their vice or virtue. Yet still they curse me, submitting me to grisly executions. I am drawn and quartered, cut in ha...

 
8:08 PM
0
Q: Five different things and five different clues and -------

DEEMPlease finish the title of this puzzle! Five different things, quite common All come in different size, shape and colour Each word has 3 different consonents Five words share and show the 3 same consonents at same exact location Look at them carefully See anything speci...

 
8:45 PM
@GarethMcCaughan Heh, I tried wolfram alpha, but needed the full mathematica to complete it. Alas, I don't own it. Guess I'll just leave those to you. ;)
 
 
2 hours later…
10:44 PM
Well, it's perfectly doable by hand. Just much quicker by computer.
 

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