did people get weary of affix riddles or something

@Avi oooooo I haven't written one of those in a minute :)

Thanks for the idea :D

lol

😂 go for it

Can't lie, this has me a bit bothered. :/

hi

actually

for that sort of problem

you're usually best off doing a bfs to a certain depth

applying operators as per the rules

to formulas, which you pretty much represent the same way

that you would if you were doing a memoization or dynamic programming problem

but hashing out all the details is a pain in the neck

and if you can't find a solution within depth 5-9

usually the puzzle is very poorly constructed

My personal solution was to generate expressions using a recursive function, then I wrote an interpreter to solve the expressions properly. That was the most scalable solution I found at the time.

now... lets make a puzzle shall we?

im going to make a prologue to my halloween puzzle

However, I thought the question was borderline but still wanted to help.

Unfortunately, this isn't Stack Overflow or Software Engineering, so I have to limit what I put in my answer to general direction, IMHO

@Tacoタコス right, the problem is that recursion is too slow

@Avi I concur entirely

@Avi async :)

you end up recomputing the same values

too many times

you always prefer to construct the value in either the least operators or least numbers possible

and then use that value in further computations, just storing how you made it

async will be faster but it could still blow up for these kind of exponential problems

Honestly, my approach favors completeness over the speed of getting an answer; not favorable for something you want to answer quickly.

Which, is something the OP probably wants, but I'm not going to help someone write a way to cheat fast answers.

using memoization will be generally complete and usually very fast

o, true

I don't usually try to answer that kind of question with computation though

usually coming up with a clever way will be faster

totally understanding what both of you saying. Totally.

unless you have a custom solution pre-written

waves at Avi and Taco

@Avi it's more fun to solve it by hand

@Stevo sounds like a plan

@Tacoタコス exactly!!

@Stevo hi

let's make a puzzle

using operators

I tackled the problem programmatically for fun a few years ago, but haven't touched it since.

@Avi um... i kinda suck at those puzzles lol

and the number 0, for pumpkins

@Stevo we're trying to create a puzzle, not solve it :P

so uh

@Avi Oh...

first things first, the number 0 is generally useless

I'm trying to cram in homework

@Avi blasphemy lol

at least for number creation

so our first step should be using 0!=1

I can bring everything to nothing and I can blow everything up with the number zero.

n * 0 and n / 0 🤣

Sorry, I'm done being cheesy now lol

uhhhh

do you think we can do derivatives

also has the speed limit for typing on the chat gone down, or have I gotten faster??

@Avi i dont think that the speed limit has changed

waves at slate

@Avi faster, I think.

ye, maybe

@Avi lets have a competition lol

no lol

i'll get stomped

lol

I only do that good on one-liners

how fast is your wpm?

like 80 when choking, 95 when solid, 60-120 on oneliners

0 for numbers

lol

im 60 when sleeping (as if not trying), 80 when im trying, 40 for numbers. 200000000000000 on oneliners

op

im not the fastest

my high school friend claims that hes written 100 wpm when trying

"I really don't think you have anything to worry about, Charlie Brown. After all, science has shown that a person's character isn't really established until he's at least five years old."

did 105 on this but then choked to 102

sad

lol

"I really don't think you have anything to worry about, Charllie Brown. After all, science has shown athat a persons' character isn't really established until he's at least five years old."

that was definitely slow for me

uh oh

anticheat

livechat.com/typing-speed-test/#

Try that out lol

Stumps you up good :D

Uses words you're not used to lol

Like "vowel" lmao

o oh

yey

on a roll today

lol

sad

79 on your weird moving text thing

63 wpm on the livechat one

thats bad

for me

@Avi where is that? lol

81

the livechat

63 again

Your screenshot?

i suck at typing

@Tacoタコス um i already closed the window

uh

i retried

but uh

the main thing that's throwing me off is how

it doesn't stop you

if you make a typo

so you can't backspace-correct

wpmtest.org

That one pisses me off because it makes noise lol

this is for the livechat one

still kinda janky though

@Avi I concur lol

oh my god

this one also advances on typo

now...

for my puzzle...

im going to pretend

today is christmas

totally

whats a public holiday held in july?

Christmas in July

thats a new holiday

ive never heard of it

where was it originated from?

ive only heard about christmas in december...

smh

this 2nd site is awful

doesn't like

register the first letter of a word

more often than not

10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english

^ this is the real shit

very good site

sad

95

68 wpm

i kinda give up

That's how it should be done

Natural typing :)

Not "she space vowel king something about nothing cats are car"

typingtest.com

That's where it is :)

problem is that you end up memorizing the story

very fast

To be fair, you're never really typing random words

Full random sentences that make sense would be better

I write code for a living, so I'm not really about how fast I can type anymore lol

frfr

coding messes up typing syntax a lot

but actually my personal bottleneck is reading speed

I just can't read and comprehend the text in different fonts/formats so fast

@Tacoタコス speaking of coding, is 40 the minimum or is there a loweer one?

once I get used to the text, then my fingers slow down around 100

@Avi my friends once timed me and i read a full page in 38 seconds

@Stevo I'm not permitted to answer that yet :)

@Tacoタコス :(

@Stevo please tell me it was the extreme in one direction or another (e.g. a page in the dictionary vs a page in one fish two fish red fish blue fish).

@Tacoタコス nope. It was page 4 in a book called Rangers Apprentice: The tournament at Gorlan

YOoooo

That sounds like it was a long page lol

good series

why did i get 40 again

@Avi yes, halt nearly died in book 9

@Stevo I think the real question is how do you get 40?

@Tacoタコス didn't i post another one saying another way to get 40?

@Tacoタコス i know the pattern in my mind

Yes, but you don't explain how you got there. It's a logical-deduction puzzle, so there's going to be a logical explanation for why you can't get below a certain number.

@Tacoタコス oh...

D:

bottlenecked at 83-84

either i'm getting weary of typing

or there's something seriously wrong with the way this one presents the text

probably both tbh

Just purchased the tabs today

So ready to learn it :D

how can you make .22222222222222222222 using the least number of 2s?

I can make it with 5 2s

how?

@Avi I can make it with one ;)

@Tacoタコス What?

lol

that works...

@Tacoタコス I see polyphia I like

@oAlt bought the tablature for the new levels new devils album gonna start learning G.O.A.T. this weekend :)

Good luck hehe

Their songs are quite hard to master but certainly not impossible; go for it :DD

@oAlt the problem I'm not looking forward to is integrating the sweeps lol

Sweep picking is my kryptonite lol

hi

I'm back

ok

@Tacoタコス and this is evil

lol

just edited the tag wiki for the enigmatic tag

lateral thinking

yup

sounds like a plan

waiting for peer review for your tag wiki

I'm writing a liars puzzle 😬

now how do you make .222222222222

using only 0s

@Tacoタコス 😬😬

got burned twice on those

@Avi hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

although, to be fair, they weren't exactly conventional liars puzzles

@Avi hold my Dr. Pepper

0!+0!+0! (all the way to 22222222222222222222222222222222222222) and then divide it by 0!+0!... all the way to 0.222222222222222222

there

thats how u use 0's

lol

well an upper bound is 2/9

so 11 zeros if you just make every number 0! which is 1, added the # times

8 if you do 2/((2^3)+1)

but uh

7 if you do 2/(3^2)

which might be as simple as you can get

Super lazy lol

what is this

Okay, sorry 🤣

AHAH

?

😂

@Avi a zero, photoshopped lmao

yupppp

@Tacoタコス oh.

that was uh

pretty good

anyways, ive started editing the tag wiki for the enigmatic tag @Tacoタコス did a tag wiki edit pending peer review

I don't see anything in the meta queue

@Tacoタコス no, it the normal puzzling queue for suggested edits?

it's in suggested edits queue

@Stevo I don't see it there either.

um...

theres another way to do it

i'm gonna reject :P

@Avi im gonna cry

I'll read it over carefully

ok

Is it an edit to the tag itself or the community wiki answer?

@Tacoタコス both

uh

seems to be only for the tag wiki

@Tacoタコス community wiki u can straight away edit even <2k

which is what you get if you uh

want to go deeper

a.k.a. literally nobody, ever

sec

i'm double checking this against other tag wikis

ok

lol

ive just started part 1

It's kind of lacking

I'll approve and try to add some stuff if I can

ok

lol, apparently land for houses are 2 mil

the hell

"(Note that if you have less than 20000 reputation, your tag wiki will be peer reviewed before it is published.)"

I thought uh

8k was enough

;-;

oh no...

Nope lol 20k

thats dumb...

I'm waiting for that halfway point lol

well uh

I approved, but others may not?

not sure

it needs to be more extensive, I believe

like how?

puzzling.stackexchange.com/tags/riddle/info

here's an example

i knokw

Personally, I believe we should fill in the wiki answer before we start making changes to the tag.

@Tacoタコス i edited it into the community wiki

obviously it won't be that long since enigmatic puzzles can be varied and strange compared to riddles, so it's hard to make sweeping generalizations

@Avi mine is just the starting point of continued editing on the tag wiki

but still there should be some reasonable amount of detail that, while you may be able to solve certain parts of an enigmatic puzzle from the get-go, the essence of the matter is that the solve process is not straightforward, and requires careful thought to decipher

or

maybe may not even require careful thought

but is at least reasonably concealed by the author

yeah

cause you dont want a person

to hide it

in capital letters

thats not a good enigmatic puzzle

it can be

:P

> The puzzler's first task in the puzzle, which is a non-trivial puzzle in itself, is to work out what sort of thing they have to do to start.

@Avi hmmmmmmm

This likely belongs under the last point

@Tacoタコス thats a bit of a debate

cause it is describing what an enigmatic puzzle is in an example

@Stevo it's describing the first step in solving an enigmatic puzzle

thinking it that way... yes.

but then that part is very small...

Sometimes it's not the first step that's enigmatic, though

@Avi I concur

like, they can tell you the starting points?

@Avi true...

we need a lot of changing

@Stevo it can be elaborated on with an example

"Puzzles where the genre or solving strategy of the puzzle is not explicitly stated; puzzles where the puzzler must deduce what type of puzzle it is."

@Tacoタコス yes. one sentence is 100% not enough

I think this is good

For example, this answer does pretty good

the tag description describes it accurately

@Avi yes it does. but in the tag wiki we can add a bit more with an example

Right

Gimme a sec, I'll add it to the wiki answer, then see what you think :)

So an enigmatic puzzle often, but not always, leaves its first steps unclear. Enigmatic puzzles leave components of either the puzzle goal or solving process unclear to the solver.

@Avi true.

Can they contain misdirections and deceptions?

gimme a sec

@Avi red herrings, yes.

Enigmatic puzzles may contain misdirections and deceptions ("red herrings") intended to lead the solver away from the intended solve path. A good enigmatic puzzle involving red herrings will also have good hints leading towards the correct solve path, so that solvers do not waste all their time pursuing fruitless avenues of inquiry.

^ That likely belongs under "what makes a good enigmatic puzzle"

A game with objects in space creates a house (10)

nope

that doesnt work

@Tacoタコス yup

the answer to my cryptic might be unknown to some people

@Avi mind if I throw you under the bus in the wiki? lol

(and its my second cryptic... im open for feedback)

@Tacoタコス what do you mean by that

no wait

my cryptic has a problem

oops

@Avi putting this in the answer while I'm editing and attaching your name to it

😰 ok

A game with objects in space are created before a house (10)

When you post an answer to an enigmatic puzzle, it is usually a good idea to explicitly specify how each element of the puzzle known at present contributes to the next step in solving the puzzle. In this way, readers can clearly understand the elements of the puzzle and how they lead to the solution. Writing an answer with too few details is discouraged for most questions, and is highly problematic for enigmatic puzzles.

??

not sure if this is true or not

@Avi you should

@Avi because just writing the answer... is discouraged?

This is because enigmatic puzzles are by nature harder to understand, so omissions or poor explanations can make it impossible for readers to follow the answerer's logic.

yes.