The Sphinx's Lair

Beastly Gerbil

7:00 PM

This one? :P

user189275

@BeastlyGerbil This site is good, but it's bit pain to hunt down the gems.

Beastly Gerbil

just click the maths tag and then click sort by votes

dcfyj

And don't look at the answers :P

user189275

Tag proposal: 5 minutes (Quickie puzzles (eg USB riddle) /puzzles which are meant to be insta answered (IQ test "puzzles" ))

Deusovi

That seems like a meta tag.

user189275

7:07 PM

@BeastlyGerbil Votes are terrible measure of puzzle goodness.

dcfyj

USB riddle?

ah that one

I thought you meant this one:

4

Q: Unilaterally Bickering Soliloquies

I flash... But, illumination is not always to be found I recall... Yet, others give me amnesia I am little... Still, I can be quite large I will carry things for you... Conversely, I must receive them first I communicate very fast... Still, you prefer it that way I am bigger than my older brother...

riddle

Deusovi

AK, you don't need to remove your messages. Please don't constantly remove them, especially when they're important to understanding the context of a conversation.

7

user189275

dcfyj had the gotcha moment, so I deleted, and I don't delete key context chats intentionally . (Previous deletion of the ladybug picture was a mistake, though)

dcfyj

That's just the thing though, that was a context chat, because I replied to it.

Deusovi

Exactly. What if there was another person who came back but got confused? They'd never know what riddle you were talking about.

In general, you shouldn't be deleting any messages that are part of a conversation.

There are exceptions, but not many.

user189275

7:15 PM

Sorry then.

user189275

103

A: I have three fingers. What is this?

It's

Beastly Gerbil

I don't understand how that question and answer got so many votes

Deusovi

Neither do I. It was good, but not that good.

dcfyj

I've never had remotely that many on any of mine :(

Beastly Gerbil

Same as this

Some puzzles just get a random amount of upvotes despite being average

user189275

7:17 PM

@Deusovi It's nowhere in qualitycompared to any of the Hugh Meyers riddle, and he puts lot of effort in the riddles. I don't know why is good.

Lukas Rotter

Sep 20 at 9:39, by Gareth McCaughan

@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.)

Beastly Gerbil

So true

dcfyj

I think my main issue is that I get few views. except for 9 of them all my puzzles have less than 500 views :(

Although I can understand why my last one doesn't have a hug amount of upvotes, it's rather daunting.

Beastly Gerbil

I often post a puzzle with the hope and sometimes expectation of many upvotes but usually those hopes and expectations plummet after a few hours

dcfyj

I forgot that this one got a bunch of votes

53

Q: Strange women and their strange ways of giving you phone numbers

While Bob was walking down the street one day, he met a wonderful woman that was attractive and smart and a great conversationalist. After they had been chatting for a while the woman looked at her watch and quickly got up and scribbled something down while saying "I have to go, I'm running ver...

cipher enigmatic-puzzle trivia

Lukas Rotter

7:23 PM

My formula: 1) Add visual components like images or GIFS 2) make it a cipher (because that's all I can) 3) Put "weird" in the title and maybe variations like "strange" in the body. This at least worked for me to get over 10 upvotes :P (only questions following this formula achieved that)

I think the "weird" part is very important.

Beastly Gerbil

It was a very pleasant suprise when I came down stairs one day to find this had got 40 upvotes in a day

dcfyj

up to 81 now :S

Beastly Gerbil

And I mean what? how does this deserve 29 upvotes?

dcfyj

I do have 8 puzzles that were favorited by people though

Beastly Gerbil

puzzling.stackexchange.com/help/badges/33/…

dcfyj

7:26 PM

I gave that one an upvote because I thought it was clever

Beastly Gerbil

In my opinion its not much of a puzzle

dcfyj

@BeastlyGerbil I couldn't have that one yet, I've only posted 22

Sconibulus

That's 25 different people clicking the favorite button on one question

dcfyj

oh, misread it.

Beastly Gerbil

:P

dcfyj

7:28 PM

most I have is 12

Beastly Gerbil

Still good

dcfyj

I was talking about 8 different questions that had been starred by at least one person though.

Sconibulus

my best is 3 :)

Beastly Gerbil

Maximum on site I think is 70 somthing

dcfyj

Time to write a query!

(Which is true, as I'm about to write one, but it has nothing to do with pse)

Lukas Rotter

7:34 PM

dcfyj

Making puzzles is really annoying, you want them to be solved but you don't...

Beastly Gerbil

I get so annoyed when people are close but missing an obvious thing

Lukas Rotter

I usally like it if they're solved between 12-48 hours... If it takes longer I like to start a bounty, but unfortunately I'll have to resist starting a bounty on my current question as soon as I'll be able to... Otherwise people might exploit that in future questions.

dcfyj

@BeastlyGerbil That just happened on this last puzzle, but they figured it out. The great thing about this puzzle is eventually they'll get to the point where they can cross-check themselves and I won't have to tell them if they're wrong.

Alconja

8:34 PM

(Came here to post an observation, and I see it's actually relevant to the current conversion)

My latest answer is worth significantly more rep than my latest question... Guess which one took more time/effort? :)

2

Beastly Gerbil

Jammy!

Lukas Rotter

Is just had an idea for a puzzle that 1) is perfect to post on halloween (because of it's presentation), 2) fits the most probably next fortnight (IMO) and 3) fits the tags assigned to me here :P Now the most annoying part will be the "balancing" (i.e. not make it too hard / too easy)... Always failed at that so far... Anyone has advice how to determine the difficulty without having to have experience?

Alconja

@LukasRotter getting difficulty right is one of the hardest parts. Best I can suggest is trying to do a dry run yourself and at every step, ask yourself questions like: what information do I need to get this bit? Where is that information available? What assumptions do I need to make? How many wrong assumptions are people likely to make?

Lukas Rotter

@Alconja Thanks. The problem is that I always think the information needed to solve it is clear and everyone knows what to do with it. I guess I must bring on my best acting skills and somehow objectively judge the puzzle and what people could miss / misinterpret... That will not be easy :P

And I fear if I take too many misinterpretations of clues into consideration the puzzle might end up being too easy.

Alconja

8:52 PM

Oh, and I just noticed your link (just woke up, or at least that's my excuse)... Good man. Maybe I should suggest a new fortnightly challenge: Alconja's Assignments (I assign each user their own unique pair of tags). :)

Beastly Gerbil

What about me? I like a challenge...

Lukas Rotter

@Alconja I'm sure many people would vote for it just for fun :P Btw, what do you think of this suggestion?

Alconja

@LukasRotter absolutely, was going to suggest the same when the time came.

Beastly Gerbil

I do like the idea just unsure about how successful it will be. Same with the metapuzzle

Alconja

@BeastlyGerbil Consider yourself assigned riddle+number-sequence

Beastly Gerbil

9:00 PM

Hmmm, tricky but ok

A few ideas spring to mind....

Lukas Rotter

I'm glad Alconja realised I'm only capable of doing cipher puzzles :P Otherwise I'd probably produce the worst puzzle on this site.

2

Beastly Gerbil

I prefer making visual puzzles

^ taster of my current puzzle

Pretty pleased with the graphics

Lukas Rotter

Looks amazing. What will the "main tag" of the puzzle be? (e.g. riddle, mathematics, mechanical) Or do you want to keep that a secret for now? :P

Beastly Gerbil

Umm visual

Or story

It will contain sub puzzles of different things, like riddle or a cipher..

However if there is an indanna-jones tag then that will definetely be the main tag

Lukas Rotter

9:20 PM

The only problem with my current idea for a puzzle is that it's extremely trivial geometry, so I'm not sure whether it would deserve the gemoetry tag. But strictly following the tag description it would fit: "A puzzle related to shapes, geometric objects (polygons, circles, solids, etc.) of any number of dimensions, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. ". I.e. anything that involves shapes.

Beastly Gerbil

Go for it!

Rubio

don't you mean, knock yourself out?

too soon? hehe

Beastly Gerbil

:P

Rubio

i'd use the geometry tag, personally. gemoetry seems like a tag for geometric anagrams. hmmm

@Alconja who gets assigned one of those? heh

Gareth McCaughan

9:43 PM

the bowdlerized British bird in the "dice star" puzzle has to be GANNET (it's a direct reference to a Monty Python sketch)

the foliage has, in two versions of the puzzle, been "rough-looking" and "under the weather". I guess both of those must be meaning "somewhat unwell". GREENS??

ohhhh and I guess the "missing ..." thing is PINING (for the fjords). I actually wondered about that before but failed to spot the other sense of "missing", d'oh

(that gives us the previously mysterious PNG, by the way)

but we're still short at least one APS word, so far as I can see

the pests could be VOLEs rather than MOLEs. Or maybe DEER or even BEAR, but I doubt it.

I'm still having enough trouble figuring out how this thing could start or end that I suspect there's at least one DEL word we haven't got right yet.

Alenanno

10:03 PM

@BeastlyGerbil "Can I take a bite?" "Knock yourself out!" *actually knocks self out* "Oh damn...!" *runs away*

Oh hey @Sconibulus

Sconibulus

10:15 PM

hey there

Alenanno

10:51 PM

What is the formatting for the table in "What's a Word™?"

I guess it's not fixed.

Sconibulus

MathJax is one format, Picture of Excel sheet is another

I think there are a couple others floating around, but those are the main two used recently I think

Alenanno

@Sconibulus I saw the designs vary between users... I was going to post my own version (similar to the others, but with some minor differences). I don't think people will mind, eh?

Sconibulus

Not unless it's terrible :)

Alenanno

11:07 PM

@Sconibulus With LaTeX? Impossible. :P

@ffao I was almost on the verge of deleting that question.

I'm a bit unhappy with it.

Alenanno

11:25 PM

It also got a very meh reception. ^^'

Alenanno

11:41 PM

@ffao Are you here?

ffao

sorry, I couldn't resist the urge to show how much of a weeaboo I am

Alenanno

@ffao Ahah. I know it might be inappropriate of me to ask, but would you mind if I deleted it? I'm not sure I want it in my curriculum lol

ffao

if you want your questions to be seen by more people, you should post them in the afternoon

Alenanno

You did a very good job though.

ffao

about 7 hours before now, that is

Alenanno

11:44 PM

@ffao Eheh when I said "meh" reception, I mean it got a downvote and then an upvote.

@ffao Nevermind, I see you got upvoted. I'll keep it.

Deusovi

@ffao same

I think I only knew it because I'm also a weeb

Alenanno

I've only been posting very bad puzzles lately. Maybe I should travel, climb a mountain and find myself again.

ffao

I tried memorizing kanji, but those are impossible

so I know only hiragana and katakana, which makes me even more of a weeb

Deusovi

Yep, same here

Alenanno

@ffao :D Well, you can learn Kanji with time. You just need to find your method and be prepared for some work.

You don't know any at all?

Deusovi

11:52 PM

Hey @Randal'Thor!

I only know a few kanji myself - just some very easy ones.

Rand al'Thor

Hello all!

Alenanno

Hello

Rand al'Thor

33

Q: About a man and a bee

A man walks out of his house and over to his flower garden. He holds out his right hand and a bee lands in it. What is in his eye?

riddle wordplay humor

ffao

I know a few, forgot a lot more

Rand al'Thor

I'm the only person to have downvoted this? Seriously?

Deusovi

11:54 PM

Not anymore.

I think I've seen that one before, actually - don't remember whether it was here or not.

Alenanno

@Randal'Thor Why? Isn't it clever?

Rand al'Thor

Wasn't the humour tag supposed to get lynched?

Alconja

I actually didn't mind it... but it doesn't deserve to be upvoted that high... question is do you upvote on worthiness or to "balance" things out

Rand al'Thor

@Alenanno This isn't Punning.SE.

ffao

If only I knew earlier that making puns gets you to nearly repcap

Alenanno

11:55 PM

@Randal'Thor It did make me laugh, though.

Deusovi

We've asked for burnination of several tags, and nearly every time we get responses telling us to go through everything to make sure that no questions end up with only irrelevant tags.

humor, word-problem...

Alconja

Whether it makes you laugh or not doesn't make it good (or not). But it did take some thought, and I had an "aha" moment when solving it, so that's a puzzle

Alenanno

@Randal'Thor cc@Alconja Besides, this might not be Punning SE, but word play is not extraneous to puzzles.

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja You're not supposed to vote just to 'balance' things. I downvoted that question not because it's too highly voted but because, funny as it is, it doesn't really belong here. (Nothing wrong with your answer, of course!)

@Deusovi I started that job for word-problem. Need to go back and finish it at some point, especially since nobody else has taken up the baton.

And I call for more delete votes on more crappy closed humour questions in here every so often.

Alconja

Maybe I've got a skewed view, since I answered it before it had humour, so I didn't approach it as a joke, but as a puzzle, which, while very simple, was at least somewhat satisfying to solve

Alenanno

11:58 PM

@Randal'Thor I can understand you think it's of low quality, but I don't think this last one deserves deletion (if that's what you meant).

Alconja

So, while I broadly agree that jokes are bad. I think this is a (super easy/simple) puzzle that happens to be humorous, as opposed to a joke that's vaguely puzzle-y.

Rand al'Thor

@Alenanno Only closed questions can be deleted by non-mods anyway, so I wasn't talking about this last one.

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