@Deusovi I want this to be GLUTAEUS, which is a supporter of ending (or rear end, anyway) and contains both GLUT (vaguely capitalism-related) and EU (means, middle letters, of "gathering resources"). But I can't seem to get it to work. (By the way, @Avi, that's an indicator I didn't mention (because I didn't see it at the time).)
that question isn't even a puzzle because countless such mappings exists and I can always enumerate every possible button press sequences to a number between 1 to 10000 and it's automatically a trivial solution
an arguably better problem would be "how many such mappings exist" but then that's just math stuff
Yeah, I agree that it's pretty trivial. The "best answer wins" phrasing is what stuck out to me the most, but I probably would have complained on those grounds were it not for that
This puzzle is part of the ‘Twelve Labours’ series, but can be solved independently. Previous instalments can be found here: Prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05
Hercules looked down at his to-do list and sighed; he always hated getting his hair cut. Stymphalian Beards had only recently set up ...
It'$ not ₺he pride before the fall.
It's not 'round mouths in afternoons.
You may have heard it said by three:
Do it in meta 'for toil and trouble.
Or if the charge is all done wrong,
It's guaranteed for subtraction!
Ensure the sword's not just a blade,
And within the ...
@Voile this "wtf" message of yours finally pushes me out of this community. Ironically I was a "top new Puzzling user" last month and stack exchange said in the email "It’s users like you who make this community worth visiting in the first place". Now I might tell them that it's users like you who kick people out of this community...
@Stiv So the story started with me having some idea of creating a series of my own "button-pushing puzzles". That was the first one. Now that it no longer matters, I can tell you that some others might involve the design of a "random number" button, hence a bit lateral-thinking.
The first discouragement came from the discussion with Deusovi, where he pointed to me that this type of questions are not good puzzles. That's fair. I haven't read through all the discussions in the meta site, and didn't know the consensus of good puzzles on this site. But this renders my follow-up puzzles inproper, since they might not have a definite answer as the first one.
And then comes that "wtf" comment, which to me looks quite "impolite", if not rot13(ehqr), and doesn't show any respect to the time and effort I put in designing the puzzles. What's worse is that the question got closed in several hours, so my feeling is that people saw this comment in the chatroom and then went to vote for closing - yet nobody pointed out to him that the comment is impolite.
Of course politeness is again a personal standard, and it could be that the majority is fine with this. So I thought it's just not a suitable community for myself...
A student was found making Graffiti in the teacher's office.
He was punished and was asked to repaint the wall of the room.
The teacher gave him a grid to show which part of the wall should be painted white,
and which one should be blue.
Solve this grid as a Nurikabe puzzle.
.....
..5..
.....
@WhatsUp Thanks for sharing. In my experience of PSE, that 'wtf' is a rare flash of something that I don't see regularly on this site. Without speaking to the OP I can't vouch for the motivation behind it, but yes I agree it's not nice to have that comment directed towards you or your puzzle... The trick I find is to ignore the haters but listen to those who give constructive feedback.
Almost every puzzle I have ever created has received at least one unexplained downvote, which would be very easy to take personally and feel a little down about (it's always disappointing when someone doesn't like something you've put effort into creating) but I reason that if a comment wasn't left to explain then it is likely a case of someone deciding purely "nah, not for me" (which isn't really how the downvote is supposed to be used).
When a comment is made you can evaluate, choose whether to agree or disagree, and then react accordingly. If you decide to drop your series based on considered user feedback, fine - that's your choice - but do stick around in the community. There are plenty of interesting puzzles and discussions on offer, and an unexpected new discovery or a fun exchange can totally lift a bad mood... Don't give up on it yet! Peace out...
@WhatsUp I'd also encourage you to stay around if you can bear it :-), and I can confirm Stiv's remark that it's not usual to see puzzles greeted with anything as negative as "wtf" unless they're much worse than yours is.
@Voile I understand that you think the puzzle is a bad one, but honestly I don't think anyone could consider it bafflingly bad and "wtf is this puzzle" is pretty rude; please consider that the people you're talking about may be reading what you write. Feedback is fine, criticism is fine, mockery not so much.
Compare: (1) "wtf is this puzzle"; (2) "isn't this too easy to really be a puzzle? it's just asking how deep a binary tree needs to be in order to have 10000 nodes". #1 is just a sneer; #2 indicates what it is you find unsatisfactory about the puzzle. (And invites the obvious answer: "seeing that you can do it that way is solving the puzzle; obviously this was an easy one for you, and you should feel free to downvote it if you think it's too easy to belong here".)
Plenty of puzzles can be interesting and worth doing (let alone posting) even though they are easy. “Too easy to belong here” should not be a thing. Having said that, there is a considered difference between easy and not a puzzle. A question can have an answer that needs some active step on the part of the solver to arrive at it, and still not be a puzzle.
I like playing CTFs (capture the flag) which are mainly hacking games. I'd like also have some CTF style puzzles here (no hacking, just puzzles with things like OSINT and Crypto). I've noticed that there are no such tags on puzzling SE.
I enjoy playing hacking CTFs and I'd like to bring non-hack...
@Stiv @GarethMcCaughan OK, I think you made a good point that one should look more at the positive side. Perhaps I'll still be around from time to time. Thanks for the kind comments!
McGraw said in grinning eerie manner,
Rowland diabolically wins biannually every tenner,
which he achieves carrying black spangled banner
during which stubbornly bringing home dinner.
What is the hidden message?
So I've been trying to solve this Riddle called "Phage is Spreading.."
To complete stage one is an achievement.
To complete the test is talent.
Talent will be rewarded.
Good luck.
-Phage
Images given:
What I tried was decrypt the second Image using a QR-Code decoder.
This is what I got...
This puzzle is part of the ‘Twelve Labours’ series, but can be solved independently. Previous instalments can be found here: Prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05
Hercules looked down at his to-do list and sighed; he always hated getting his hair cut. Stymphalian Beards had only recently set up ...
It'$ not ₺he pride before the fall.
It's not 'round mouths in afternoons.
You may have heard it said by three:
Do it in meta 'for toil and trouble.
Or if the charge is all done wrong,
It's guaranteed for subtraction!
Ensure the sword's not just a blade,
And within the ...
A student was found making Graffiti in the teacher's office.
He was punished and was asked to repaint the wall of the room.
The teacher gave him a grid to show which part of the wall should be painted white,
and which one should be blue.
Solve this grid as a Nurikabe puzzle.
.....
..5..
.....
Genius level!
3, 26, 83, 1196, 2915, ?
McGraw said in grinning eerie manner,
Rowland diabolically wins biannually every tenner,
which he achieves carrying black spangled banner
during which stubbornly bringing home dinner.
What is the hidden message?
So I've been trying to solve this Riddle called "Phage is Spreading.."
To complete stage one is an achievement.
To complete the test is talent.
Talent will be rewarded.
Good luck.
-Phage
Images given:
What I tried was decrypt the second Image using a QR-Code decoder.
This is what I got...
