The Sphinx's Lair

Prince North Læraðr

4:00 PM

That's like being in an ice cooler

Yes, I have great temperature tolerance

matt

the high over here is quickly googles 57

and the low is 35

bobble

I have no final answer, let alone a provable one. All moves are counted. (the title may be a bit misleading, but the description counts: white moves not white-king moves.) — Retudin 11 mins ago

wonderful

another optimization problem with no known solution

matt

how wonderful /s

Deusovi

ugh

i have an unfinished manifesto on the problem with optimization questions without known answers, and why they're almost always bad puzzles

matt

why not finish the manifesto?

Sphinx

4:08 PM

1

Q: Chess solitaire: The Kings longest walk

Challenge: maximize the number of moves white needs for its king to reach a square of your choosing, adhering to the following rules: Black does not move Like normal: The king may not be in a check position (after a white move, it is allowed at start) The starting pieces do not exceed the normal...

0

Q: Ad Hoc University -- Class Integration

Welcome back to the Ad Hoc University where, you may remember, I am a professor of Awesomeness. Last week, the dean of the school told me I had to integrate the class I teach (see previous link for info on that) with another class, Bountiful MC. To make my class interesting, I made the rules for ...

enigmatic-puzzle

Avi

He keeps having to re-optimize it

5

Deusovi

ha!

matt

i love that one avi :)

but like seriously

Deusovi

because that would take effort, and i had a lot of backlash when i tried to argue against optimization questions before

matt

:(

Prince North Læraðr

4:10 PM

@Deusovi Try it again? I agree with you

bobble

me too

Prince North Læraðr

I was playing (albeit terrible) devil's advocate as well as Rubio (who was actually being a good devil's advocate)

But both of us agreed that optimization puzzles were problematic

Deusovi

honestly i would very much like there to be a close reason for unknown optimization questions - i think they're not puzzles, because they're not designed to have a solution

(and they aren't just "bad puzzles" like iq test questions, where the path to the solution is underclued -- they're specifically not puzzles)

21

Q: The end of open-ended puzzles

Consensus has been reached. I say this on Rubio's authority - the contents of this post are considered to be a part of the definition of this site's scope. So, I posted this open-ended puzzle a while ago, looking forward to all the fun around it and the upvotes that would pour in. Nope. Tha...

discussion tags scope

16

Q: About NON-open-ended puzzles with multiple answers working towards an optimum

A while ago, consensus was reached that open-ended puzzles are no longer welcome on our site. That means, if a question has no absolute "best possible" answer, so that any answer could conceivably be outdone in the future, then we're supposed to close it as too open-ended to work well here: there...

discussion answers

here's the previous discussion, where i thought things were satisfied, and then the followup question, where "open-ended" was redefined much more narrowly than i had originally intended

Prince North Læraðr

I mean, this isn't code golf

msh210

@Deusovi heh, I started reading that line "because that would take effort, and i had a lot of backlash when i" and expected it to finish ~"have taken effort"

Deusovi

4:15 PM

ha! that's even better, wish i said that instead

Avi

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I'm gofling on the floor laughing

Prince North Læraðr

har haR

Avi

yes yes I know but it's a recursive abbreviation

matt

ah yes gofl

i am golfing on the laughing floor

Prince North Læraðr

@Avi Ugh stop lol

Avi

4:17 PM

dunno what you call those (e.g., The TTC Company)

matt

Recursive acronym

A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in which Hofstadter invents the acronym GOD, meaning "GOD Over Djinn", to help explain infinite series, and describes it as a recursive acronym. Other references followed, however the concept was used as early as 1968 in John Brunner's science fiction novel Stand on Zanzibar. In the story, the acronym EPT (Education for Particular Task) later morphed into "Eptification for Particular Task". Recursive acronyms typically form...

Avi

ahhhh The TTP Project

thanks!