and, for the avoidance of doubt, without=outside is not something cruciverbalists cooked up just for cryptic crosswords. It's a genuine English usage that existed before there was such a thing as a cryptic crossword.
(E.g., there's a Victorian hymn which begins "There is a green hill far away / Without a city wall". It doesn't mean that the hill has no city wall, it means that the hill lies a little way outside a walled city.)
The local paper this morning seemed a bit strange. The whole thing was a bunch or random squares! Below are some snippets from what should have been headlines of articles.
@Deusovi don't be too :/ey - you know, the whole 'do it for the sake of the reward and eventually you'll do it for the sake of it' ;) (although seriously, I'm not badge hunting - too much effort...)
You swim in my sea
But don't appreciate me
Until I win races
Or make laughing faces,
Plus I give great head
You gotta admit
Though I run from the dead,
But don't call me chicken shit
The questioner has posted the answer. The answer is not in any way offensive. The potentially-offensive language in the puzzle is clearly deliberate -- the point, I take it, is to write something that sounds like it will be lewd or excremental or something but is actually totally innocent. (I remember being terribly amused by such things as a child.) I don't think it's naive exactly.
@Sp3000 I always have trouble with verbs in the present, because of the ending 's' -> in that case it should have been 'stick', but at the same time it couldn't be
@Catija But I think you're free to recommend a rewrite. Maybe leave a comment to tell the OP they can rollback if they really want or dislike it. Or that they can still edit it themselves.
@n_palum I think the chicken part is important, though. and "chicken shit" is idiomatic. Heck, they have "chicken shit bingo" at some of the bars in town here.
"Manure is an excellent fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients. "
As far as I know from working in a Home Depot garden section as well, manures and fertilizer in general are all high in nitrogen because it's good for the ground
plantea.com/manure.htm This page seems to imply that there's a lot more nitrogen in chicken manure than cow or sheep or horse.
> Poultry manure (chicken in particular) is the richest animal manure in N-P-K. Chicken manure is considered "hot" and must be composted before adding it to the garden. Otherwise, it will burn any plants it comes in contact with.
I think the question is more at that point about how honestly over the top is the word "shit"... or the phrase "chicken shit"... and how PG stuff needs to be... clearly, nitrogen does give beer a nice head... but I don't know if the innuendo is acceptable here or not.
I'm personally disinclined to force a user to change their puzzle, and there's at least one precedent of a "dirty" riddle whose answer made it apparent it wasn't. That one included, if I remember correctly, a disclaimer from the beginning that it was more than it appeared to be at first blush
Doing that here is closing the barn door after the horse has left.
I think we've seen a few folks fairly pointedly recommend OP change the riddle to be a little less jarring, and that's not really accomplished anything
Yeah, that's why a disclaimer up front would have been appropriate, if this wording was something the OP really wanted to keep.
Having said all that. Two things come to mind, for me.
1. There's (literally) nothing preventing community members who are bothered with the riddle, either for its tone, its language, or its construction as a riddle, to make appropriate edits to a question or answer. You're allowed, you're encouraged, to do that when it makes sense.
I suggested the disclaimer already and moved it to the front. I think it's okay with the disclaimer. I just suggested downvotes may be removed if they alter words.
2. People have flagged it, telling the Mods (in effect) "we'll downvote, but we won't vote to close or make any edits ourselves. The community wants action, but won't take action." Well. We're supposed to represent you, and do what you would do. What did you do? Nothing.
@Catija (Well, no; but to get it changed, the alternative would be to do it irrespective of OPs wishes. Which, again, is still entirely an option available to the community.)
@Rubio I don't think the OP has made any implication that they would be unwilling to adjust the riddle. It might be worth seeing if they would be willing to come to chat.
Anyway. I guess my point was that there is a philosophy that the moderators that moderate least, moderate best. I'm far happier seeing the community do its thing than have the mods step in and decide for everyone what everyone wants.
I think (but I repeat myself...) the innuendo is most of the point of the puzzle. But perhaps Errorum would rather lose that than have the whole thing removed, which might be the alternative in view of PSE policy on this sort of thing.
@ffao Thanks :D I think fixing the structure to an AABBCCDD structure makes it obvious that "shit" is intended and one could format poop in brackets: [poop] to show that it's a placeholder... assuming you're concerned with the word "shit".
If you think it's good, I will suggest my rewrite with the suggested edit note that the OP needn't keep it if they wish to leave it the way they wrote it.
shrug. Why? If you have edit privileges, there's no reason to waste other people's time deciding if the edit is good... it's not as if the OP is often the person judging them. If ind that the OP is rarely the person approving or declining edit suggestions but I don't have any numbers on it.
I suppose now that OP has the option of overturning an edit review it's not as important. I just know I had a question or two that if someone had "helpfully" edited would have been broken, and would want to be able to suggest a correction to the OP rather than decide what they meant for them. It's rare but it happens.
The local paper this morning seemed a bit strange. The whole thing was a bunch or random squares! Below are some snippets from what should have been headlines of articles.
This is a question from technothlon 2014 paper
I couldnot understand how are they making the sequences.
You swim in my sea
But don't appreciate me
Until I win races
Or make laughing faces,
Plus I give great head
You gotta admit
Though I run from the dead,
But don't call me chicken shit
