Puzzles Etc.

I don't think this can be right. The periods of both clocks are at most 0.2 seconds apart. If one clock is ticking 57600 seconds faster than the other, they're not both ticking at 1 +/- 0.1 seconds each.

manshu

12:00 PM

But it is given in the question that "They each tick with a constant period, with each period in the range 1±0.1 seconds."

Lawrence

That's right. I've edited my question to clarify.

The difference in periods has to be at most 0.2 seconds.

manshu

Maybe I'll improve my answer after reading the question if will be able to :)

I think my answer still applies :p

Lawrence

@manshu Ok. I'll also make a note in your answer.

manshu

ok

Lawrence

I think I see where the misunderstanding arose.

manshu

12:05 PM

I would like to know it too

Lawrence

When I said the clocks tick with a period within the range 1 +/- 0.1 seconds, I meant the period was in that range. It could be 1.05 seconds, it could be 0.92 seconds, etc, but it would be bounded between 0.9 and 1.1 seconds, and it (the period) would be constant.

manshu

Yeah. And it will be maximum if one clock keeps tick at 0.9 seconds and the other clock keeps ticking at 1.1 seconds

Lawrence

Correct. Then you have to factor in the phase change overnight to check if that maximum would work.

manshu

I...don't think I get it.

Lawrence

(cont'd) Since no one else has posted an answer, I'll take out the word approximately from the phase change part.

@manshu Which part?

manshu

12:12 PM

Now the question is out of my reach. I don't know how to solve it now

Lawrence

Ok. Thanks for helping me clarify it, though!

manshu

ok

question_asker

12:34 PM

@Khale_Kitha hey, I didn't hate the answer to your password puzzle, like you seemed to think I would

Hugh Meyers

12:46 PM

The mate in one puzzle reminded me of something. Does anyone else remember a book of chess puzzles by Raymond Smullyan? I remember them as being really cool. He wrote a lot of good books.

They weren't your typical chess puzzles. Stuff like: "A piece has been knocked off this chessboard. Deduce which piece it was and what square it was on."

question_asker

haha man. I loved smullyan and gardner books when I was a kid

I probably only skimmed the chess puzzle ones, though

I even ended up special-ordering some out of print smullyan books when I worked at a bookstore, because I just couldn't find them anywhere in the flesh

Khale_Kitha

Bah - but I apparently had a messup, that I hope hasn't thrown people off all this time

question_asker

oh, the 26 vs 28 thing?

Khale_Kitha

I think my point, though, was that I want to try and make sure that my future puzzles have a meaningful answer. While the hex was meaningful, from the standpoint of it representing a meaningful answer, the hex, itself, may feel random.

The other puzzle has a more meaningful answer.

yeah

question_asker

I almost corrected that person on their answer and then I realized you had changed the question haha

you mean the escapee puzzle?

Khale_Kitha

12:56 PM

lol

Yeah

question_asker

or

I guess I think of it as a spy thing

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, that's the intended premise.

Though not a govt spy

More Macgyverish

question_asker

a robin hood

gotcha

Khale_Kitha

You're in a rabbit hole @manshu, on the escape puzzle, currently.

We need a new Fortnightly Topic Challenge, today

question_asker

it was an interesting thought, at least

I'm currently wasting away trying to figure this one out puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/28097/…

Khale_Kitha

1:01 PM

Yeah

Yeah, I remember that one, heh

guess puzzle

If it has anything to do with that nonsense song link, he posted, I don't know - can't really watch the video right now

question_asker

oh, no, I think that's just a response to the HM post, since HM was reading quasiphonetic words into the letters. I remember that song from... shari lewis or something.

Khale_Kitha

I haven't figured out what he means on his comment about positioning, though

Ah

Yeah, I re-read it, and agree

question_asker

yeah that's what I'm having trouble with. the "special" letters

aside from the fact that there are three "special" letters that comprise half of the total letter count, there aren't many remaining unique letters

Khale_Kitha

Shorley Truly Right-o, Mate!

....lol

Sorry, I have Hugh's response stuck in my head

question_asker

I don't know what they mean by "position" - J and T are... eighth and ninth in the list?

Khale_Kitha

1:12 PM

I don't get that, either

It sounds like he means position on his little chart

But I don't see the importance, yet

question_asker

yeah that's what I meant by "list"

his frequency chart

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, I just wonder why he added the numbers to a sum

And if 48 is important

If I turn the individual sums, into letters, they don't seem to be useful

ha gd aabe b q

question_asker

no, 48 is just the total letter count

and that one comment is correct: if you pair up the letters as they appear in the OP, every pair has either a J, a T, or a Z

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, they're clearly the special case letters - whatever importance that may be

question_asker

unrelated: I didn't realize there was a sound design SE

Khale_Kitha

1:17 PM

Yeah, I found another math one, yesterday, that I didn't know about

Cross Validated

Hugh Meyers

I was thinking perhaps they were markers of some kind. A doubled letter means that something special happens until you see that letter again. Something like that.

Khale_Kitha

I wondered that, too

I just hadn't found anything meaningful, with it, yet

The real thing picking at me is his comment about exact positioning.

Hugh Meyers

And there was one set of doubled letters that didn't seem to lead to a single letter. I couldn't make sense of it. I have to admit I didn't try particularly hard.

Khale_Kitha

There's nothing to relate the worksheet to, for positionining, so it has to be exact positioning of the elements, relative to each other, on the same sheet.

Though half of the letters are compressed on the left side, and the other half are spread out, on the right side.

Curious...

Anyone else notice that he intentionally used the incorrect quotation mark on the left side?

I just noticed it, in edit.

Though...that's not in the original puzzle

question_asker

“?

Khale_Kitha

1:24 PM

Yeah, it's an upside down left quote

Unless it's just the font used

question_asker

that's... not wrong? I'm failing to see what's incorrect about it

Khale_Kitha

The correct left quote generally looks like the reverse of the right one

Either that or I'm just remembering wrong, right now

Which is possible

question_asker

What do you mean by "correct"? I'm used to seeing both

Khale_Kitha

I guess I'm just not used to seeing that one - must be the font

question_asker

(i.e., fat part on bottom or top, as long as the "hooks" "point" "inward" to the quote)

I actually kind of like the fat-part-on-bottom style quote on the left side, has a very yin-yangy correspondence with the fat-part-on-top style quote on the right side. just a personal preference

Khale_Kitha

1:27 PM

lol

I have no preference, just wasn't familiar with it, offhand

question_asker

ooh that sound design SE has logic and logic-pro tags. but a lot of it is for logic pro X :(

Hugh Meyers

There seems to be an assumption that people will fairly quickly get to a string of words.

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, there does

question_asker

yeah

Khale_Kitha

Random mental note: 10 letters, in total

The curiousity of each letter having a space is interesting, too

Hugh Meyers

1:33 PM

If you take out the z's and j's, there are a number of words like bead, gate, dead

I wonder if that's what he was referring to.

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, I wondered, too - perhaps that was the "easy words" he mentioned

If not...

There's two instances, total, of 4-letter sequences repeating,and...

5 instances of 3 letters repeating

curious...

"ach pair of adjacent letters in the original jumble has either a "j", a "t" or a "z"."

I'm not showing this to be true

It's actually J, D, or Z

1 JJ, 1 DD, and 5 ZZ

question_asker

no

it's T

Maybe you're pairing them off differently?

Khale_Kitha

There's not a single TT pair

question_asker

noooooo that's not what they mean

they mean just chunk the text into pairs.

bz, ze, az, dj, ji, etc.,

every one of those pairs will have either a j, a z, or a t

Khale_Kitha

So each subdivision of 2 letters

Okay, that's completely different from what was implied - k

"pair of adjacent letters" sounds like duplicated letters, to me

question_asker

1:39 PM

but never a j AND a z or a z AND a t or a t AND a j

Khale_Kitha

k

A possible statistical replacement, btw - if it helps us any, for any reason:

LEERSEAIITESTISEEAAEESAERIESAEIUSNRESNERAEEOSEEA

Matt

10 letters?

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, 10 letters used, total

Matt

here I go again with a familiar concept

ten letters => 0 - 9

number pairs -> ascii

question_asker

well, it's also worth noting, that that specifically is the case for (assuming 1-indexed) pairing thus: [1,2], [3,4] as opposed to [2,3], [4,5]

(referring to the pairs always including one of those letters, that is)

Hugh Meyers

1:41 PM

What if each pair of letters stands for a letter?

Khale_Kitha

seems plausible

depending on the values

However, if it's using 0 - 9, that wouldn't really work, unless some other method is used to determine the resultant letters

Since I imagine that at least one pair starts with a number greater than 2

several do

however, there's something special about the parings, and the letters j, t, and z

question_asker

Khale_Kitha

I considered a hex pattern, but H and I break that

Matt

if pairings exist, only 7 of the 10 letters are used in the first place

question_asker

in case laying them out vertically helps anybody, there it is

Khale_Kitha

1:45 PM

Try that again, but with...

Z, T, or J, always on the right side

question_asker

yeah I tried to come up with something only using the non-j/t/z letters but got nothing

if only t was an m...

Khale_Kitha

beadiaiaddadeadgaeaedhad

zzzjjzjzzzzzjzzjtztzzzzz

question_asker

Khale_Kitha

t is only used towards the end

question_asker

yeah, there are only 2 total

Khale_Kitha

1:48 PM

yeah

question_asker

j, in "position 8", appears 5 times. t, in "position 9", appears 2 times. z, in "position 10", appears 17 times.

Khale_Kitha

But why the spacing...

question_asker

those are the "important" letters, in their "positions" (still not totally sure I'm interpreting that hint correctly), with their number of appearances ("frequencies" isn't really right)

Khale_Kitha

AAAAAAAABDDDDDDDEEEEGHIIJJJJJTTZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

The characters, in order

question_asker

because of the letters that aren't used?

Matt

1:49 PM

for the rest of the letters in the alphabet

Khale_Kitha

That could potentially be it..

question_asker

hmm

Khale_Kitha

And a sentence can easily not use all 26 letters, so that's good reasoning

question_asker

on a mostly-unrelated note, there is still a puzzle by this person that I haven't figured out and it's killing me

Khale_Kitha

lol

Hugh Meyers

1:55 PM

Which one?

Khale_Kitha

Rofl - I went to open notepad to write down some nonsense I'd thought of that could make a good puzzle

I pressed Windows + R

And typed "Nonsense" - sigh

ROFL

Try again: "Notepad"

question_asker

@HughMeyers an old number pattern one, which I "solved" by doing some detective work and finding the answer in a very non-standard way

Basically, I want to know what the real answer is.

7

Q: A purely numerical sequence with a hint of the visual

What is the missing number in this cyclic sequence? It would require a notation convention not seen here to fit into the scheme here. $$\phantom{ \textrm{(repeat)} } \quad\textbf{?}~~ \,,~~ 2.4 \,,~~ 1 \,,~~ 36.0 \,,~~ 1 \,,~~ 8 \,,~~ 1 \,,~~ 15 \,,~~ 2.4 ...

number-sequence

I like that they did the same thing in that puzzle as in the one we've been discussing: when no one had answered it, they posted a non-answer "showing some work". In both cases it has left me none the wiser, however.

Khale_Kitha

Wish we could use mathjax in the chat rooms...

And that puzzle is annoying because the person you were talking to removed EVERY one of their comments

(or the user was deleted)

question_asker

I wish that, when a question is in the review queue because it was on hold and has been edited, it would say why it went on hold in the first place.

I can't know if an edit fixes a problem if I don't know what the problem was in the first place.

Khale_Kitha

yeah

though, if you ctrl click the puzzle..

it'll come up in another tab and you can see the close reason

humn

2:06 PM

couldn't resist seeing what's going on

question_asker

I was pleasantly surprised at the resolution of that Offensive Puzzle meta question

Khale_Kitha

lol, humn

question_asker

hello humn

humn

hmmn

?

question_asker

hmmmmn

Khale_Kitha

2:08 PM

ho hum, humn is hmming.

humn

oh well, it's only human

Khale_Kitha

"It's only a model.."

humn

what i see above looks right on

question_asker

we're all still at a loss about the J/T/Z significance, but (it seems like) we've got some avenues to go down re: unused letters

humn

ah but the positions aren't just sequential

still reading

Khale_Kitha

2:10 PM

On that other puzzle, q_a....

I you take the hint he's given (the numbers turned to fractions)

And give them all a common denominator

The numbers result as:

45 ? 24 10 360 10 80 10 15 24 10 80 90 ? 24

I don't see a pattern there, yet - but in case it helps

humn

unintended coincidence about exactly 10 letters, could've been up to 12

actually could've been all 26

but that would've eliminated a clue

question_asker

OK so missing letters is out

Khale_Kitha

Huh, curious

So there's 23 characters in the string, right?

question_asker

?

Khale_Kitha

looked back at your excel page, but I'll count them

question_asker

2:16 PM

48 characters total, 24 pairs

humn

the first pass is a string of 24 pairs

jinx

Khale_Kitha

right

I meant pairs, but miscounted

And we've got those pairs, currently

Though the only meaningfully apparent thing is the connection to j, t, and z, already mentioned

question_asker

@Khale_Kitha re: other puzzle - a pattern can be found in the answer I linked to in my answer; how this pattern was created, and why the chosen notation of my answer is correct, is what I still to this day haven't figured out

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, my head doesn't want to read that paragraph, right now - I keep trying, but it says no.

humn

the last two-column chart above might be more suggestive with the columns reversed. Back in a few minutes. Thanks for breathing life back into another puzzle, q_a! I'm a fan of your artistic sense, K_K.

Khale_Kitha

2:22 PM

Always amusing to unpause my amazon music player, from the day before, and it's on the outtro of a song - especially when it's Nemesea

Hmm, reversing the chart in my head, but nothing popping out, at me, yet

And I wish I knew what humn was referring to,lol

question_asker