The Sphinx's Lair

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4:22 AM

I was on an old question recently and flagged two joke answers - answers clearly not in the spirit of the question - as NAA. Here and here. One was mod-declined and the other got 1 "Recommend Deletion" and two "Looks OK"s. Should I just not flag unserious answers?

2 hours later…

Deusovi

6:35 AM

That first one didn't seem to me to be "clearly not in the spirit of the question" - it looked like a legitimate attempt to answer the question. It may be a bad answer, but it's not a non-answer.

The second one also seems like a semi-plausible guess, explaining most of the riddle. It's not amazing, but we've certainly had similar questions that had worse intended answers. Again, you could say it's bad, but it's certainly not a non-answer.

4 hours later…

Stiv

10:53 AM

Q: Fortnightly Topic Challenge #50: Escape Rooms

This is the ninth installment of the Fortnightly Topic Challenges Rerun described here and the fiftieth installment of the FTCs overall, with topics suggested and voted on here. This fortnight's topic is "Escape Rooms" (suggested by Stiv) and will span from the 21st of February to the 6th of Marc...

^ Just a reminder that this is the theme for the current fortnight, and if you want to get involved you probably want to be thinking about it now, as they take a while to pull together neatly! (I'm working on one, but it won't be ready until at least the weekend...)

1 hour later…

Mithical

11:57 AM

I haven't looked at it yet, but I have the feeling this might spur the return of Imgur mazes.

2 hours later…

Gareth McCaughan

1:40 PM

ugggggh, I hope not.

1 hour later…

Stiv

2:54 PM

Ha! Well, rest assured my one in progress involves a grand total of zero imgur mazes... (Although, now you mention it... JOKE)

Lukas Rotter

3:32 PM

My one not in progress involves an estimated total of 50 images

Stiv

Ha! That just made me snort...

Beastly Gerbil

I don't think imgur mazes themselves are that bad, I think they just got overdone, and a lot of them weren't the best quality

A really good imgur maze can be very enjoyable

Stiv

Agreed - this one from last year by kristinalustig was a headscratcher that was very enjoyable to work through.

Beastly Gerbil

3:49 PM

I myself have been guilty of making some pretty bad imgur mazes, but I do like them because they allow the puzzle to be made much bigger and can have some fun artwork and so on

This was probably the only good one I made, but mostly because of the images, the puzzle itself wasn't that great

And this is definitely the best one I've ever seen

Sid

4:39 PM

@Stiv Never knew there was an FTC bot too

Beastly Gerbil

Lukas somehow created it a while back :P

bobble

5:35 PM

107

Q: Visual design changes to the review queues

The Public Platform team would like to announce another release in a series of planned work for the Review queues. This release focuses on refreshing the queue user interface in preparation for further improvements to the user experience. Starting today, we will roll out these changes in three ph...

discussion featured review announcements

in case anyone is confused about why the queues changed, this finally shipped to us

2 hours later…

Sphinx

7:07 PM

Q: intercepting the box

If you need to send a message in a box to a person so that no one can intercept it and get the message, how do you do so if you have a padlock and key and they have a padlock and key

riddle lateral-thinking no-computers

Gareth McCaughan

7:30 PM

Having looked at the examples of good imgur-maze puzzles posted by Stiv and BG, I now think ... that there is no such thing as a good imgur-maze puzzle.

Beastly Gerbil

Oh dear :P

Lukas Rotter

Oof. If I somehow manage to implement my "idea" in time, I strongly suggest you do not click on it unless you want to travel down 50 layers of hell :P

"Gareth's Inferno"

Beastly Gerbil

7:45 PM

Gareth's form of hell is being trapped in Lukas' puzzle and having to escape, but finding out theres an infinite amount of layers :P

Sphinx

8:20 PM

Q: Sometimes with Feathers?

When in red, I was very loud. In high definition, a treasure. You put me in to interfere. Rest on me for your leisure. Put me between the last two letters, I am an Asian plant. Keep some of me in the water, And being unsettled you can't. What am I? Please explain each line in your answer.

riddle word wordplay

2 hours later…

Stiv

10:13 PM

Ah, but Gareth, it's all relative!

Sphinx

Q: GPA puzzle for fun

Suppose you are given two lists of grade points and credits hours for N courses. The puzzle is to match each grade point to a credit hour such this perfect matching results in some given GPA. I suspect that this puzzle is hard (i.e. NP-complete). So probably there is no efficient algorithm to fin...