@Rubio I did look at that puzzle, though not very hard -- I was kinda busy at the time. I don't see anything to object to there. Maybe there's imgur stuff later on, in which case I reserve the right to feel a little icky about it, but I've no problem with a story-puzzle that puts abstract puzzles within the story. (A puzzle with a story in which one person challenges another to find things on imgur wouldn't produce the sort of icky feeling I'm talking about, for instance.)
@Deusovi Either too-broad or maths-problem, I think. I answered it because why not?, but I also VTC as maths-problem. (I could just as easily have picked "too broad".)
Meh. With no actual information on runtimes of the phones, or sales ratios, or anything with actual quantitative info, asking how long you can expect a phone charge to last just seems pointless.
With the phone question, if you somehow contrive to have absolutely no information about anything related to the phones (including e.g. no idea of whether longer battery life is likely to correlate with higher or lower sales) then there's a symmetry argument that makes the expectation be the average of the two lifetimes. Otherwise, yup, could be anything depending on factors not listed in the question.
But there's no lifetimes given! We don't know the two lifetimes!
Actually, no. It was worse - it was originally in riddle format. They just edited in a suggestion from humn in the comments (who claimed it would then be a lateral thinking puzzle) and added the lateral thinking tag. They claim in the comments they doesn't know the solution.
(I took it that the two lifetimes were supposed to be known, but just hadn't been stated explicitly. If not, then yeah, it's either steganography or 100% ridiculous.)
I do slightly suspect the user in question of suffering from "if I post a puzzle others can't solve it proves I'm cleverer" syndrome.
Whereas I thought "if they aren't known, the question is obvious nonsense, whereas if they are known it could kinda-sorta make sense" and picked the charitable option. I am not claiming that this was correct :-).
The user likes math and math-based ciphers, so maybe they're expecting some probabilistic formula as the solution, with everything represented as variables.
well, there's an answer that's just a huge multiple integral involving your prior probabilities for all possible combinations of runtimes, which brand is which, sales figures, etc. But that's ... not very helpful.
I'm a bit new to making riddles, so please bear with me :)
Here it is:
I need no definition.
Flowing like water,
From port to port.
-
Hurting none,
I am mightier than the sword.
Many tremble beneath my power.
But I may be purged from afar.
-
Many uses,
Both good and evil.
I am un...
@Deusovi I have an idea. Retract the VTC, and I will post a spoilered solution, which people can either look into or ignore and try to solve it on their own. Either way, the question gets a solution and hopefully we can all resolve our problems. — CipherRiddle2 mins ago
I'm not doing anything either way on this one. If you all would like to reopen it to see the solution, feel free.
I would be interested to see CipherRiddle's alleged solution. If the question is reopened, can it then be closed again if the solution is unsatisfactory?
(Which I expect it to be; but who knows? I've been wrong many times before.)
I think being closed is probably the right state for the question; I am curious about CR's alleged solution; I'm not sure I want to do anything to encourage a state of affairs where people can get closed questions reopened by piquing others' curiosity :-).
@xnor Yeah I took a quick look at that one too and am of the impression that a non-computerised proof is nontrivial :P Best hope is pigeonholing left right and centre maybe
This is based on the Add-A-Gram puzzles by wildBillMunson. You need to find a chain of words, such that each next word is an anagram of the previous word plus an additional letter. Each one is a single word, and it must match the part of speech as the clue.
Example: a scratch inside a charge ...
An entry in the 19th fortnightly challenge...
A Grid
Some Clues
There are three examples of this in the finished grid
Two answers that touch a corner, in relation to 25A (D)
Contained in the rotational symmetry of the grid
The clue above corresponds to an answer in this direction
Position...
@boboquack (and @Sid) I've had requests from a few different people for wrap-ups and I even wrote 80% of one for Rejbas, but I wasn't super happy with it... Ultimately, I wasn't sure there was a huge amount of value in what I was writing (it just felt like a rambling description of only vaguely interesting content). Maybe I'm just being self-conscious and over-thinking it though...
Mainly for users with 3k+ rep
Straight to the point:
Should we VTRO to find out what the OP had in mind as the answer when they posted the question?
On a recent question, the question was originally closed due to broadness/mathematical calculations.
However, some people would like to know...
"The OP has said they will post the intended solution if and only if the question is re-opened." They can only do that if the question is open, it's not like they're deliberately withholding the solution.
The only worrying thing in this scenario is that it sets a precedent for future claims by users that "This puzzle was reopened to see OP's answer. My puzzle should be too"
Unsure if I should reply to the meta with this: Assuming VTRO won't be a thing, what stops a user from posting an "improved" version of the same puzzle as a separate question?
He should update the current question. Just like it says to. "If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question."
Mainly for users with 3k+ rep
Straight to the point:
Should we VTRO to find out what the OP had in mind as the answer when they posted the question?
On a recent question, the question was originally closed due to broadness/mathematical calculations.
However, some people would like to know...
My roommate's notebook is full of these weird grids and drawings. I know that he is trying to learn to write computer code and he likes making old video games as a way to learn. I'm an experienced game designer so sometimes I like to look at his notes and see if I can figure out what he is work...
I found a drawing under a stack of books in my house. It looked like a logical circuit diagram, so I decided to make it. I assumed that I was allowed to put anything in the boxes with the question marks.
And guess what? The drawing was correct, no matter what I put in the question mark boxes.
...
Well, @boboquack, my entire "solution" so far has been a series of unconfident-but-too-coincidental-to-resist connections. Does any of it happen to be on target so far?
You seem to be one of the resident experts - is there in fact a definitive way to get a monospace font inside mathjax? the closest I can get is the typewriter font, but that's not actually monospace, depending on your fonts and/or browser.
This might work better, @Rubio, I don't have a Mac to test on.
I had forgotten that MathJax has \verbatim, as: \verb"..."
(the " quotes in \verb"..." can be any character, which automatically becomes the delimiter)
\begin{array}{lll}
\verb"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX^XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"&&\_\\
\verb"X : : : : : : : : x0: : : : : : : : : : X"&1&\_\\
\verb"X-xxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx-x-X"&&\_\\
\verb"X x x : : : : : x : : : : : : : : : : x X"&2&\_\\
\verb"X-x-x-x-x-xxx-x-xxx-x-+-xxx-xxx-xxxxx-xxX"&&\_\\
\verb"X x : x x : x1x : : x1: : x x : : x : x X"&3&\_\\
\verb"X-xxx-x-x-xxxxx-xxx-x-xxxxx-xxxxx-x-+-x-X"&&\_\\
\verb"X x : x x : : : x x x x : : x : : :0: x X"&4&\_\\
\verb"X-xxx-xxx-+-x-x-x-xxx-xxx-xxx-+-xxxxx-x-X"&&\_\\
(can't resist, while slurping Baby Bear's porridge) You could make a copy of it, @Mithrandir, hide the offensive parts, and present it as a Rorschach-like puzzle where solvers should only be as ashamed as their answers.
@Rubio: Neil W has found the skeleton seers: They're osteomancers, and I don't know why I hadn't seen that. And I think I've also found the evergreen. It's Til, an obscure evergreen tree found on the canary islends. It isn't in any dictionary I use and I found it via Wikipedia's disambiguation pages, where I've tried out all sensible three-letter combos.
🖉 Aw, @Rubio, I'm sure you'd understand if I don't make a monospace \macro after all, but I'm very curious to see an image of the nonmono Mac mess. You might have found this post about MathJax vs Mac fonts, for what it's worth.
...
@TheGreatEscaper, I'm secretly having more fun than ever with the mod-3 Part Two of Prime Circuit Optimisation, in hopes of finding a 3-gate (or fewer, of course) per input solution, using feedback loops, what else.
Haha, glad that you're enjoying it! I actually do need to double check my solution for Part Two, though. Because your search for the better solution has me questioning whether mine is quite watertight
The only way I could tighten up my 4-gates-per-input solution turned it less comprehensible so you still have tantalized by how your solution differs. I only saved 1 gate total, not per input.
Ah! The self unsure portrait. I'll definitely write up a solution at some point. Strangely enough, determining whether the missing part is x or y is proving the harder part for me now.
Nah, this is an 8x8 masyu cut up into quarters, nothing else
Also, this probably breaches some chat rule or something, but I've started a little blog for all these unusual logic puzzles here: completelyconfounded.blogspot.com.au
Below is an 8x8 Masyu puzzle (rules can be found here), but the puzzle has been broken into four pieces! Can you put the pieces back together to make a proper Masyu puzzle with a unique solution? (The pieces can be rotated, and swapped, but they cannot be flipped. The red piece cannot be rotated,...
I think I've earned a bit of a reputation at my school such that some teachers just don't bother me. I'm sure now that it's year 11 and proper exams are starting things will change a little, but I'm already two weeks ahead on assessments, so... :P
I'm not really sure about the morals of this, but it's nice to take shortcuts here and there.
Once a month my deaf cousin from Georgia visits her grandmother who lives in the state of Washington. Because of her hearing impairment, she and I made an agreement that she always texts me here whereabouts when she goes on a trip. She does this in the following way: every time she starts traveli...
Yesterday I've posted quite easy puzzle: Universal dissection. Now the actual problem.
When we deal with 8x8 board with 1 missing cell it doesn't matter whether we allow to flip parts or not, optimal number of parts will be the same (see answers of @elias and @Peter Taylor). I would like to hav...
Inspired by Maze Solving Robot and the related one on code golf SE. Also Is progress possible in an infinite maze?
Rules
Two people start in the same cell in an orthogonal grid of infinite size.
Each cell has four edges, and hence, a maximum of four ways to enter or exit it.
Every edge in the...
I found the first two bosses (and the bird) to be reasonable bosses (aka a decent challenge), the temple bosses were a joke, the second to last boss annoying (especially the last part of the fight), and the final boss was a good challenge
My first puzzle here was literally small. Here's a puzzle that is nonliterally small
Silver, without any left, flipped it at charged particle modification (8)
Within Buddhist or Yiddish lore (7)
After solving these two cryptic clues, their answers will make a two word phrase describing what yo...