On June 30 1999, Ricky McCormick was found dead in an isolated area, 15 miles away from his home. He didn't own a car, and the area was not subjected to public transport so it is a mystery how he got there. The case has been identified as a murder, not a suicide.
Found in his pockets where two n...
@Randal'Thor @BeastlyGerbil I'm sure there must be an elegant solution to the cubes puzzle. Something parity-ish. E.g., #adjacencies = 3/2 #cubes, so it's enough if #adjacencies is even; perhaps more strongly the number of "x-adjacencies" has to be even and ditto for y and z.
I kinda want to colour the cubes two colours (say black and white) by parity and label each adjacency with the direction it heads out of the adjacent white cube in, and then ... well, unfortunately it isn't the case that you have to have the same number of these in all directions (I have counterexamples), but maybe +x and -x have to have the same parity or something.
@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
@BeastlyGerbil Not particularly; there are already enough active 10k-ers to delete questions that need deleting. I'd really like more people to get 20k though, so that not every deleted answer has to be mod-deleted.
How can I be sure I'm looking at a sockpuppet?
You can't ever be 100% sure. What you think is a sockpuppet could in fact be my good friend Nog Shine, who loves everything I write, copies my writing style, and uses my computer to vote and post stuff when I step away for coffee.
But in practice, ...
Storytime:
I joined your wonderful community, and immediately posted a riddle about The Beatles. Then I posted another one about The Beatles, and then one about David Bowie. The Bowie riddle was answered by someone who had seen the two Beatles riddles. He told me that when he saw my name on ...
You might want to take a cup of coffee and sit down for this.
Well, it all started in 2007. The world was a much more innocent place, or was I younger and more innocent? Who's to tell?
Anyways, being on volunteer work in Haifa Israel, a bunch of my friends and I started calling each other "Frea...
@randal'thor very true - it looks like the OP edited the question as I was writing my answer haha. Should I leave it here, or just delete it? Not sure what the standard approach would be :) — Joe13 mins ago
Any thoughts on this?
(i.e. should answers that have been invalidated by good edits to the question be left or deleted?)
@Deusovi To keep my rep on a multiple of 5 (yes, I'm weird). I accept answers either to balance out downvotes or, if I repcap or don't get downvoted, in batches of five.
I don't tend to delete my answers unless in hindsight they're indefensible (e.g., an answer to a mathematical question that's founded on a flatly incorrect bit of reasoning). If I thought an answer was a perfectly good one to the question as originally asked and it was then invalidated by a change to the question, I'd edit in a remark explaining what happened.
If it wasn't very convincing to begin with and the edit(s) to the question just clarified that, I would probably leave it there for downvoting :-).
@Sconibulus Agreed. Personally, when deciding whether or not to VTC as too broad, I always check how many completely valid answers it's got (i.e. check every answer posted to see how well it fits) rather than just counting the number of answers.
Many people post answers which only sort of fit, or fit most of the riddle but not one or two lines. (I probably used to do so myself, but I try to be more careful these days and only post answers which I think have a very good chance of being right.)
@DanRussell Well, if the correct answer doesn't fit properly, then we're into "plastic bag" territory and the riddle is worth closing or at least downvoting.
@Sconibulus Sure, that's fine.
(I assume you mean using the idea of riddle reassembling and not the lines themselves?)
@Randal'Thor Yeah, of course. (I have downvoted all three of those.) I'm just musing on why people might, in good faith, post answers that don't quite seem to fit: Because they're used to seeing fairly crappy riddles with fairly crappily fitting answers.
@DanRussell Or perhaps a better reason: because it does fit most of the lines and they think it might fit the one or two remaining lines in a way they haven't yet worked out.
I've often posted answers with one or two "Not sure about this line"s which the OP or someone else then helps me to work out (and they do fit the riddle well - I just hadn't realised how).
I doubt there's a single site on SE which is really happy with their representation on HNQ. Every site gets some of its bad questions showcased there - it's not a Puzzling-specific problem.
Also, for the record, I have no idea what this accepted answer has to do with that riddle. Even looking at the explanation of each line makes no sense. Almost suspicious, as I find it hard to believe that was deduced from the clues.
@DanRussell it doesn't. It feels like a completely different reasoning, not entirely related to the clues. As if the answerer just twisted the clues to fit into their way of thinking. But that doesn' t make the answer incorrect. You can get the right answer with wrong reasoning.
Light's away and the crowd will sway - that could refer to the fact that even if the light is off, the sand (its particles, i.e. crowd) will continue to go back and forth - when you rotate the hourglass.
Comfort and joy you get from me - it can be comforting watching as the sand falls - like watching a waterfall or something.
Always taking what I have. - the hourglass has sand. It always takes it. i.e. it goes from one triangle to the other and vice versa. It is never lost. In a way, the lower part, "takes it", but the hourglass already has it.
@DanRussell there is your reasoning that could be the intended one.
@Randal'Thor Neat. Two components :( but this shows that it's possible with 34 cubes, thus banishing any parity-based notions such as that n had to be a multiple of 4.
is there a consensus on when to tell people they're going down the wrong path? my latest puzzle appears to have tricked people, but I don't want to detract from the puzzling experience :P (kind of like giving hints too early)
@Sconibulus For a question about meta tags on a small site? Few people care about tags, and even fewer care about meta tags. I'm surprised it got as many as 7.
@Sconibulus Yeah, but that was a massive decision with a big impact on the way the site is run. Getting rid of one small tag on meta isn't something people are going to be up in arms about.
Whilst perusing through the tags, I noticed there is one for pokemon. Do we really need one specific to this or can these be removed or changed to video-games?
There's a tag called liars which, in my opinion, doesn't make any sense since the description says it's made of
liars,
truth tellers, and
jokers.
In other words the tag name doesn't provide all the information necessary to understand the meaning. In fact it only names 1 out of 3.
Despite t...
In a room where I frequently chat, I asked about ciphers for a challenge, and someone directed me here. Is this a good place to ask about that sort of thing?
@duzzy Sure! We have a cipher tag here and a lot of cipher challenge puzzles. I'm not sure exactly what you've got in mind, but you might like to check out Code Puzzles: What (Not) To Do? before posting.
@BeastlyGerbil Nope, no idea. Seems to be a common phenomenon on this site: people shooting up to the top bunch of users and then just disappearing. leoll2, Bailey M, ...
@Randal'Thor make sure you don't fall foul to the same fate!!!
I was actually quite surprised that you came back after you were out for a year, such a long period of time would make some users forget about this site.
I've been suspended as well, and I'm pretty sure the old mods didn't like me either because when I was suspended for 'voting irregularities' I was innocent! And then when I told them I was they didn't even respond! Lost a month of puzzling for nothing...
We would probably all be better off if we tried to focus on the present. Randal'Thor has "served his time", so to speak, and is now back and contributing positively to the site. None of us is served well by continuing to discuss the events of the past.
I would think that you might be better off appealing what you think is a questionable suspension without the spectre of a deserved suspension hanging over the proceedings
@BeastlyGerbil Not necessarily. Like GPR said, suspension length is at the mods' discretion. If they decide your second suspension was unfair, or if you've earned enough 'brownie points' by behaving yourself in the interim, or if this hypothetical third suspension is for something totally unrelated, or for any other reason, they could choose to suspend you for something less than a year.
@BeastlyGerbil Yes, that's always the preferred option :-P
@Sconibulus Still haven't got much to go on for the last two of your five history riddles ...
Though I suspect "An Empire was born" may refer to the British Empire, and "I was somewhere in France" maybe the Napoleonic Wars or the First World War?
I figured out that cipher I asked about earlier. It was just a substitution cipher that included punctuation in place of some of the letters, and some letters in place of punctuation.
With recent discussions and active attempts to handle the declining riddle quality on the site, I thought I'd also resurrect this question too, as I think it's related (since broad low quality riddles => lots of guesses => HNQ)...
As GentlePurpleRain points out, the algorithm to select posts f...
(from the perspective of someone who is a regular/mod on other non-PSE SEs)
@Alconja +1, nice idea. But realistically, I doubt you'll be able to persuade SE to change the HNQ algorithm even in this minor way. Everyone knows the HNQ system is broken, and nobody's done anything about it yet; I get the idea the CMs/devs have put the issue on a back burner for the foreseeable future and spend their time on other things instead.
You could propose it on main meta, but all you'd get is a bunch of upvotes (and main meta rep is the most useless rep there is) and no status-completed.
I may be vulnerable here on the outside, back within your reach, but some of my kind run amok within their systems.
Many are protected by fiery walls.
One busies his time running cycles.
Still another ensures that you’ve cleared your cookies.
They are stewing over your calloused treatment of ...