@Sid I got the PUZZLING and EXCHANGE from the fact that I was supposed to fill in [8 letters] STACK [8 letters] and navel-gazing self-referential puzzles are common around here :-). (Perhaps we could consider the quoted material a "puzzling exchange" too, kinda.)
How many minutes are there in February 2017?
This is "puzzling golf". The shortest correct answer wins.
PS: The puzzle is not so much to compute the result, but rather to express it in less than 5 digits.
Possible detail to be refined and added to the puzzle statement: When ocarinists and subcontrabassoonists play extremely rapid passages, they can fake it by being accurate on just the first and last notes, as long as inaccurately fingered intervening notes have the correct rhythm. — humn1 min ago
Our perceptual systems like to "fill things in" when they are missing. If you hear all the harmonics of some note but the fundamental frequency itself is absent then you will hear that note even though in some sense it isn't there
so if e.g. you have a bunch of high-pitched ocarinas playing notes that "would be" the overtones of some other note, it will be at least a bit as if you heard that other note
possible super-weak connection with particle physics: one mechanism by which this sort of filling-in can happen is nonlinearity in the perceptual system, which produces subharmonics and things; this is sort of anti-connected with particle physics in that people have contemplated nonlinear versions of QM from time to time and concluded that any nonlinearity would have to be super-tiny
nonlinear wave-y things do happen elsewhere in physics where, e.g., they produce solitons
@GarethMcCaughan I still don't understand how you get Puzzling exchange in that puzzle. Anacata=Stack is also something I don't like(Probably,because my Hindi isn't too strong). Also, The question was "Who called...". How can PSE be a "Who"?
(I'm getting power dips every minute now and might cut out completely any time. Sorry if that happens. Howling wind outside -- back in a couple of minutes after switching to backup power)
solitons act kinda like particles but I don't think there's any particular connection with particle physics (in particular, actual particles don't "act like particles" in the relevant way, precisely because QM is all linear).
@Sid Well, I told you how I got it. It may of course turn out to be incorrect, or there may be some more convincing means by which I was meant to get it; that would be a question for @Techidiot rather than for me :-).
I assume that if the answer to "who called Ana" is meant to be PSE, we should (in so far as we're supposed to imagine any realistic story at all) imagine it being the mods or admins of PSE making the call.
After looking it up, I see what you mean, but either way, puzzle is not the word you are looking (Disclaimer: No Jedi mind tricks were used in the sending of this message)
... side topic concerning side topics ... I'm thinking of starting an ownerless minimal-etiquette chat room so that this room doesn't get diluted by side topics or random video posts (from perpetrators like me) ...
This room is so great for collaborative solving, CCCCs and site-focused topics.
@Sconibulus , good to hear. Perhaps I'll stray more freely here with the understanding that a new room is only a click away if anyone complains. I just didn't want to start one ad hoc room after another.
@GentlePurpleRain I see how "conflict" is a definition; is there a bit of software called Discord, or something, that explains the other half of the clue?
Turns out, it got downvoted once I accepted the answer. :) May be I should have provided a couple of more clues in there which could have avoided the confusions
All you need to do is, try figuring out the people who called Ana.
This is a story from a very famous incident happened with a friend of mine and we call it
UTILISING C - (C for the weird call she received)
Disgusted Ana threw away her plate. It cracked and scattered everywhere.
Ana was ...
(Heey, elias, I almost have a diagonal picture ready for Find 7 solutions, inspired by your mention of 45-degree reflection. I'll plop it here and @elias you in a few minutes. It cheats, by the way.)
Endless destruction surrounds broken car and close pet.(4,3) Confused ditsy old southerner strangely remains.(5,4) Modern factory within tree.(2,5) Creep ready for darkest rappel entanglement.(5,8)
@Deusovi Bear in mind that it's a metacryptic thing; there are extra constraints. I agree that "dear cat oddly sits in stalk prepared" is not an optimal clue for REDACTED in isolation, of course.
Sure, but the other clues were questionable too. Besides, "communist" / "performed" / "censorship" / "in the past" would be perfectly cluable - as actual words/phrases rather than two clumsily stuck together!
Well, of course Matt's been around here recently. Hey @Matt, would you like to confirm whether there's a further step required after getting REDACTED in your "Where am I?" puzzle?
@humn This one allows for an infinity of solutions, @elias, with L and I stretched along one diagonal and Z translated independently along the other. See the cheat?
One thing notably not used in Matt's puzzle yet: those words "before it's too late", which appear in the title and in the puzzle itself. "Before it's too late, where am I?". It seems like that has to be significant.
I do like the idea of enemy agents intercepting a cryptic multi-layer puzzle and substituting another cryptic multi-layer puzzle with answer REDACTED; it's very witty.
Im afraid the answer would be, as shown by the great number of hints,
Texan Chocolate Taki Fried Waffles mixed with a serving of Diced Pineapples from Canada.
Currently I begin to study puzzles and wonder if there exist some book or something which breaks down all puzzles to types and describes them.
I'm not native english speaker, so I might be confused with term "puzzle".
Maybe it's more properly to say not "classification of puzzles", but "classific...
By the way, @dcfyj, your solution below is one of my all-time favorites. It played by the puzzle's intended rules, opened the door for the 1-char-fewer accepted-on-a-technicality-and-also-brilliant solution, and you had to leave on vacation before you could revise yours to match. I should've bountied it. Never too late.
Here's what I came up with: $20$ Characters
This is basically the same idea as Peregrine Rook, with some minor changes.
I also found this: $19$ characters
This interestingly enough compiles but doesn't count in this challenge as the value of v is not defined.
@dcfyj , there. I just remembered why no bounty before. I was in shock after finding out that each bounty was double the previous. (Am numb to that by now.)
Oh yeah @Techidiot, the power cut made me forget, so GCC, GAF, FDE, EFE - I see where they come from G=7, C=3, ... but 13, 14, 15, 16? Musical? Acronyms?
I am still trying to figure out, exactly what is the clue you have in there. I tried checking the computational value for the "?" sign which looks suspicious to me, but no luck
Two missing numbers made me feel like checking for something called "home pattern"/"missing pattern" but didn't helped much
Hm hm, @Jonathan, your clue "The sequence is strictly decreasing and contains only positive integers (that narrows them down to 1485 choices)" seems to give away that the numbers are decimal, even though they look suspicously octal. (1485 = 54*55/2)
yes 1485 is the number of positive decimal numbers that could fit, so I have excluded bases greater than 10, octal numbers all lie within that same set though... one sec.
(and you know that half the time I ask leading questions, it's more how you respond than what you say that i'm looking for. The classic case was once when you completely changed the subject.)
@Techidiot borderline maybe / subjective -- I thought of adding that tag but then it would probably be too broad, I err to the side that it's just maths.
How many minutes are there in February 2017?
This is "puzzling golf". The shortest correct answer wins.
PS: The puzzle is not so much to compute the result, but rather to express it in less than 5 digits.
All you need to do is, try figuring out the people who called Ana.
This is a story from a very famous incident happened with a friend of mine and we call it
UTILISING C - (C for the weird call she received)
Disgusted Ana threw away her plate. It cracked and scattered everywhere.
Ana was ...
0.0.0
Now go and decode it.
Hint: Waffles.
Im afraid the answer would be, as shown by the great number of hints,
Texan Chocolate Taki Fried Waffles mixed with a serving of Diced Pineapples from Canada.
Here's what I came up with: $20$ Characters
This is basically the same idea as Peregrine Rook, with some minor changes.
I also found this: $19$ characters
This interestingly enough compiles but doesn't count in this challenge as the value of v is not defined.
