Anyone see something obvious in my attempts at Part 4 of A Letter from the Past... I feel like it's almost there, but obviously I've missed some way of incorporating the date...
@ArbitraryKangaroo If you've a solution, and you think it works, go ahead and post it.
user189275
@Ankoganit: I don't think it works, and that's why I ain't posting it. Okay, now I will stop reporting my halfstupid attempts in working out the answer in Sphinx Lair.
Professor Pheno Menon has sent for me for helping with some decorations. When I reached his home, he explained:
"Look here, I've got $6$ flags: $2$ red, $2$ blue and $2$ green. I want to pin them in my garden such that no three are collinear."
"I am assuming there's some catch?", I said.
"Inde...
Please help me!
Last weekend I hosted a hell of a party at my workplace (I'll invite you next time, promise). Of course, my boss didn't know about it.
The next morning I entered the building and ...
... everything was just a huge mess! Naive as I am, I was expecting something less wicked an...
(the only way I can make sense of your comment is something like this: it's a really good puzzle but terribly badly presented or something, so that it doesn't deserve attention right now but if fixed it would deserve a lot more and someone should fix it)
but after a brief glance at the puzzle I really doubt you mean that
did you mean receive rather than deserve?
1 hour later…
user189275
3:25 PM
@GarethMcCaughan: No. It's well designed puzzle, atleast as far I can see until now. I just meant that the upvotes aren't consistent with the quality of a puzzle here, and this (upvotes in this puzzle) is a experimental proof of that (fact).
@ArbitraryKangaroo I agree with that. People will upvote or downvote for no reason apparently
user189275
@Saiid: Yeah, but there are some vague correlation, one of the outstanding theories is that upvotes peaks up and decrease with size, which explains why the multilayered long detective puzzles got so less upvotes
My main issue is writing the riddle and the clues for the cipher. It takes me a while to come up with a decent riddle, and the clues I'm not sure which ones and how I want to drop them.
@dcfyj You should give it a try. I'm not accepting until the solution is actually reached. Although I'm wondering how I can help in case a hint is requested/needed.
Riddles are one of the things I'm beyond horrible at. I was attempting the mini-puzzles before they got solved as I can do calculations pretty well, but it's gotten past that point now.
@dcfyj Am I allowed to confirm/deny partial answers? Like if someone gets a part right/wrong, when (if) am I allowed to say "yes that is correct" or "no that's wrong". I read on Meta that I should wait, so I'm waiting until I start nudging people.
@ArbitraryKangaroo What do you mean - you think it's got more upvotes than it deserves, or fewer?
@Alenanno Like dcfyj said, it's completely up to the OP how much/little information they want to give in comments on answers. It can depend on many factors: how hard the puzzle seems to be (easy ones need fewer hints than hard ones), how close people are to the solution (e.g. if someone's got nine-tenths of it, you might as well help them out with the last little bit), or just how chatty you are (e.g. I tend to leave lots of comments, while Gamow hardly ever did).
Personally, I wait to post hints in my question (at least a day), but I tend to comment on people's answers fairly quickly. Although, I have a habit of being cryptic.
@Alenanno I suspect your puzzle is one that will probably need some nudges - the riddle is quite cryptic, and there may be more than one way of interpreting some of the clues in it.
I'm wondering if there may be some non-obvious approach to mini #4, e.g. looking at the letters in "two", "seven", "seventeen" rather than the numbers 2, 7, 17.
@dcfyj That was the first thing I noticed, because I was already analysing the diagram before bothering to read the text :-P
I think I'm going to add an instruction about the riddle, I would wait but I think it's an important detail. At least, I thought it was clear, but it seems it's not.
Professor Pheno Menon has sent for me for helping with some decorations. When I reached his home, he explained:
"Look here, I've got $6$ flags: $2$ red, $2$ blue and $2$ green. I want to pin them in my garden such that no three are collinear."
"I am assuming there's some catch?", I said.
"Inde...
Please help me!
Last weekend I hosted a hell of a party at my workplace (I'll invite you next time, promise). Of course, my boss didn't know about it.
The next morning I entered the building and ...
... everything was just a huge mess! Naive as I am, I was expecting something less wicked an...
