The Sphinx's Lair

12:00 AM

Oh hey, thanks @Deusovi! I was just about to link to that one again.

Would you guys think the same of this?

> A man built a rectangular house with all four sides facing south. A bear walked past the house. What color is the bear?

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I was going through the humor tag and thought that definitely didn't deserve to be here.

Nah, that's a puzzle.

Rand al'Thor

@Alenanno I would downvote that for being ridiculously easy :-)

Alconja

tsk tsk. you shouldn't be voting on difficulty

Alenanno

@Randal'Thor Well, apart from that. I mean, do you think that style of puzzle is not good for the site?

If properly designed, I think it'd make a good puzzle.

Deusovi

12:03 AM

Good for the site? I don't think so.

Rand al'Thor

@Alenanno "Properly designed" in what way? Like adding extra layers of crypticity?

Alconja

I've used effectively that gag as a mini-partial clue before

Rand al'Thor

I'm sure a good puzzle could be made out of that idea.

Alconja

"Follow the gaze of the crimson saint as he looks to the pre-dawn glow."

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja Ooooh, that sounds familiar.

Treasure hunt?

nostalgia

Alenanno

12:05 AM

@Randal'Thor Like not being that obvious.

Alconja

Indeed :)

ffao

as a non-native speaker, that treasure hunt hurts my brain

just this one sentence in chat is already enough to make me utterly confused :P

Rand al'Thor

@Alenanno Sure, that style of puzzle could certainly be good for the site. It might be hard to make it non-obvious without adding a lot of other different elements to the puzzle though.

Deusovi

One line from that is still burned into my mind from how long I spent thinking about it. "Paired up, pared down, the truth exposed, lies within lies / heading onwards north, reeling seas terrorize."

Alconja

:) I was so happy with myself when I polished that line up... but it was much too hard in retrospect

Rand al'Thor

12:08 AM

@Deusovi I think I got more upvotes for solving that one line than for solving most of the rest of the puzzle :-)

It looks so easy in retrospect.

Deusovi

That entire puzzle was fantastic.

Rand al'Thor

Oh, here's another crappy humour puzzle:

8

Q: What's the name of this country?

A group of people were naming their country. They argued back and forth, each not willing to give up his own idea. Some time passed, and they couldn't agree on a name. They decided to have a draw. This is how the draw worked: They filled a hat with all the letters of the alphabet. They agreed on ...

Deusovi

(Of course, not like I'd expect any less from Alconja!)

Alconja

In fact, if I had my time again, I'd rework the whole thing and probably flesh out each stanza to make it more achievable without so many hints

Rand al'Thor

(sorry to sour the mood)

@Alconja It certainly did need a LOT of hints!

Alconja

12:09 AM

It probably needed less than I gave, but I didn't know where people were having troubles, so I kind of took a shotgun approach

I generally like to make completely new puzzles, which are as different as possible from my previous ones, but I have thought about revisiting that one for a sequel...

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja Sequels can be fun, provided they're not too overdone.

Alconja

Back to humor, I think the fundamental issue is this: Puzzles which are humorous can be ok, but Jokes which happen to be puzzle-ish, are likely not. The problem arises because the former naturally invites the latter, which makes them all "bad" for the overall health of the site...

Rand al'Thor

I've deliberately spaced out my Mysterious Email puzzles a lot. I already have an idea for a fourth one, but don't want to post it too soon after the third.

Alconja

@Randal'Thor And, yeah, that one is literally a joke dressed up as a puzzle. Rather than a puzzle which is humorous.

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja I'd say it's way "too broad" as well. Look at all those answers, most of which seem quite plausible.

Alconja

12:16 AM

Perhaps the distinction is: if it weren't labelled humor, would it still be solvable (and have the answer be satisfying/obviously correct). I'd argue the bee/hand one is ok by that definition, but there's no way anyone would get the country one (and would not be satisfied by the accepted answer)

@Randal'Thor Agreed. I actually like some of those better... VTCing

..and going back to my last comment, that alone is a pretty solid argument for burninating the humour tag

Deusovi

Agreed, but the answer suggesting it (from last month's thread on humor and joke) is at -1.

-1

A: Changing 'joke' to 'humour' or burninating it

After doing a little looking at some of the questions tagged humor, I'd suggest what @GentlePurpleRain did in the comments to this question: Get rid of both humour and joke! Take a look at the list of humor-tagged questions. There are only 4 with a QScore of > 10. The first two are logic prob...

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi The answer suggesting burninating the tag entirely is at +12:

12

A: Changing 'joke' to 'humour' or burninating it

In the interests of providing options: We should get rid of the joke tag entirely. Most of the questions with this tag are either already closed, or not very funny (obviously subjective). I don't think the tag really serves a useful purpose, and it should probably just get burninated.

Deusovi

That's the joke tag. Not humour.

And apparently both were used at some point?

Rand al'Thor

They're the same tag.

joke was renamed to humour as a result of that meta post.

Deusovi

Hm, really? Dan's talking about them as if they were separate.

Rand al'Thor

12:26 AM

At the time that meta question (and my answer) were posted, the humour tag didn't exist yet.

ffao

Dan answered the question two weeks later, maybe the rename had already been made by that point

Deusovi

Oh, makes sense. Sorry, I have an awful memory. I still don't see why it was downvoted then, or why we even went through with the renaming if that post was voted so high.

Rubio

1:35 AM

question for you puzzle sages, out of curiosity. what's the guideline on un-[hold]ing puzzles that (eventually?) get enough community response to actually get a correct answer accepted? i've seen questions with accepted answers that are still "on hold" - which, I dunno, would tend to suggest that the basis for the hold either wasn't particularly strong, or at minimum is no longer relevant.

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio Whether or not the OP accepts an answer has no bearing on whether or not the puzzle is bad enough to be closed.

If someone posts a "guess what I'm thinking" puzzle, and someone else makes the right guess and gets accepted, then the puzzle is still too broad, irregardless of that acceptance.

Rubio

1:56 AM

i cringe at your use of irregardless. :) but i am not asking about closed; asking about "on hold", which maybe I just misinterpreted as "we don't want to close this, but it needs more attention from the questioner before it has a reasonable chance of being solved".

Deusovi

"On hold" is actually the same thing as "closed" from a functional perspective. It just displays "on hold" for the first week to encourage people to improve their questions, then "closed" afterwards. (For some close reasons, it just skips straight to "closed".)

Rubio

ok - thanks for the explanation, i wasn't clear on that. now I am. :)

hm. long shot on Sconimbulus' DICE: "foliage under the weather", maybe wILteD, freeing up a SER

ABcDexter

5:57 AM

hello everyone

Puzzling Meta

6:12 AM

0

Q: Banning "IQ test" questions

Recently there is lot of increment in insta thought puzzles, (Mostly of "IQ test", "pattern", "riddles" and "cipher" with short length), and they aren't "puzzles", but rote exercises / guess what I'm thinking type. So I suggest a. Banning and deleting such kind of questions. and/or b. Creati...

discussion tags

Gareth McCaughan

8:32 AM

@Rubio could be, but I really think it's going to be something more suggestive of (human) sickness.

Rubio

possibly. having said that, right now i have a full set of solutions for all dice, but i have no idea if they're right - trying to see if the hidden letters arrange to a usable message

Gareth McCaughan

I almost do but I'm pretty sure some of them aren't right

so do you have two APS words? I only seem to have one.

Rubio

yes, i have two

Gareth McCaughan

ooh. would you be willing to share whichever one isn't PAEANS, or is it a secret?

Rubio

not sure how best to do that. i don't want to steal everyone else's effort (or make it look like i'm trying to)

Gareth McCaughan

8:40 AM

(by "share" I just meant "say here")

Rubio

oh. heh

the other is dumping horsea for lapras (SAP)

Gareth McCaughan

ah. I was aware that I had no idea at all whether that one was right, but figured someone who actually knows that stuff would have said if it mightn't be.

the difficulty I have is as follows. 1. for EEI, in second place, I only have HFR (from the slightly dodgy HEIFER). 2. so GANNET (the bowdlerized bird) surely can't go in third place because HFR GNN seems hopeless. 3. the only other place it can go is second-last. 4. it pretty much has to split as ...NG N.... 5. the only 4-letter words I can get from N + any of the things I have for last place are NOME and NIDS both of which seem super-implausible.

Rubio

so i'm going to post what i have in a bit

you'll see how i got it all to fit into place

Gareth McCaughan

oh, so you actually have a solution now? that was quick

(or did I misunderstand a few minutes ago when you said you didn't?)

with LAPRAS I have comfortably enough viable things for all dice but (e.g. for the reason I described above) it really doesn't look as if they can be put together to make anything plausible.

so I like INTUIT (not sure whether better than INFERS but it's a good one)

TILERS not so much, but who knows?

TUTONE isn't plural because the group was called "Tommy Tutone", not e.g. "The Tutones"

I think MINERS is as plausible as TILERS but don't really much like any of the answers proposed for that one so far

Rubio

9:02 AM

oh. no, not a solution. you see what i posted.

Gareth McCaughan

Mods and other Serious People: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/44888/… OP has just admitted he's trying to get Puzzling to do his homework for him. Action?

@Rubio yes, you'll see from my comments above that I saw what you posted

Rubio

yeah catching up after mad editing hehe

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio your brain is in a pretty similar state to mine on this, I think

except that as a tool for thinking about possible solutions I strongly recommend a grid that has dice alone one axis and clues along the other, with 3-letter residuals in the grid entries. It makes it much easier to see what the possible options are.

and e.g. to see problems like the one I described above with there apparently being no good way to deal with the consonant-heavy GNN residual from GANNET.

Rubio

yeah

so as full disclosure, i've got a computer trying basically every match of one of my solution words against every die it can go with, and then every permutation of the resulting hidden letters for those pairings, to see if it can find anything resembling sensible text

i don't expect it to, but hey, it was quick enough to write and let a computer do some of the heavy lifting while i, you know, bash my head on other puzzles :)

i didn't really know how to mechanically do the solving of the word->die->text step, so it was that or just belch the whole mess up as an answer.

at this point, i guess, i've opted to go with both.

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, making a computer do the hard work is probably about as good as helping your brain do it :-).

except I'm pretty sure we haven't got all the dice right yet (as in, I think there's at least one word we haven't found, not just that we haven't guessed right between HEWERS/TILERS/MINERS and CATGUT/SILKEN and so on)

but I guess there's a very good chance your program will find some nice words somewhere in the middle and make everything click for you :-)

Rubio

9:12 AM

yeah that's kinda what i'm hoping for

if it looks suggestive of actual english somewhere in the siftings, then the rest hopefully can be banged into shape

i tried to record different alternatives that still seemed viable in my notes, so i listed (for example) all the possible pokemon and both hewers/tilers and retained mutton with corpse even though i've been certain that was wrong from the get-go

Gareth McCaughan

@GentlePurpleRain if you happen to be around and awake (you're in the list in the sidebar) as the only mod here you might want to take a look at my comment about 10 minutes ago about someone trying to get us to do his homework. I'm actually not sure what the policy is on that sort of thing...

Rubio

so backtracking on what doesn't come together should be possible

Gareth McCaughan

(afk for 45 minutes or so)

Alenanno

10:45 AM

@oleslaw I'm not sure that question deserves hints. I mean if I was asking you in person, maybe, but you guys have internet. The wrong hint + google = giving away the solution. :D

Hey @BeastlyGerbil

Beastly Gerbil

Hi

Quiet today

Alenanno

Yeah, indeed.

And it's only Wednesday.

Beastly Gerbil

Gets more active from 4 (GMT) onwards I find

Alenanno

What is your stance on hints? I mean, I have given hints in the past, but I don't want each of my questions to have hints. I think it kind of spoils the fun (although it does make things easier). I'm starting to understand the philosophy of "no hints".

Beastly Gerbil

I go start with no hints.

If there are any misconceptions then I add a clarificaton