1:49 AM
0

A town was invaded by aliens, and some of its residents were kidnapped and replaced by shapeshifters. You're tasked with capturing one of the shapeshifters. Here's the setup: There are 7 residents of the town. At least 4 of the residents are humans, and the remainder are shapeshifters. Everyone ...

2:14 AM
0

You are playing a snake game. The snake starts in the top-left corner of a grid. Each cell of the grid is either empty or a wall. Each turn you can press a key to move the snake in one of four directions: either horizontally or vertically. Once a key is pressed, the snake moves in the assigned di...

2 hours later…
4:43 AM
@GarethMcCaughan any chance to get a hint for the c4?

sigh, this again
looks like they make a new account every time too

Mods, maybe suspend the account, then delete it? IP ban should keep any new accounts from posting questions, as they'll be auto-suspended.

Won't necessarily work if they don't use the same email address to recreate the account, but might be worth a shot.

I think it's the same email because the Gravatar hash is identical

4:58 AM
0

I sent six puzzles to the Times but received the following reply: Dear Sir, We are sorry to reject your crossword submissions for the following reasons: Squares must be 15x15 or 21x21 Words cannot be duplicated Nonsense words are undesirable Sincerely, The Editor I was going to try the Sun in...

apparently CAM can mean something like "crooked", and (MAC+ARON)<+I would fit the definition "beau" like HTM mentioned yesterday
unfortunately there's no haggard queen named Nora that i can find, and of course crooked is not the same as uncertain

5:24 AM
0

You are playing a snake game. The snake starts in the top-left corner of a grid. Each cell of the grid is either empty or a wall. Each turn you can press a key to move the snake in one of four directions: either horizontally or vertically. Once a key is pressed, the snake moves in the assigned di...

6:18 AM
-2

In a colony, there are men, women, and children. 4 women can carry as much water as 7 children. 3 men can carry as much water as 2 women and 1 child combined. If 7 men, 15 women, and 4 children each visit 36 journeys to bring 1l of water, then how many journeys would 14 men, 12 women, and 21 chil...

0

Looking at David Ahl's Basic Computer Games, one of the programs that caught my eye was One Check. It's like Peg Solitaire, which I've figured, but it's on an 8x8 board with the 4x4 inner bit hollowed out. I am wondering how to leave just one peg on the board. 01234567 0 xxxxxxxx 1 xxxxxxxx 2 x...

0

Ana and Bob are writing symbol $X$ alternatively on board $2022\times 1$. Winner is the one who makes 3 consecutive $X$. Who has wining strategy if Ana starts? Describe it.

2 hours later…
7:59 AM
0

What is the code in: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeooeeeeeeeeeeeeeppeeeeeiiiieeeeeooeeeeeeeeeeppppppppeeiiiieeeeeooeeooooeeeeeeeppeeeeeeeeeeeeooooeeeeooooeeeppeeeeeiiiieeeeeooeebbbbbbboobbbbbbeeiiiieeeeeooeebbeeeeeooeeppeeeeeiiiieeeeeooeebbbbbbbbbbbppbbeeiiiieeeeeoooobbbbbbbbbbbppbbeeiiii...

8:27 AM
0

In the kingdom of underwaters, there was a game that all the nymphs liked to play. In four chests, four different coins gold, Silver, Copper and Bronze were kept in the underwater fountains. One day, 123 nymphs came to play 'Guess what's in which box?' While all the 123 nymphs were done guessing,...

3x in a row :(
The same qeustion...

This is getting very tedious...

1 hour later…
9:35 AM
This is not confusing

10:20 AM
0

This is a puzzle from the Expert section of my game Fetching Alchemist, visually modified for presentation here. It is a variant of the Travelling Salesman problem where you are trying to complete a set of quests. The red numbers indicate the distance of each road. You need to find the shortest ...

10:43 AM
0

In a Colony, there are men, women and children. 4 women can carry as much as water as 7 children. 3 men can carry as much as 2 women and 1 child combined. If 7 men, 15 women and 4 children each visit 36 journeys to bring 1L water, then how many journeys would 14 men , 12 women and 21 children ne...

11:07 AM
0

What begins with letter T and ends with letter T, use after

2 hours later…
1:24 PM
1

17 identical coins with diameter 1 are lying flat on a table, such that their midpoints build the vertices of a regular 17-gon (regular heptadecagon) and adjacent coins touch each other. What is the maximum number of coins, which can be added inside the 17-gon, none of them overlap and lying flat...

1 hour later…
2:44 PM

Yep, the room is frozen unfortunately :( HTM forgot to continue the chain

3:22 PM
We just need a mod to unfreeze it - here's a link if interested in where we'd got to.

3:54 PM
I unfroze it.

Thanks Gareth :)

1 hour later…
5:21 PM
@PrinceNorthLæraðr Oops, sorry bout that. It's been in the back of my mind for a while now, but I still haven't gotten a mechanism that I feel is worthy of fleshing out into a whole puzzle yet

No worries

Ideally, it wouldn't involve cryptic clues because the previous one already did that

Has there been a hint for the CCCC?

I'm thinking of maybe doing a maze puzzle but with some sort of twist
@Sid Not as far as I'm aware

Yeah, I have nothing on this CCCC. So I am waiting for a hint hehe

5:31 PM
yesterday, by HTM
Regarding the C4: The only 8-letter queen written by Haggard I could find is Nyleptha, from this novel of his. I strongly suspect the definition is actually "beau," but I haven't been able to parse the wordplay
yesterday, by HTM
A MACARONI is an attractive young man, and it contains ON = "about" and I = "current," but I can't get the rest of the wordplay to work
^Here were some of my thoughts, maybe something there will be useful?

Macaroni hmmm. I thought that was only cheese

You can have a macaroni eating macaroni shaped like macaronis :)

current could also be "AC", no? (Alternating current?)
Then, we could think of a wordplay for "Haggard Queen's uncertain" = MARONI

Yeah, I was also thinking maybe "about current" means putting AC inside of a word, and M(AC)ARONI fits that bill

1 hour later…
6:39 PM
I think I'm going to be writing an annoyed meta post for here about how you SHOULD NOT use "edit" in LQP for an answer that should be deleted
since this would be the fourth time I'm complaining here
grumble grumble I got another disputed flag puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/49947

6:50 PM

3 hours later…
9:27 PM
Well it is perhaps fine to know where in a flat do you have socks and where do you have spoon. Or you probably don't go to the gas station to buy a pants there. If asking math question is rather strange to ask here if there is a place you could get an answer probably much faster and also of better quality. All this is stupid. I will start posting all my math questions here and everytime will say it is a puzzle. — Greedoid 7 mins ago
I covered some reasons why people may choose to post their mathematical puzzles here instead of Math.SE within my answer. If you post math questions which are problems and not puzzles, no matter how often you say it is a puzzle, it will be closed under our "math problem vs puzzle" custom close reason. I understand that perhaps you think the answers would be better on Math.SE, but as I say at the end of my answer, people may choose to post wherever they want, regardless if you think it is strange or not. — bobble 1 min ago
can anyone think of a way to explain this better? I'm at a loss for what to say to this user now.

Hopefully my analogy helps

I'm also, uh, a little uncomfortable with being called "stupid" and all of their tone in general. I probably won't be participating there any more. Thanks for helping.

I don't think they called you stupid per se, but I agree that they sound super hostile about this
I think it's less of "I want an answer to my question" and more "I want to explain why I'm right", but who knows

Seems they went ahead by posting a math problem

oh here we go

9:42 PM
I did my promised close vote

-1

$${2\over x-14}+ {5\over x-11} = {5\over x-13}+ {2\over x-9}$$ It is puzzling me for a days. I'm getting huge polynomial I don't like.

I'll follow suit - you wanna comment on it or should I?

Please, you. I don't want to deal with them.
@Sphinx does the first comment there tip into NLN or even "Unfriendly or Unkind"?

Yup for sure - I can almost taste the hostility
My anxiety sure can lol

which flag?

9:54 PM
I'd think Unfriendly - I don't really see how it's NLN

I'll chance an Unfriendly; the last time I tried that it was declined (though when someone else re-flagged as NLN for me it was deleted)

10:20 PM
I don't know enough about geometry to know if that's a problem or puzzle

-1

We have a paralelogram $ABCD$ and point $P$ inside it. Halflines $BP$ and $DP$ cuts respectively lines $AD$ and $AB$ at $E$ and $F$. Why are the area of $ABPD$ and $CEPF$ the same regardles of the position of $P$?

I think this puzzle legitimately blurs the line between problem and puzzle - note they're asking for "why are the areas the same", which makes it seem like there's a clever explanation, and while I don't actively view geometry puzzles, I feel like I've seen puzzles with similar premises before
The one thing I'm worried about is attribution - they didn't attribute their previous math "puzzle", but I don't want to ask about it with no intention of trying the puzzle out and invite a "why haven't you tried to solve it yet" so I think I might leave this one to those more qualified than I

10:35 PM
I would usually post a comment asking to confirm attribution - it's a courtesy I extend new users if I suspect something might be unattributed. However they're a) not new and b) someone who I don't want to interact with right now

^ my thoughts exactly

Would you mind editing into both the geometry questions?

I'd rather not right now lol

I'm itching to edit their titles into something that is more useful/distinct, but I know I shouldn't

10:51 PM
-1

Squares $ABCD, DCGH, BEFG$ and $ELKM$ are positioned as shown on the picture. Find the area of triangle $DGK$ if you know that the area of square $ABCD$ is $20$.

11:15 PM
0

This is a puzzle from the Expert section of my game Fetching Alchemist, visually modified for presentation here. It is a variant of the Travelling Salesman problem where you are trying to complete a set of quests. The red numbers indicate the distance of each road. You need to find the shortest ...

11:58 PM
0

This is the third maze in the Wormeus series. Previous puzzles are here and here This shouldn’t be too difficult but contains a cute gimmick that isn’t possible in the original Theseus mazes sans the requirement of eating all the apples. Here is a quick recap of the rules: Wormeus’s actions are...