The Sphinx's Lair

Rand al'Thor

12:03 AM

I have an idea for a reverse-puzzling question, but I'm not entirely sure that it would count as one ...

humn

12:34 AM

Maybe your reverse-puzzling idea will broaden the definition, Rand al'Thor.

Why not post the puzzle in any case and let retagging do its magic if that's how it turns out?

Deusovi

Yeah, I say go ahead! Sounds interesting.

humn

(was going to @ping you, Randal'Thor, as this is one of my favorite tags, but am waiting for a phone call)

Rand al'Thor

Yeah, I will do, but I still need some time to fully solidify the idea and get the puzzle into shape. Maybe tomorrow.

humn

No hints?

Rand al'Thor

In the meantime, I just posted another fun maths puzzle which should keep people occupied for a bit :-)

Deusovi

12:37 AM

Yeah, seems like fun!

I suspect that it's always possible, but I can't prove it...

humn

Thanks again for that pyramid one! I tried a Physics-curl approach too but it bombed.

Rand al'Thor

@humn And I think it was you who posted that great Sierpinski answer to the letter-triangle one?

(I get you mixed up with manshu sometimes, sorry.)

humn

Right. and Right. I am becoming humnshu by the minute.

(still waiting for a phone call) Am curious about how you adapted the pyramid puzzle from its source?

Rand al'Thor

@humn I linked to the source where I found it from the question. Not much adaptation really; the problem is simple enough that there isn't much that can be changed.

humn

nice find in any case!

Q: Transmute all humans on this planet into Manshu

[$drive by again = later, bye = for now$]

Rand al'Thor

2:03 AM

Yay! I've finally overtaken the rep Gamow would have if not suspended, and reclaimed my throne of official #1 user :-D

Deusovi

2:31 AM

@Randal'Thor It helps that several of his posts have been deleted during the suspension. (I do appreciate the flags you and other people have raised, by the way - we're still looking for plagiarized posts, but the rephrasings make them very difficult to find.)

Rosie F

4:54 AM

@Randal'Thor Indeed. Puzzles solved using parity are common -- it's a refreshing change to find one solved by mod-3 "parity"... "Triality" (per Berlekamp, Conway & Guy)?

Maria Deleva

6:01 AM

I am actually afraid my idea for reverse puzzling is too easy

Deusovi

6:42 AM

@MariaDeleva Nothing wrong with that, as long as it's fun! I've posted some fairly simple puzzles myself.

Maria Deleva

Ankoganit posted the first reverse puzzle. Looks interesting. :)

I'll post mine tonight. :)

About the retileable words, I think it is about anagrams but not sure

Sid

7:08 AM

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42773/a-colourful-escape How did this puzzle get so many upvotes? Isn't it a bit of guess what I am thinking?? All you have to do is put the coordinates on a map and try to search for something in a 5 minute radius...

Rosie F

7:18 AM

@Sid Indeed, and even then the question's still too broad. One clue which appears to be vital was revealed only in the OP's comment to AndrewF's wrong answer to the question. And another clue involves an ethnic stereotype (see OP's comment on Dan Russell's answer) :(

Sid

Shouldn't that be written in the question itself? All relevant clues should be in the question rather than on comments according to me

Gareth McCaughan

9:39 AM

@Sid, I agree, it seems like a really weak puzzle in multiple ways and I have no idea why 18 people upvoted it. But it sometimes seems like votes and puzzle quality are inversely correlated. (They aren't really, but it's quite common for weak-but-approachable-looking puzzles to get way more upvotes than they deserve, and for tough interesting ones to scare people off and get few votes.)

user189275

11:04 AM

@MariaDeleva I suppose you should give done hints to the lonely words puzzle, otherwise It's a guess what I'm thinking puzzle, as I could curve fit ridiculously.

user189275

@Ankoganit Are you from WB ? The title of your reverse puzzling post makes me assume so, as it's a common phrase here.

user189275

Your name suggests that too, bit it's sane word twice.

Ankoganit

@ArkaKarmakar He he you're right... :)

Ekdom thik :P

Your answer is accepted :P

user189275

To be Eli Hobson Dunbar keno ?

Ankoganit

@ArkaKarmakar Autocorrect effect, I guess ;)

user189275

11:08 AM

Yeah, it's very annoying.

Ankoganit

I made up the username years ago for another (math) forum...and it's hard to justify the "words" cooked up by a bored teen. :D

user189275

@Ankoganit Anka ar ganit duto pray eki, tahale parpar dubar byabaharer dark at king ?

user189275

Effete you somehow inspired by :

user189275

Were not effete

user189275

Churi kara bhalo jadi n.a. paro dhara ?

Ankoganit

11:11 AM

@ArkaKarmakar Perfect.

user189275

@Ankoganit You were inspired by that ?

Ankoganit

Yes, that was the first thing that came to my mind while looking for a title

Sid

That language sounds incredibly familiar.... Heard quite a lot from people...

user189275

@Ankoganit Classic Bn riddles, Dhandas, could be posted here, but they are insta-thought and to short. Don't tell the language to Did, let him find out.

Ankoganit

@ArkaKarmakar And many of them depend on the language-specific peculiarities, which may not work in English.

user189275

11:26 AM

I mean Sid not Did

Maria Deleva

@ArkaKarmakar how is it "guess what I am thinking" puzzle? The clues are all there. Even if I have given a single pair of words, it would still be solvable. Think: what does lonely/ not lonely mean? Also what are most of the words ( regardless of lonely/ not lonely) and how could that matter?

user189275

@MariaDeleva I am not telling it's "guess what I am thinking" puzzle, but I'm telling though should provide hints excluding title to narrow down options.

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva It's has pretty long since you posted that...so maybe we can have a hint or two? I am badly stuck.

user189275

@Ankoganit But 1. Some riddles contains excellent ideas, so it could be applied in English language. 2. Some are culture and language specific. I have tons (6) of books in that.

Ankoganit

@ArkaKarmakar OMG, 6 tons!

Maria Deleva

11:32 AM

Well, I have actually given hints above. Some words can also be crowded.

user189275

@Ankoganit He he. I meant that by ton of riddle books, I meant only 6, it was a exaggeration

user189275

@MariaDeleva What is word crowding ?

Ankoganit

@ArkaKarmakar Phew, thank god!

Maria Deleva

@ArkaKarmakar a word that is extra not lonely. But words cannot be extra lonely.

Gareth McCaughan

WB sounds like it should be West Bengal. The language seems to have a thing or two in common with Bengali but when I put "cheating is efficient but only until you get caught" into Google Translate and ask it for Bengali most of the words are different from the ones in AK's comment.

Ankoganit

11:37 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Ah, don't trust Google Translate in regional languages like this one.

Gareth McCaughan

fair enough. (I don't trust it much ever.)

(though it's really impressive compared with the state of machine translation, say, 10 years ago)

user189275

@GarethMcCaughan You are right. In the phrase, it's not cheating, but small item stealing I.e Churi not tuklibaji

user189275

Also the structure is slightly different

Gareth McCaughan

Most of the lonely/not-lonely words are adjectives, and Maria's mentioned in comments to the question that only actual words are eligible to be classified this way. That suggests e.g. that a Lonely Word might be an adjective that can't be applied to certain classes of other word, or that has some other restriction on how it can fit into larger phrases.

Haven't found any way to make that work yet.

I also wondered about parsing LONELY as LONE -LY and thinking about how the adjectives turn into adverbs, but that didn't get me anywhere either.

Some of the words contain short names, which briefly seemed like it might be relevant (maybe you're LONELY if you don't have any other people with you or something) but seeing oVAL and jussiEUAN on one side and acROBatic and broKEN on the other pretty much squashes that idea.

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

9

Q: What is a Lonely Word™?

This is in the spirit of the What is a Word/Phrase™ series started by JLee with a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. If a word conforms to a special rule, I call it a Lonely Word™. Use the following examples below to find the rule. And, if you want to analyze, here is a CSV versio...

pattern

Maria Deleva

11:49 AM

@Gareth, by the way I don't see you purple now. Perhaps it was indeed a cache issue.

Gareth McCaughan

Could be.

I still see myself purple on question-answers. I'll try doing a ctrl-f5 and see if I go snot-coloured again when I do.

aha, I do. Sounds very cache-y, then.

dcfyj

12:12 PM

Still looks purple to me, but this window's been open for a while, so that might be it.

Sid

It was bengali!! How on earth did I miss that.. I should have known it from the first line that I noticed!!!

user189275

12:40 PM

The not lonely word may be some special letter being "accompanied" or "Squeezed" by some special letters.

Maria Deleva

It is a Not Lonely Word, not a Not Lonely Letter.

user189275

@MariaDeleva: Can a word be neither lonely and not lonely ? Lonely and not not lonely (and higher order) are always same ?

Maria Deleva

A word should be either lonely or not lonely

user189275

@MariaDeleva So the difficulty came in producing the lonely words or the lonely-not lonely pairs ?

Maria Deleva

The difficulty is in finding lonely words that are truly lonely (and could not be argued to be not lonely) and not lonely words that are not too much of a stretch of the not lonely definition. Otherwise, the puzzle would have become much harder to solve.

M Oehm

12:46 PM

@ArkaKarmakar: The words are not pairs. There are two independent lists: The Lonely words on the left and the Non-Lonely words on the right.

user189275

@MariaDeleva: I am asking for a hint: Is the meaning of the words, somehow, relevant ?

Maria Deleva

It is relevant.

user189275

@MOehm: I actually asked why MD commented that it was a very difficult set of examples to produce. I asked if a row was somehow connected.

Maria Deleva

I would explain more after the puzzle is solved.

M Oehm

I thought that lonely somehow referred to the relation of adjacent letters in the word to each other. But the idea that they must not be adjacent in the alphabet is dismised by SHINY and that they must not be adjacent on a keyboard by CLOWN.

Maria Deleva

12:51 PM

The words are lonely/not lonely. Not the letters. :)

Deusovi

1:06 PM

Ooh, I think I might've gotten it. Not quite sure yet, though.

Maria Deleva

if you have, it would easily become clear to you :)

Will

@MariaDeleva I'm having this exact problem with one I kinda want to do. (I've looked painstakingly through thousands of words and have only 14 plausible candidates that don't require knowledge of incredibly obscure words and only feel confident in about 5 of them) I'm very interested to see the solution.

Maria Deleva

@Will it was the same here. :) And now, when looking at these words, they seem obvious to me. But this is only because I have become too familiar with them.

dcfyj

Like me and my dancing men?

Maria Deleva

like you and the dancing men :)

dcfyj

1:14 PM

I got to the point where I could mostly read the cipher plainly... I think that's a little too familiar haha

M Oehm

As long as you didn't have your dreams subtitled with dancing men ....

Maria Deleva

yeah, at least in my case it is just normal words.

dcfyj

Not that familiar

Well, at least not as far as I know

Maria Deleva

:) I think we are all becoming a little obsessed with puzzles

dcfyj

Trying to beat humn at his own game right now. That programming puzzle he put up is mean.

Will

1:17 PM

@MariaDeleva Yes, that's another thing - some of the candidates seem very easy to figure out and I'd love to avoid dead giveaways with how long I've spent on this, but I'm not sure if the time I've spent is the precise reason they seem obvious. Looks like it worked out fine for you, though. :P

dcfyj

I'm sure once we know the answer it'll all make sense.

Maria Deleva

Well, that is why I am so stumped why nobody has solved them yet. They do look obvious to me. And once you solve them - they would look obvious to you as well. I am sure of it.

dcfyj

Probably, but you have to keep in mind, that we don't have yours.

Puzzling Meta

0

Q: How does the first post review queue work on this site?

Today I came across some low quality posts, answering this question. The members seem to be users since today. Why are their posts did not land in the usual review queues, as on other (say SO.SE) sites?

support

Maria Deleva

I wonder where Deusovi went. He mentioned he has an idea.

dcfyj

1:21 PM

He's probably working on it

I wonder how quickly my part 3 will be solved?

(no it's not up yet)

still have much planning to do for it, writing a riddle, figuring out how to use the cipher I found, figuring out how to clue for said cipher, etc.

Redacted?

user189275

@dcfyj: What ?

dcfyj

Puzzle series reference.

user189275

1:38 PM

@Mithrandir @Randal'Thor I have found answer to a question (What does Mithrandir want to tell us ? :- ) before it's asked. The answer is, from quipquip, congratulations you have found my info good for Vou but there's nothing of interest here . :-P

Lukas Rotter

@ArkaKarmakar Yep, it was even just ROT-13, actually.

Maria Deleva

1:53 PM

I am trying to figure out how a certain type of puzzles (available on a certain website that I also don't remember) were called. There were 2D (with squares) and 3D (with triangles) versions and on the axis you were given the number of colored squares/triangles and when you paint them all correctly, a picture is revealed.

Areeb

Nonograms?

Will

Nonograms?

haha

:(

Areeb

That was close

dcfyj

Nonograms?

user189275

61

Q: What was my wife trying to say?

One day, my Japanese wife Nono handed me two messages 580D10F20G10D13011173203443206640942092330411622053222041112103112221032212210421142012234130580236905325A031112H042127905121890142726016135802622212602A22270B412230846250A731106526107324208322081122056 and 7109501A350726505138504112...

visual cipher

user189275

1:56 PM

Like this ?

Maria Deleva

That is it. Thank you!

Several years ago I was obsessed with these. Even made one.

Will

I love nonograms; been slowly working on some large multis...

dcfyj

Large ones tend to annoy me

Will

(A "multi" meaning, e.g., a "200x200" composed of 100 20x20's)

Areeb

These seem interesting, I guess I'll go try some now

Maria Deleva

1:58 PM

the site I used before was griddlers

I found it now by looking up nonograms in google

dcfyj

@Will I've done those too, although 20x20 (if not clue well) take forever and then I get bored of them.

Will

Unfortunately I haven't found any apps/sites that have consistently good puzzles with unique solutions / don't require guessing/backtracking from the start... :|

The NoNoSparks games on Kongregate are fun though & I'd recommend those if you haven't played them

dcfyj

I have a free account on this site. So I get free logic puzzles every week. One of each type they have, some are super easy, some are not.

and some I don't understand the logic behind...

Gareth McCaughan

I enjoyed doing nonograms for a short while, then got bored and wrote a computer program to solve them for me.

Will

I'll check that one out later! I use this app ... most of the puzzles are good but there are some really awful ones too.

user61230

2:34 PM

Beware of a rogue Kickstarter offering to sell a wooden puzzle box. They're not confirmed legitimate, and by the looks of things, they may very well not be. The designs come from one of my favorite puzzle box designers, Bruce Viney, and the kits they (may) be reselling from Myers Puzzles.

dcfyj

2:44 PM

I pretty much never look at kickstarter

dcfyj

3:18 PM

grrr, I can't bring it below 19 characters with what I've got.

manshu

4:01 PM

@Randal'Thor How can you?

BTW..anyone got the swag yet?

user61230

4:16 PM

@manshu Not I!

Gareth McCaughan

Nor me.

Will

Nothing here yet either. It hasn't been 6 weeks though.

Deusovi

4:37 PM

@MariaDeleva I don't see an issue with that.

And nope, nothing here either.

(Also, sorry for my absence! I fell back asleep for a while after making that comment about thinking I had it.)

Deusovi

5:02 PM

Hey guys, new puzzle from Sleafar!

2

Q: A Letter from the Past

It has been quite a while since your first assignment as a P.U.Z.Z.L.E. agent. Most of your tasks weren't even half that exciting and since your boss is currently on vacation, your most important task right now is to beat the ceiling dart high score. Just as you prepare your final throw, your bo...

cipher story visual steganography history

And it seems to be a multi-part one too!

dcfyj

you work much too fast

Deusovi

I haven't really gotten anywhere in this one...

dcfyj

One thing to note, the punch card has 10 lines and the cipher has 10 characters.

Deusovi

I think the punch card was just for getting the message.

It definitely could be for something else though!

dcfyj

I wouldn't assume things in puzzles like these :P

3306420322 (character count for each punch card line)

Will

5:24 PM

I found a nearly identical punch card (though it has a watermark) if this helps anyone

unclewaltersrants.com/.a/…

Deusovi

Probably just the image source.

Will

Interestingly, the E in P.U.Z.Z.L.E. means Enigmas ... and... IBM's punch cards (apparently) played no small role in WWII

dcfyj

@Deusovi anything with the character counts/punch lines?

Deusovi

Nothing that I've seen.

Gotta go to class, back in 2-3 hours. Might check in occasionally.

dcfyj

I probably won't be here when you get back

Deusovi

5:33 PM

Aw. :c

Alright then. See ya!

dcfyj

Not for a couple weeks going on vacation after today ^^

Sconibulus

oooh, a couple weeks for a vacation? Nice, going anywhere fun?

dcfyj

Going on a cruise, most of the trip is just hanging out with friends on the way down and on the way back.

The actual vacation is just a 3 day cruise to the bahamas

Is it bad that I just noticed that humn's question is a couple months old?

user189275

1

Q: Hit! Hiss! The purse...hit...murder ? Go, test

Frontstory: You look puzzled with a cubical box in front of you. The box contains some holes. Some has fixed numbers, some has wheels, which numbers could be adjusted (from 1 to 100, $ \square $ ), and some box are black ( $\blacksquare $), so the numbers are hidden, and you can't see it. When y...

riddle mathematics enigmatic-puzzle steganography

user189275

Awesome puzzle !

Deusovi

5:55 PM

@dcfyj Whoa, that sounds cool! Have fun - we'll miss you! c:

Rand al'Thor

7:11 PM

@Deusovi Unfortunately, that doesn't help, because all the deleted posts are old enough (> 60 days) that he still keeps all the rep he made out of them :-/ (Also, I wasn't going to mention publicly that I'd been flagging his posts for plagiarism, in case he's the type to hold grudges ... but meh, I'm sure he dislikes me enough already.)

@RosieF I probably shouldn't have posted the pyramid puzzle and the letter-triangle one so close together - now everyone is getting the two mixed up in conversation!

@manshu Nope. And I only just managed to submit my swag form before the deadline, so I'm really hoping I was in time to actually get some!

Sconibulus

swag?

dcfyj

For the top rep users

Rand al'Thor

@dcfyj Mind if I write a puzzle about dcfyj and the Bahamas? :-)

Lukas Rotter

@Sconibulus Yes, swag.

dcfyj

@Randal'Thor Lol, go for it. Sadly, I won't be the one to solve it.

Rosie F

7:31 PM

@Randal'Thor Oh that pyramid puzzle! * blush * Yes, that was a neat one, too.

dcfyj

7:45 PM

@Randal'Thor Do you remember what puzzle it was that took a year to solve? It was somewhat recent, after I joined (that it was solved not posted)

At least I think that's the case...

Rand al'Thor

8:14 PM

@dcfyj Not sure which one you're thinking of. There's one more than a year old which AFAIK is still unsolved (unless someone solved it recently when I wasn't looking) - can't remember the name, but the question had a photograph of a keypad. Then there's this awesome puzzle which lasted several months and a dozen hints with everyone getting absolutely nowhere, and eventually we had to bring the great McMagister out of retirement to solve it.

It should be noted that even though this answer was posted almost 3 months after I posted the puzzle, McMagister had been inactive and hadn't seen the puzzle until I contacted him on another forum on August 12. It took him only one hour to solve this puzzle! — pacoverflow May 11 at 22:44

Deusovi

Back!

manshu

@Randal'Thor you deserve more than just a T-shirt and few stickers :)

@Randal'Thor this puzzle was solved almost 9 months after its posting.

Will

tfw you run a program to brute force possible candidates for a puzzle and it runs for like an hour only to return two things that don't actually work

Deusovi

8:31 PM

My Chess Fortnight puzzle took two months, and I think some of Alconja's puzzles have taken longer than that.

Lukas Rotter

8:45 PM

@Will Wow, that must be one complicated Word TM puzzle! How large was the word list you used?

Deusovi

@LukasRotter Who said it was a word™ puzzle, hm? Are you secretly also Will?

Lukas Rotter

8 hours ago, by Will

@MariaDeleva I'm having this exact problem with one I kinda want to do. (I've looked painstakingly through thousands of words and have only 14 plausible candidates that don't require knowledge of incredibly obscure words and only feel confident in about 5 of them) I'm very interested to see the solution.

Deusovi

Oh, right. Still, who said it was the same puzzle? :P

Lukas Rotter

That would be a great plot-twist, since that would mean I awarded myself a bounty on my last puzzle.

Sconibulus

@LukasRotter flagged

Deusovi

8:54 PM

BANNED

Will

@LukasRotter I'm using a smallish (235886 words) dictionary & it still feels too large (a lot of the words are actually common misspellings and there are still a ton of incredibly obscure words even after filtering out proper nouns)

Lukas Rotter

And it would also mean I posted the answer to "What is Lukas Rotter's secret"

Sconibulus

well who would know better than you?

manshu

@Deusovi omg...lukas had been a great puzzler until he awarded himself a bounty..

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Well, that does make sense.

Deusovi

8:55 PM

@manshu Yep, it's a shame, but I guess he's gonna have to go. The evidence is clear.

Lukas Rotter

Well, then that is it, guys. Since I just exposed myself, I will leave this platform and will continue to live my live in a place far, far away. It was great with you all, bye!

Deusovi

How could you betray us like this? We trusted you! :c

(If it were possible (and not a major abuse of power) I'd suspend you for thirty seconds as a joke. :P )

3

Lukas Rotter

This conspiracy actually nicely fits into the puzzle I'm currently making... I will definitely include it. (and Will will probably post the answer to it)

Will

Honestly I think I'm gonna have to completely scrap an aspect of this puzzle and refine what's left :/

Lukas Rotter

Nevermind, I will not "definitely include it", since it would be insulting to him :/

Will

9:08 PM

... but I'm curious now

Lukas Rotter

Well, I'll put it like this: I'm not exactly giving compliments to myself in the puzzle.

Will

Well I love self-deprecation, so.

Lukas Rotter

But it's not allowed to mock other users. I guess I could make it work if you explicitly give consent, though.

Will

But you're not mocking another user, are you? ;)

Lukas Rotter

@Will Right. I don't think the mods will count that as a valid excuse, though :D

So let's just pretend you're actually a different person for now.

Deusovi

9:14 PM

Hey, as long as you have permission, I don't see any issue with it.

If everyone involved knows it's all in good fun, then there's nothing wrong with it!

Lukas Rotter

@Deusovi Does "Well I love self-deprecation, so." count as a valid permission? :P

Deusovi

Seems pretty clear to me, but couldn't hurt to ask again. @Will - this is fine with you?

Will

As long as it's inoffensive (e.g., no slurs which wouldn't be welcome here anyway) go for it :)

Rand al'Thor

For just a moment there, I went "WTF, am I being accused of cheating now?!"

:-P

Deusovi

So did I!

humn

9:20 PM

[jumping in to draw attention to a possible new genre of mazes]

Deusovi

Hey! :D

humn

Anyone notice that one?

5

Q: Two honeycomb hints (yet another 'find the next number in the sequence')

Find the next number in the sequence $1,7,74,\dots$ First hint: Second hint: There is a simple rule for both cases, all the blanks can be filled and the sequence can be continued ad infinitum. Edit Since one answer has already appeared, I'll add another case (the answer is differen...

calculation-puzzle number-sequence

Sconibulus

hmm... that's not minesweeper

humn

It even more closely resembles Hidato (or Numbrix):

Hidato

Hidato (Hebrew: חידאתו‎‎, originating from the Hebrew word Hida = Riddle) is a logic puzzle game invented by Dr. Gyora M. Benedek, an Israeli mathematician. The goal of Hidato is to fill the grid with consecutive numbers that connect horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Numbrix puzzles, created by Marilyn vos Savant, are similar to Hidato except that diagonal moves are not allowed. Jadium puzzles (formerly Snakepit puzzles), created by Jeff Marchant, are a more difficult version of Numbrix with fewer given numbers and have appeared on the Parade magazine web site regularly since 2014. The name...

Will

@humn You just reminded me I should start back up on those Hebrew Duolingo exercises (and taught me the word for riddle) so thanks

Sconibulus

9:25 PM

that... seems kinda arbitrary when selecting which square to fill next

humn

Glad to be of service, Will

Ah, Sconibulus, the form is still developing.

If constructed deliberately as a maze, only one choice of path will work.

Sconibulus

I get the Hidato, thing, it's a maze with a clearly defined increment by 1 rule

humn

And here the increments themselves must be discovered.

Sconibulus

I meant the new Hex one, it seems really arbitrary which hex comes next, and choosing a different one leads to a wildly different, but still plausible, answer

humn

The "board" doesn't need to be very large to be interesting

In the maze version, there wouldn't be a distinction among unfilled cells, black or not, just a distinction between filled or not.

Yuriy S

9:29 PM

humn, I posted the second case as a new question after all

Deusovi

Oh hey Yuriy! Nice puzzle!

Yuriy S

Thank you!

Rand al'Thor

Oh, I think I know the answer. Please undo the protection... :( — Tomasz Pluskiewicz 8 hours ago

humn

(tried to star that "Please undo the protection" comment but it didn't show up right)

Yuriy S

To Sconibulus, that's where the second hint comes into play.

humn

9:40 PM

Having two combs for the same mystery cell is interestingly 3-dimensional.

Sconibulus

it looks like the pattern from hint 2 of the second one resolves to 42, but there's no way to apply the same pattern to the first and get anything that makes sense

Yuriy S

Well, there is a way, and the answer is correct

Will

Doesn't the same pattern work?

literally the same exact one

???

nevermind I cannot math

Sconibulus

Hmm? No, the way I did it (possibly wrong) was a tightening clockwise spiral

starting from the uppermost thingy

I need to head home though, have a good night/whatever time

humn

Starting to suspect that the current version is more interesting than the single maze idea because the current version requires solving 2 individually-ambiguous mazes for a common purpose

Glad you got to see this before leaving, Sconibulus, enjoy the evening/whenevering!

...

Yuriv, if you're still here, was there a specific reason you chose hexagons, other than aesthetics (or complexity?)?

Yuriy S

9:56 PM

humn, the squares could be used too, but I love hexagons

humn

so the shapes could even vary within one "honeycomb," conceivably

Yuriy S

I'm not sure what you mean

The pattern should be the same for the sequence to be the same

So we have one for hexagons, one for triangles, another one for squares on a square grid

Probably other cases are possible

humn

once the algorithm is well known, i'm picturing a general case

where two "boards" are presented, each with some cells filled in and 1 mystery cell that has to have the same value on both boards.

To figure out the mystery cell would require solving a path in each board

the general case i just tried to describe could be very interesting and challenging with quite small boards because each would be ambiguous by itself.

(and i'm still lobbying for negative numbers to help the sums small)

Beware, Yuriy (sorry for the earlier misspelling, screen cuts off parts of letters), don't let someone like me grab your idea and run off with it.

Will

That edit made that 55555333% less terrifying

(Yes, that number is prime - fun fact.)

humn

10:12 PM

(cowering from that number)

Rand al'Thor

11:20 PM

@Emrakul I noticed your name on the Literature proposal at Area 51. I assume you've already used up all your upvotes there, so there's no point in nagging you to help get it closer to commitment stage? :-)

Lukas Rotter

Does anyone here know why Puzzling has the SO-style for tags? I'm not complaining, but it seems like the designers didn't have enough time, since the other parts seem pretty unique to me. (except the actual logo, maybe)

Deusovi

11:35 PM

yeah, I'm still not happy with the actual logo

as for the tags, I never really questioned them

TBH it seems like the SE overlords don't really understand the point of the site

Lukas Rotter

Actually, on a second look: The color is a little bit different and also the font-size. But these are all very subtle differences, I still would've liked a more rememberable style :P

@Deusovi Do you know why they changed the badge-style from the (in my opinion) nice looking keys to this "apple-puzzle-piece"?

Deusovi

14

Q: Why was the key icon changed to a puzzle piece?

On the first day of the graduation, the badge icon was a key: (source of image: Puzzling Design Pitch - Congratulations, you're graduating!) But I logged on to Puzzling today and I happened to notice it was a puzzle piece, as you can see in the Puzzling sprite sheet: (source of sprite shee...

discussion design

No response from the over²lords.

Will

I prefer the puzzle piece, though the complaints about it looking like an apple are fair, and I do think it'd look better rotated and flipped (bump on the right + notch on the top)

user61230

@Randal'Thor Yep! I'm set. I've actually been trying to nudge it to life elsewhere, too.

Rand al'Thor

11:50 PM

0

A: Why was the key icon changed to a puzzle piece?

Presumably because of this highly-voted response (40 upvotes) to the original graduation/design announcement on meta: I do have some concerns about using the keys for badges - keys usually have something to do with security rather than "unlocking" a puzzle. Jigsaw puzzle pieces, I think,...

@Emrakul Yeah, me too. It's getting tantalisingly close now! Got any more good places to advertise the proposal, other than SFF?

Will

Question re: A51 proposals (since you two seem to be pretty knowledgeable about them) - what is the purpose of the referrer portion of the share links? Is it actually used for anything and is there a reason I wouldn't want to remove it?

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