Prompted by this question (and this similar question by the same user), I'd like to ask for the community's opinion on how to deal with puzzles taken from mystery geocaches.
For those not familiar with geocaching, a typical geocache is a container hidden somewhere (usually) outdoors, with a lo...
Japanophilia refers to the appreciation and love of Japanese culture, people or history. In Japanese, the term for Japanophile is "shinnichi" (親日), with "親" "shin" (しん) equivalent to the English prefix 'pro-', and "日" "nichi" (にち), meaning "Japanese" (as in the word for Japan "Nihon" (日本)). The term was first used as early as the 18th century, switching in scope over time.
== History ==
=== Early usage ===
The term "Japanophile" traces back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries before Japan became more open to foreign trade. Carl Peter Thunberg and Philipp Franz von Siebold helped i...
The father bought gifts for each of his three daughters, whose names
were Black, White, and Gray. Thinking it would be amusing, he bought
two black scarf for Black, two white scarf White, and a white scarf
and a black scarf for Gray. He had the store clerk wrap the three
presents and...
We have 3 closed boxes. One contains apples and the second contains oranges and the third contains apples and oranges . They have labels Apples, Oranges, Apple & Oranges but all the labels are put on the wrong boxes. How do you put the labels on boxes correctly if you can only open one box to see...
@ffao The other variants are not so obviously duplicate, as they leverage the same logic but under different circumstances. The "modified version" formulation is identically this puzzle in how it is set up, and seems to make that duplication the most obvious of the 3 I looked at.
@ffao Nah. There's a qualitative difference between "You pick one to look at" and "One is picked for you and here's the result." That's why the school locker room version is different -- so different in fact that there are scenarios where you can't know the answer for sure. If you get to pick where to look yourself then you can guarantee success. I think that's a substantial difference in presentation and in answer to the posed question, even though the logic why is the same.
(There's additional things about where you can add them - you can't stick a space or hyphen in the middle of a word creating two different words, for example.)
@Wen1now fyi I think people thought you were referring to, e.g. commas, hyphens, double quotes which is most cases can be ignored, but not always (i.e. "irrelevant except when it's not")
@Wen1now it doesn't matter whether it's a grey scarf or a black and a white scarf, since we never see it. It could be a scarf of a random colour for all my answer matters. Anyway, removed
Maybe. I might be missing something. I would assume it would have to be "swaps x sides" or "swaps sides of x". The "for" acts as a separator in this case, though.
Me: "I wonder what this CCCC thing is they're always talking about. Oh look! there's a pinned explanation!" **CLICK** 0_0 "Welp, these are too complicated for me..."
Don't worry, they're not as complicated as they look! I went into a lot of detail there for sake of completeness, that's all.
The basics are just the stuff before "double definitions" (the first type of wordplay I mention). Hell, you've probably solved a few cryptic clues in Contact without even realizing it.
(Also, please let me know if anything is unclear. I'm trying to make the guide as accessible as possible.)
In the double definitions section you give the answers with no steps in between. I eventually understood most of them (Except I still don't get DONNER), but to someone with as thick a skull as mine it might be nice to completely spell out the steps to the first couple of examples.
Well, there aren't really any "steps" per se. "POLISH" can be defined as both "European" and "shine". There are no intermediate portions. But fair enough, I could add more there.
(DONNER is a reference to one of Santa's reindeer as well as the Donner Party, a group of American pioneers who spent a winter snowbound and had to resort to... unpleasant things, to put it lightly.)
Looking over it again, I'm considering doing a rewrite of some of the early sections of the wordplay types. (There are a few typos I still can't believe I didn't catch.)
@Rubio Haven't looked at the Contact game, but my first thoughts are DAMASK and DAMASCENE (though I think the latter needs to be capitalized). I wouldn't be surprised if there are a bunch of other more obscure ones.
You do realise, I hope, that there are whole levels of word knowledge above mine. Imagine trying to defend in Contact with a couple of high-level Scrabble players among the attackers.
Of course I do! It's meant as more of a joke than a serious implication that you know literally every word. (Please, let me know if it bothers you, though. I really don't mean it in an insulting way, or in a way that makes you uncomfortable at all.)
My understanding is that the best Scrabble players often don't pay any attention to the meanings of the words they're learning, but they could probably do very well just by posting anagrams.
Yeah, I was about to say the same thing regarding Scrabble players knowing (or not knowing) the meanings of the words. (Defenders could just try all the anagrams for short words, of course.)
@GarethMcCaughan Maybe not offended, but I think it might be reasonable to be slightly uncomfortable by excessive compliments, especially ones that exaggerate a lot.
@Tumbler41 I've started trying my hand at these daily cryptic crosswords and am also considering purchasing one or both of the "Cryptic Crosswords" books in the "Dummies" series.