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12:03 AM
@matt Ugh, this pops up every few months. The correct answer is "ask the person who was writing the expression what they meant". Math notation, like all notations, is a system for communication; this is an ambiguity in it. Some people take multiplication by concatenation to have precedence over explicitly-written multiplication/division; others do not. The "true" meaning is only determined by what the writer intended.
If I say "I saw the man on the hill with the telescope", who has the telescope -- me, the hill, or the man? The correct answer is "context and the writer's intent determine the 'true' meaning, if there is one".
And if I refuse to clarify, the sentence has no context as part of an overarching conversation, but I'm still asking you for which is the "real" meaning, then I would be wasting your time.
 
@bobble "You're going to h-e-l-l double hockey sticks" (I don't actually mean that, but reference)
 
If the mathematical notation system gets its ambiguity removed, it becomes a programming language called APL.
 
oh APL is *interesting*™
 
How do you do that TM notation?
 
it's a unicode character - one of the many i have shortcuts set up for
 
12:10 AM
I usually add a (tm) - it still gets the point across
 
Disclaimer: I'm a big fan of APL, and it's my main weapon for code golf.
 
how does one wield APL as a weapon?
 
i'm fascinated by a lot of the APL design decisions
 
But why is there no standard, agreed way of interpreting it in context of the mult expression? Seems weird imo
 
why would there be? mathematical notation evolved over a long period of time (and still is evolving) -- it wasn't standardized in one place and spread to all the world in this fixed, immutable form
 
12:13 AM
@bobble Solve code golf challenges in it. You win if you get shorter code than the others.
 
I know about Code Golf, was trying to make a joke.
 
the principia mathematica is near-completely incomprehensible by modern notation, and it's only from the 1910s
 
*The APL is locked and loaded, ma'am*
 
@Deusovi wow ... ahh
 
12:14 AM
what does that mean!
 
like, you can't even begin to parse these lines -- and that's not just because of things having been defined earlier
the "grammatical structure" of the text itself is unclear unless you've spent time immersed in it
 
which I have not
 
Looks like we need someone who translates old mathematics into modern mathematics, like ones who translate old English to modern English
 
If you want to know why that is, there's a History of Science and Mathematics SE to browse
 
granted, this is later in the book, and the earlier sections are more comprehensible. but even parentheses, which we take as a given nowadays, are mostly unused in this form of notation -- they denote precedence in other ways
mathematical notation is a writing system just like any other. it changes as people discover more efficient ways of communicating the same ideas, and it's reliant on human interpretation of the text. that doesn't mean the underlying mathematics is ambiguous, just that our way of notating it is
 
12:20 AM
@Deusovi Because, correct me if I'm wrong, all other simple parts of notation are clearly defined?
With that I mean the other basic stuff
 
"clearly defined" where exactly? f(a,b) can mean "the function f applied to the two numbers a and b", "the function f applied to the open interval from a to b", and even "the open interval from a to be, scaled by a factor of f"
 
Avi
the vector (a,b) scaled by a factor of f?
 
sure, that too!
the six variables f, (, a, ,, b, and ) all multiplied together
 
Avi
D:
 
12:28 AM
mathematical notation was (and still is) learned mostly by word of mouth and examples, not by applying a strict set of rules. of course people learned PEMDAS/BODMAS/whatever, but the understanding of what that entails comes from actual experience -- people don't instantly intuitively understand the operations by that ruleset, and people don't think "okay, parentheses first, then exponents..." every time they look at a mathematical expression
 
One time I took one of those competition math tests and there was a question with a function f(x). No one had ever told me what functions were. I solved the question treating f(x) as f * x and got it hopelessly wrong. That's a real-world example of mathematical ambiguity doing poor baby bobble in.
 
people are very good at reading something as it was intended to be written rather than as it actually was written. it's no surprise that one of the very uncommon edge cases was not completely agreed on
@bobble ouch
 
Avi
also :(
 
Holy shit I know why I hate mathematical notation xD
 
wait, that's the reason? there are so many better reasons to hate it
sin² vs sin⁻¹, for instance
 
Avi
12:32 AM
Isn't there a name for getting a headache from having way too many symbols in a paper
"Symbol soup" or something
 
Yeah that honestly bothers me less, lol
 
Why not "symbol mountain" or "symbol universe"?
 
Avi
Symbol sickness?
argh
I know there is some term for it but I can't remember it for the life of me
 
but yeah i'd imagine if you read
csc(2θ) = 1/sin(2θ) = 1/2sin(θ)cos(θ) = csc(θ)sec(θ)/2
and then the next day you read
sin(2θ)/4 = 1/4(2sin(θ)cos(θ)) = 1/2sin(θ)cos(θ) = sin(θ)cos(θ)/2
if you're actually following the arguments, the 'ambiguity' doesn't matter to you
(and i used parentheses around the arguments of sin and cos there! normally that's a source of additional potential ambiguity)
 
In my Math 3 class, some kids tried to get away with writing only "sin" or "cos" (etc.) because the angles were all the same... until they weren't, that is.
 
12:39 AM
it's a lot better than any natural language -- sacrificing unambiguousness for conciseness is a tradeoff that all writing systems make. you're perfectly free to be completely unambiguous but it'll require a ton of extra parentheses
 
I'd prefer to parenthesize the fraction (so (1/4) 2sin(θ)cos(θ) instead of 1/4(2sin(θ)cos(θ))), but yeah
 
@Bubbler If you want a translation of that bit of Principia Mathematica into modern, I can do it for you. The first line states a theorem (number 43 in section 54): if alpha and beta are 1-element sets, then the following conditions are equivalent: (a) alphe and beta have no elements in common; (b) the union of alpha and beta is a 2-element set.
"Dem." is short for "demonstration"; it means "now we'll show why it's true".
 
oh i probably would too, but if the expression on the right was a sum, would you parenthesize both? it might depend on how fast you're writing, and you might not even stop to think about it
(ah, thanks gareth - i was pretty sure that it was something along those lines, but wasn't 100% sure off the top of my head)
 
The next line appeals to an earlier result (number 26 in section 54) to say that if alpha is the set containing just x, and beta is the set containing just y, then alpha-union-beta has 2 elements iff x isn't the same as y.
That last condition is then turned into "the set containing just x, and the set containing just y, are disjoint", another thing they proved back in section 51.
And then into "alpha and beta are disjoint", an equivalence they proved earlier still.
The rest is just bookkeeping.
(Actually, no, that's not quite fair; if I'm reading it correctly -- which I might not be, because this notation is about a century out of date -- they also need to show that alpha and beta being 1-element sets implies that they are {x} and {y} for some choice of x,y; that's the thing for which they quote 11.11.35. After that it's just bookkeeping.
)
 
2
Q: Heteromino: Solitude

BubblerHeteromino is an area-dividing puzzle with very simple rules. Here is an example puzzle with solution: The rules of Heteromino are as follows: Divide the white area into L- or I-trominoes. No two trominoes of identical shape and orientation may share an edge. Now, solve the following puzzle. ...

 
12:44 AM
The dots are used for what we're now write with parentheses: more dots means "looser binding".
The semicircle-open-on-the-left means "implies".
The left-quote symbol is used for function application, another thing that we mostly now write with parentheses. (The notation of Principia Mathematica was less ambiguous than most mathematical notation...)
The iota symbol is the function that turns x into the set containing just x.
 
@Deusovi I'd parenthesize both if I needed to write it linearly. With a pen and paper, I'd just write as a fraction, as in 2sin(θ)cos(θ) over 4.
 
exactly, me too - that's why this ambiguity exists, because mathematicians usually just use fractions anyway so it's not important
 
Everything I've been saying about "the set ..." is kinda misleading because PM comes from a time before set theory as we tend to do it now, and I think they actually have a sort of weird hierarchy of universes ("types") each with e.g. its own version of the empty set.
It's maybe also worth saying that the notation of mathematical logic and set theory evolved particularly rapidly. In pretty much any other branch of mathematics, I think notation from the early 20th century would look more or less exactly normal today.
(And although the notation of PM is way the hell out of date now, I bet that if you picked 100 random logicians and set theorists and showed them a page from it, at least 90 of them would be able to make reasonable sense of it. Probably not nearly such a large fraction of mathematicians generally, though.)
 
yeah, i was aware that PM was a bit of an outlier - was using it to make a point about notation evolving over time. thanks for the 'translation' though, that's pretty interesting!
 
Incidentally, that particular proposition, from which "it will follow ... that 1+1=2", is IIRC something like 300 pages in.
 
12:50 AM
yeah, that one's the most famous one
 
It's not so much (I think) that PM itself is an outlier. Lots of mathematical logic from around then looks pretty much like that. [EDITED to fix a typo.]
 
er, right
 
I was sure I had something on my shelves with some papers by people like Peano with similiarly barbarous-looking notation, but either I imagined it or I'm looking in the wrong place; I did find some similar notation ... in another book by Bertrand Russell :-).
(note for readers who are not Deusovi: the image he posted above is from Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead)
 
ah, did i forget to mention that? yes, that one's the precursor to the most famous passage from it -- a later passage completes the proof that 1+1=2, with the comment "The above proposition is occasionally useful."
 
You said it was from PM but I don't think you mentioned who the authors were. No particular reason why you needed to, but my remark about Russell needed that context.
anyway, bedtime now. And, speaking of bedtime and Principia Mathematica, I will leave you with the following little anecdote, taken from Hardy's A mathematician's apology:
"I can remember Bertrand Russell telling me of a horrible dream. He was in the top floor of the University Library, about A.D. 2100. A library assistant was going round the shelves carrying an enormous bucket, taking down books, glancing at them, restoring them to the shelves or dumping them into the bucket. [continues]
[continued] At last he came to three large volumes which Russell could recognize as the last surviving copy of Principia Mathematica. He took down one of the volumes, turned over a few pages, seemed puzzled for a moment by the curious symbolism, closed the volume, balanced it in his hand and hesitated...."
And so to bed.
 
1:06 AM
good night!
 
0
Q: Magic rotated checkerboard function made in python!

risky mysteriesHere's a puzzle for all you python programmers out there: I defined a function that goes like this: def checkers(num): magic = [_____________________________________________________________] print('\n'.join(magic + magic[num-2::-1])) Here are the results from calling the function with di...

 
 
1 hour later…
2:18 AM
Anyone up for brainstorming the C4?
 
I've struggled on it for a while and unfortunately I have no ideas :p was thinking that the definition half is "taking nice way out on leaving," but no 8-letter words for that seem to fit very well.
Thought about WITHDRAW and RETIRING
 
This meta question, though originally about how to improve this main-site question, now has a bunch of images from the main-site question edited in, to the point that it sort of is the main-site question. Advice on what to do?
 
I'm not super familiar with meta guidelines to be honest, I don't know what to do in that situation
 
@Sciborg WITHDRAW would be a tense of speech mismatch, no?
 
Right, that's why I think if the definition half is at the end, it's something that ends in ING.
RETIRING was my next best guess, but couldn't think of any wordplay to fit that.
Alternatively, if "regular soldiers" or "regular" is the definition... could be a bunch of other words
 
2:27 AM
I wonder what "on" is doing
it's not a great linking word
 
Most of my ideas have just been thrown out of the window, as I didn't realize it's "soldiers" and not "soldier", (facepalm). I'll drop them anyway, maybe it's related. Soldier could clue "OR", and 8-letter defs of Regular are ORTHODOX and ORDINARY, but the rest doesn't seem to work out. RECEDING for leaving would include "RE", which is also a wordplay for soldier... Taking nice way out may be an anagram of "nice" (or more?). On leaving could be "put the anagram after the wordplay of leaving",
or delete "on". Taking out could also be deletion.
 
We haven't had any hints right?
 
nope
 
The Prince has arrived trumpets
 
Hey North :)
 
2:28 AM
Bows
Hallo
 
why would the Prince bow? we should bow to your greatness.
 
There's a "King in the North" joke somewhere here
 
also, if regular isn't the def, I doubt "regular soldiers" is to be converted to a synonym, as most wordplays would work with just "soldiers". So maybe, as bobble has suggested, taking certain characters out of soldiers
 
I mean, your highness (since I'm assuming that you're a tall tree)
 
2:30 AM
Hmm... "taking" does suggest taking characters.
Take "nice way" out?
 
"taking" could also be a container indicator
 
yeah, what's a nice way? An ave? Sweet? :D
 
:p
 
@Deusovi Got a minute or two for me to pick your brain?
 
sure, what's up?
 
2:31 AM
What could be the definition though? 'leaving' would mean on is a linker, or part of wordplay somehow
 
Thinking about the Jewel Cave puzzle today.
 
both sound unlikely
 
@LukasRotter I've got an idea. Take the "nice way" out = remove "die" from "soldiers"?
 
Can regular and soldiers be synonyms?
 
I'd guess "regular" has to be
Yes, they can
 
2:32 AM
I've been trying to do a version with the Cave-like connectivity to the edge mattering, and am struggling.
 
Well, no, becacuse of plural/singular :D
 
@LukasRotter Well aside from that :P
 
two conversations going on at once >_<
 
@JeremyDover yeah, that's what I was a bit concerned about - it's not immediately apparent to me how to get that to work well
 
I could do it, but it ended up basically being "You've got one thing stuck in the middle that only I can reach."
 
2:33 AM
@Sciborg hmmm. gotta help me with that wordplay, I don't get it tbh. Except that "a nice way out" might be dying :P
oops
 
@LukasRotter I like the idea of dying being a "nice way out", but yeah, not sure how it connects :p
 
the only way I can think of to use it is a very specific setup (a near-complete loop of unshaded cells around at least one piece, with no cave clues able to see the cell that would complete the loop)
 
But I had an alternative idea...what if I keep the Cave-edge rule, but allow pieces to meet orthogonally?
I worried at first this would make the Statue Park part of the puzzle almost vestigial.
 
@LukasRotter EXPIRING? (synonym for dying)
 
But I don't think so. From your solving, did you feel that the solve path was a little bit of Cave, then a lot of Statue Park.
?
 
2:36 AM
that's an option - I'm not personally a fan of puzzles that are "shading, but you must be able to dissect the shaded areas into these pieces", just because I find them very hard to notate
@JeremyDover hm, I think so, but the Cave/Kurodoko clues did end up mattering all the way through
 
@Sciborg I want that written on my gravestone: "Lukas expired on dd/MM/yyyy"
 
@LukasRotter The only correct way to do a gravestone honestly
 
(except it doesn't require everything to be placed, and it doesn't allow touching)
 
Thanks for the link! I'll definitely check it out.
 
Avi
2:38 AM
My imaginary neighbor had perfect pitch. They told me that too many things in this world were flat. The surface of the Earth, the singers in the friendly neighborhood choir, his wife's heartbeat after a loving dose of arsenic...
They didn't have kids.
 
@Avi ...what?
 
@LukasRotter Maybe you can make it like a milk carton: "Date of expiry: 80 years from manufacture; Contains a lot of calcium."
 
Avi
8 hours ago, by Jeremy Dover
That's why you have kids, so you can't easily sneak arsenic into the food.
 
I have a feeling we're going to quote him on that forever
 
In my conception, I would never set a puzzle that's a big lump that needs future dissection. I'm thinking more like tendrils of pentominos. But I see a clump would not be forbidden, and agreed I don't like those.
 
2:40 AM
yeah, I meant "dissection" in that sense too
 
Re: arsenic. This was in response to North's assertion that love -> murder. I merely pointed out that kids provide a built-in defence mechanism.
 
Now I only need a catchy song about expiry dates to play at my funeral and I'm ready to die
 
Literally beat me to it
 
:)
 
2:41 AM
thanks!
 
@Ankoganit Not only calcium, a lot of protein, fat, and vitamins
 
true
 
There's probably a catchy jingle about death to be written here especially given that your name is Rotter...
 
Cool. Thanks for the perspective Deusovi...much appreciated! I still have a couple of the current style, but may play with the format allowing adjacency. I still have Mammoth Cave and Wind Cave for names, at the very least ;-) Again, thanks!
 
yep. Once I found about the literal meaning of my surname I decided I'll never go to US/UK/etc.. Nobody seems to notice here in Austria :P
Definition of rotter
: a thoroughly objectionable person
from MW
 
2:44 AM
Ouch
 
Avi
sigh
 
for what it's worth, I've never heard that before
but yeah that's rough
 
Avi
I had an inkling it might be something like that but didn't want to point it out
for the record there are probably 100 British terms for objectionable people that are ordinary objects
probably not the best example - muppet might be a better one
 
pillock, minger, twit, pikey, blighter, bleeder, etc. come to mind
If it helps, my IRL last name is the same as a famous horror villain, and I get that pointed out constantly...
 
well, that's kinda cool (depending on which horror villain, of course....)
but probably annoying, yeah :D
 
2:54 AM
It was funny the first 20 times :p
Now it's just like "haha wait your name is [lastname], oh man, don't kill me!! lol!!" and i'm just like "yup, heard that one before"
Dover on the other hand, that's an awesome last name, it immediately made me think of Dover Beach which is my favorite poem.
 
My last name (and my middle name, for that matter) is constantly mispronounced by other people: new friends, government form-fillers, officials giving out awards...
 
Ouch. I always felt bad when there were students whose last names were just butchered by every single professor constantly.
A friend of mine had a Russian last name (Bekmetjev) and by God, you'd be amazed at the pronunciations that were attempted.
 
I'd pronounce it Beck met (short, without emphasis) yeth
how far off am I?
 
He pronounced it Beck-met-yev, so that's pretty close actually.
Kinda a "j" sound on the "yev" but not quite a hard j.
 
I'd pronounce it "so how do you say your last name?"
 
3:09 AM
I remember when I took an art history class and the professor was like "so I remember constantly being singled out for my name being hard to pronounce, so to make things fair, I am going to ask all of you how to pronounce your name" and she made every single person pronounce their names for her so nobody felt singled out for theirs.
 
An anagram of my name is "Artus Lektor" which literally translates to "Arthur Lecturer" (works better in german). Maybe I'll change to that in my mid life crisis :P Although you need very good reasons to change your full name, lol
 
3:29 AM
@LukasRotter Not gonna lie, Artus Lektor is a badass name.
 
3:54 AM
Reminds me of Hannibal Lector.
 
4:30 AM
0
Q: Masyu puzzle with secret code

00xxqhxx00 What secret code is hidden in this masyu puzzle?

0
Q: Trapping fairy chess pieces

Dmitry KamenetskyThis puzzle is based on this wonderful puzzle. A fairy chess piece is placed on an infinitely large chess board with no edges. It can only visit each square once. What is the smallest number of moves it can make that would cause it to become trapped? I am interested in answers for the following f...

 
 
4 hours later…
8:07 AM
Looks like a cool puzzle in basic graph theory:
9
Q: What is the smallest digraph whose reflexive, symmetric, transitive closures (in all combinations) are distinct?

JDHFor any given directed graph, we may consider the various closures of it with respect to reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity, in any combination, like this: For the particular graph shown above, this process results in eight distinct graphs, including the original graph. This graph is not th...

(Don't scroll beyond the question if you don't want spoilers)
 
9:00 AM
My C4 ideas:

Definition: Most likely "Regular", "Regular soldiers", or "leaving". Could possibly also be "on leaving" (an adverb meaning "while leaving" like "egressively" or something though that's too long), "way...", "nice...", or "taking...".

Possible wordplay elements: "Regular" can be every nth letter. "soldiers" can be an anagrind ("letters of 'Regular'"). "taking" can be homophony or insertion. "nice" can possibly be an anagrind. "way out" can be an anagrind. "out" can be deletion or possibly the extreme letters of. "(on) leaving" can be deletion.
"Regular" or "nice way" can possibly be an anagrind (ideally into alphabetical order).
 
i don't think the def is regular soldiers... why would you put "regular" there if it wasn't needed?
 
9:18 AM
Makes sense.
@LukasRotter how does "Soldier" clue "OR" or "RE"?
 
@msh210 (Other Ranks) and (Royal Engineer). See here. It may even work for plural, but then there's no reason to have it, so if it's an abbreviation, it's probably "men"
Revision: According to Wikipedia OR actually works for "soldiers", not "soldier"
 
9:37 AM
as someone has mentioned, "GIs" also works.
as I suppose does "REs"
or specific non-commissioned ranks like PFCs, NCOs, Sgts
 
9:51 AM
Can anyone see any way to make progress on this puzzle. I'm not convinced the masyu is solvable and I suspect it's supposed to conceal Braille but the grid can't be divided evenly into valid Braille shapes...
 
10:17 AM
Well, the 5th column from the right is empty, but that would 1) be extremely cheeky and 2) I don't see how you could make valid braille shapes at all. Maybe there's some weird logical operator stuff going on per every 2 columns...
I don't know masyu at all, but judging from other questions here, wouldn't this be a huge one? Don't know how much that affects the difficulty, but most ones seems to be significantly smaller. So yeah, it may very well be unsolvable (sorry that I can't help you at all on that, I don't even know the rules of it :D)
 
Thanks for engaging, Lukas. Yeah, you would not expect so many huge gaps in a true masyu puzzle. By splitting the grid into 2x3 rectangles you can make out C, D, B and U in Braille across the top 3 lines but it starts to collapse after that. Presumably there is something else going on here but I can't spot what.
 
"no, mas yu"
 
11:06 AM
(According to English Wiktionary, the name "masyu" comes "from a misreading of 真珠 (shinju, “pearl”)". I am ignorant of all things Japanese; can someone please explain to me how that can be misread as "masyu"?
 
i don't know japanese either but i think the same character can have tons of different readings
 
2
Q: A Shingoki Puzzle

AlaikoThis is a Shingoki puzzle. Rules of Shingoki: Draw lines between the dots to form a single loop without crossings or branches. The loop should pass through every circled number in the grid. For white circles, the loop must pass through in a straight line. For black circles, the loop must make ...

 
for 真 wiktionary lists >10 different pronunciations including "shin" and "ma"
 
ah and 珠 has "su" and "shu"
hm, apparently there are four male given names written 真 in Japanese with completely different pronunciations. I guess if you meet someone you need to ask him his name even if you already have seen it.
(Makoto, Atsushi, Masashi, and Tadashi)
(& the female given names Shin and Makoto)
 
madness
 
11:16 AM
well, doubtless someone from Japan would consider various features of English (or Hebrew or Finnish) madness too
(esp. English :-) )
(heck, I'm a native English speaker, and even I consider some features of English madness :-) )
 
yeah true
i think finnish is up there with japanese among the languages considered the hardest to learn
let's just say there are some features i would leave out if i was designing a language
 
11:36 AM
damn I missed a lot
 
 
2 hours later…
1:29 PM
@msh210 I think I read somewhere that the name "masyu" has nothing to do with pearls, instead it's from totally different kanji meaning "devil hand".
 
0
Q: What is the policy regarding using internet pictures and logos

DrDOn this site I have seen (also used) many clip art pictures or logos from the internet. Some are TM or Registered TM. I have also noticed that on the internet itself prople use these and brand logos all the time on social and other sites. Since all these are used for NON COMMERCIAL purposes are w...

 
@jafe I guess Korean is at least on par with them, at least for English speakers; I heard from an English teacher that English-Korean is the pair of languages that are the farthest away in terms of linguistics.
 
oof, Anonymous25 has deleted their account
 
...or been deleted?
 
true. Maybe because of the issue with their age (although I think that issue had been "settled" before?)
Btw @Stiv, do you want to post the new FTC post once the current post is not hot anymore, or me? Anonymous25 can't do it now :)
(or someone else for that matter of course)
 
1:46 PM
@LukasRotter Happy for you to do it. You know the ropes on this one, and I'm already setting up the Chain Puzzle so I'd be very happy for someone other than me to do that! I'll contribute comments, ideas, etc. but happy for you to lead.
 
Ok! I wonder what the title of that post should be... "Fortnightly Topic Challenges Re-Rerun!", or "... Rerun 2.0" or "3.0" :D
 
2:00 PM
"threrun"
 
good one
 
@Bubbler yeah i bet korean's tricky as well
but at least the writing system's learnable in a reasonable amount of time :)
 
2:27 PM
i had to get up at 5am today -_-
 
poor little matt
 
thanks for the sympathy lol
and it was all for some crazy family schedule that never actually happened
how are you?
 
good :)
 
:)
today I only have three live classes because of how the school does stuff
(instead of the usual four)
but this is probably not very interesting to you anyway
(aside: stupid google chrome thinks "cyberbullying" is not a word)
 
silly google chrome.
 
2:38 PM
yes.
also time for another exciting episode of "Violence Is Bad", brought to you by [redacted].
 
Hmmm. It would be nice for the FTC Bot to automatically recognize if a new puzzle is intended to be part of the current FTC installment. Unfortunately this can only be done to a certain extent. @Deusovi Would it be against policy (or do you think it's a bad idea anyway) to add a new "FTC" tag, which the bot can recognize?
Adding a standardized format for the title e.g. "[FTC] My puzzle" screams "this won't work and also uglifies the question", so I can't think of any other reasonable possibility than a tag, in order for the amount of manual editing required to at least be minimized.
 
there's an FTC bot?
 
Starting on Nov 1st there will be, yes
 
cool
hey oalt!
 
2:56 PM
@LukasRotter :((
also hey
 
3:11 PM
oh hey north, I didn't see you come in :)
 
just thinking of ideas for a fancy ipa keyboard ...
 
ack, being in two rooms is distracting
 
@bobble *snorts* amateurs
 
@Mithical oh wow you are in nine rooms
 
3:22 PM
ten actually
but that's nothing
I used to lurk in 30+
:P
 
HOW DID YOU DO IT
 
lots of tabs
 
@Mithical Okay weird flex
 
surveillance room with 30 screens?
3
 
3:25 PM
wow
 
(Discord is in its own app)
 
3:36 PM
@LukasRotter yeah, that seems like a "meta tag", which is strongly discouraged
@matt recommended layout: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…
 
what's apta? also I'm making it an actual visual layout which means clicking buttons
thanks though :)
 
Would Stiv's proposed tag, required for all chain puzzles, be a meta-tag?
 
@bobble Was just wondering that myself
 
@matt it's an ASCII-based IPA encoding method made a few years ago by some conlangers, as an alternative to X-SAMPA -- there's also a suggested keyboard layout to go along with it
 
hm
 
3:41 PM
@bobble hm, yes, I think it would be one - it doesn't really tell you about the content of the question itself
Jeff Atwood on August 07, 2010
There are a few tags on Stack Overflow that have bugged me for a long time. Namely: subjective best-practices beginner But I could never quite articulate what, exactly, was wrong with these tags. It’s been bothering me more and more as time goes on. So much so, that about two months ago, I was compelled…
granted, things are slightly different here on puzzling as opposed to other sites on the network
but there's precedent for meta tags being removed
 
Maybe in the case of a Chain Puzzle, mentioning 'Chain Puzzle' in the title and including the standard text suggested in the meta post would be sufficient, without the need for a separate tag
 
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Q: Qubes: Oh, For the Love Of

Omicron ZedTL;DR: This is a mixture between a tribute/spin-off puzzle and an attempt at a new puzzle type, greatly inspired by the notorious arcade game, Q*bert, published originally by Gottlieb Amusement Games. However, there are modifications to the original game's rules (which are listed below in a story...

 
The 'could it stand alone' argument is relevant here
 
yeah, that's the main issue with it
 
I would actively encourage people to add other tags to reflect the content - that in itself is perhaps a red flag that the tag is unnecessary
 
3:57 PM
@Stiv Yeah. If every chain-puzzle is included with "Chain Puzzle" in the title, it removes the need for a "chain-puzzle" tag
 
it does, but I'm also starting to wonder what benefits having an explicit "chain puzzle" process exactly gives
 
What do you mean?
Having an explicit "chain-puzzle" tag?
 
no, having an explicit formalized process to chain puzzles
 

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