Puzzles Etc.

Jonathan Allan

00:00

we could do that soooo many ways no?

Deusovi

there aren't many green to work with, and we need to get 3 in green's favor

we need one of the districts to be all red

Jonathan Allan

well I guess we should make 2 3 and 4 in greens favour then

Deusovi

and then we only have JUST enough to work with to get the others

Jonathan Allan

since the circles for 3 and 4 are green and 2 has 4 compared to 1's 3

Deusovi

the current divisions have nothing to do with what the new divisions will be

Jonathan Allan

00:02

but the numbers remain in the same locations

Deusovi

yeah

i think i got it

wait no

ok, let's see

Jonathan Allan

so extend 4 by the top left green of 1 and the quarter of the top-middle green in 1?

Deusovi

there we go

Jonathan Allan

your changes work?

Deusovi

now all of them have 5G/4R instead of 1, which has all red

now we can transcribe

Jonathan Allan

00:05

ok

Alconja

I got a different gerymandering that works...

Jonathan Allan

ok

Alconja

actually scratch that... screwed up

Jonathan Allan

oh well

just sticking _ in for space

double checking?

looks good

Alconja

doesn't rot13 to much...

Jonathan Allan

00:14

was about to say - colour it :)

Alconja

GOOD JOK? YOU HAVE FINISHEDE? TH MAZE

looks like a few minor errors

Jonathan Allan

hmm did we use -6 +5

f''

those are your errors, not mine ;)

Alconja

:)

Jonathan Allan

:p

Deusovi

00:17

only error is the K

Alconja

Who's going to edit in the final answer?

(I added a map for prettiness)

f''

whoever put an X in that cell must have been looking at the wrong one

anyway, good work, and I didn't expect the whole thing to be finished within one day

Deusovi

:D

f''

which room was your favorite?

Deusovi

hm

Jonathan Allan

00:19

me I double checked others

"other people's"

Deusovi

i liked 15 puzzles

Jonathan Allan

I liked all 23

but couldn't do 10

f''

23?

LeppyR64

I still don't understand "mazes in mazes"

Alconja

I think the overall concept was cool, though I agree with Deusovi, 15s was particularly neat... just wish you posted in a more convenient timezone for me :P

@LeppyR64 Follow the maze, and when you enter a coloured square, enter the maze of that colour from the equivalent position

(another cool/original one)

Deusovi

00:24

not quite original

Alconja

no?

f''

I've seen one before, but there was only one maze

Deusovi

Alconja

sweet

LeppyR64

@Alconja Ooh!

Jonathan Allan

00:32

@LeppyR64 What would you like explained?

What a lot of work @f'' WELL DONE!!

adding to @Alconja's description - when you leave a maze you pop back up the stack to the maze you entered from (so, for example, at one stage you are in yellow in yellow in red)

Deusovi

basically, each square contains a copy of its correspondingly colored maze

your goal is to get to the edge of the outer maze

(in this one, your goal is to get from - to plus)

Jonathan Allan

added a note to describe it a little

orange and green lines not great for those like me really

Good work @Deusovi!!

Deusovi

thanks! you all did a lot though

Jonathan Allan

@Deusovi I didn't add the +5 -6 what was it?

Deusovi

caesar ciphering

Jonathan Allan

00:43

ceaser

ok

f''

I just reordered everything, fixed some errors, and put the map in a spoiler

(my edit also added the shifts to the keys, so that doesn't need to be mentioned again)

Jonathan Allan

ok

didn't even notice that the map wasnt in a spoiler!

prob would have eventually :)

OK time for a nice easy puzzle, no where near as deep or intricate:

11

Q: A Strange Correspondence

I voted to delete some questions on another SE site from two users due to them being garbled nonsense.* However when I got to the sixth I thought something looked suspicious, it looked to me like an encrypted correspondence since all the titles were fairly normal but all the posts were just stri...

hint added

Deusovi

"the community wiki post"?

Jonathan Allan

ahaha need to sleep added hint to wrong puzzle

THANK YOU!!

my word.

13

Q: Logically linked numbers

The left and right numbers are linked. What should the last number on the right be, and why? \begin{align} 135759&: 1 \\ 151364&: 4 \\ 255075&: 9 \\ 279422&: 36 \\ 292620&: 91 \\ 348777&: 135 \\ 398067&: 147 \\ 417894&: 265 \\ 459431&: 279 \\ 478926&: 307 \\ 609941&: 363 \\ 689245&: 435 \\ 814576&...

pattern calculation-puzzle number-sequence

that one :p

f'' puzzle definately deserves more than 1 upvote :( probably more than 15 ^^

@f'' 23 was tongue in cheek :)

f''

01:09

0

Q: The first sentence of a long journey

"A young man stands in his bedroom." Who am I? Either one can be an answer.

riddle

well, that's the first sentence of Homestuck

which is internet-prominent enough to drown out whatever else it might be

Alconja

@JonathanAllan agreed.. yet another example of why we bounties on questions (and/or 10 points per question upvote) on this site

Jonathan Allan

Yes not many sites where asking good questions is harder than providing a good answer

Jonathan Allan

01:29

@f'' I answered, but is that a puzzle?

f''

I don't think so

btw, your second answer is a derivative of Homestuck, idk if that counts

I would expect more than one copy to start with that sentence

Jonathan Allan

I guess

Deusovi

yeah, that's not a puzzle

Jonathan Allan

Maybe it is... and we dont quite know how yet?

f''

yeah, I want to see the intended answer first...

Deusovi

01:36

there was an issue with Homestuck-Reference-As-Puzzle a few months back, wasn't there?

I'm a huge Homestuck fan but references by themselves aren't really puzzles

Jonathan Allan

Well I comment to see if they can add something that assures us it is a puzzle. Hopefuly it does not fall on deaf ears

The answer to this comment

0

Q: The Color Taste

Name the blue when definitely looks red, but is rather green in fact? Hint:

riddle

however, is somewhat intriguing

f''

0

A: My hints won't show you who I am

Everyone seems to be putting long steps as to how they got their answer and comparing all the clues and such but, I think I got it. Is it;

I think this guy has got it, but needs to add the explanation

(the question doesn't use the letter E)

Jonathan Allan

yes it's definitely right

heh

0

A: My hints won't show you who I am

It's which is notably

that's a bit cheeky

oh fair enough an edit :)

Jonathan Allan

02:56

@Deusovi yes I was hoping for more on that Homestuck riddle, have VTC

Deusovi

did you see his edit?

Jonathan Allan

03:13

LOL yes "oh right it's not a puzzle, it's a riddle"

face palm

do edits to CW posts pop the question up the stack in the "active" tab?

Alconja

i think so

Jonathan Allan

thanks

looks like @LeppyR64 solved @Khale_Kitha's

20

Q: The Catacombs of Cryptos, The Final Path

Previously, in The Catacombs of Cryptos: 1. The Entrance to the Catacombs The end came long ago. The wars are long since over. Little remains and those who have survived struggle. One of the few places that still stands, however, is the catacombs of Dias Cryptos. My father once describ...

enigmatic-puzzles story

LeppyR64

@JonathanAllan I wish I had made it home to post it before the second hint was posted. I would have looked more clever ;)

Jonathan Allan

03:30

@LeppyR64 the risk you run by doing things other than sitting in front of puzzling :p

...and well done!

Alconja

Yeah nice work. +1 (and to KK for another nice puzzle.. very clean construction)

Jonathan Allan

Did KK just wake up to accept? If so that is dedication.

Jonathan Allan

04:03

interesting - cw post starters can get badges from the upvotes (silver enlightened earned from f'''s puzzle)

Deusovi

hm, really? cool

Alconja

cool. but odd.

Jonathan Allan

yes cool but odd, like "3"

going offline for a bit...

Alconja

05:21

Fighting for bounties on questions over on meta.SE... added a bounty on the existing feature request, and got a response from Shog9

2

Deusovi

yeah, honestly I wish we could give bounties to questions

Deusovi

06:15

@Alconja: Shog9's kinda being... unpleasant, to put it politely

Alconja

A little... and apparently reading this chat room too :)

I didn't mean to upset anyone... it was just a feature request... thought that's what bounties/meta was for

Shog9

@Alconja if you want me to take something seriously, start by taking it seriously yourself.

This may not be particularly important to you, but it's still my job to at least consider the request and think about its implications.

If you're not willing to do that, ok, then don't. But once you hit the point where you're ignoring my concerns and ... essentially just saying, "come oooooon" to every hesitation, that's getting pretty rude.

As for what bounties on meta are for... They're essentially an expensive way of bumping a post you don't want to edit or answer:

9

A: Ideas for calling attention to questions in Meta of SE sites without bounty

Bounties aren't even a particularly great way to get attention on MSO (the only meta where they're available). They're nice for the occasional contest, but there are better ways of getting attention: Writing a clear, attention-grabbing title can encourage folks to click through Making sure post...

Alconja

06:31

@Shog9 sorry on mobile now, so responding will be.. clunky

@Shog9 isn't that what I did? Bump a post I didn't want to edit or answer? I felt like it was a) a good feature request, and b) wanted to reignite the conversation given PSE graduated.

And sorry if you feel like I'm not addressing your concerns, maybe I'm just missing something... You seem to be arguing generally about bounties, as opposed to any additional issues caused by bounties on questions...

Shog9

@Alconja ugh. Let's start back at the beginning. How do bounties work?

Normal ones, the ones we have today.

Alconja

To get attention, or to reward good content.

Shog9

Let's say you want to reward Deus's answer, or give him rep, or just burn your rep in a big pile for the sheer delight of it. How do bounties let you further this goal?

Alconja

Quick way to "transfer" rep...

Shog9

"quick" here is relative; it takes at least one day to complete the transfer, longer if you have to wait to offer the bounty in the first place (48-hour waiting period after question is asked).

so you start out by offering the bounty. You pick an amount, choose a reason, write some explanatory text...

Then you gotta wait 24 hours, during which time the question can't be closed and sits in the Featured list on the front page of the site and in various tags.

It's also listed in your profile

Assuming you don't forget, you come back and pick an answer to award the bounty to.

Alconja

06:46

So these are issues with bounties... I get that... How does allowing them on questions make that worse?

Shog9

Answer gets annotated, both answer-author and your profiles show the record of the award in perpetuity.

@Alconja no, you don't. That's why we're starting over.

Alconja

Ok...Sorry

Carry on

Shog9

I just described the basic mechanics of using a bounty for rep transfer / reward existing answer.

Alconja

Sure

Shog9

It can get a lot more complicated than that

there are additional restrictions, edge-cases, etc. that don't come into play here

Alconja

06:47

(And I really am trying to understand your point here, not being antagonistic)

Shog9

For example, if I wanna offer multiple bounties

but let's keep it reasonably simple here.

Alconja

Ok

Shog9

For the basic case, there's at least a day during which you're essentially promoting a question and any answers, as well as advertising the fact that you like the question and/or answer and are backing that up with your rep.

This serves a few different purposes.

#1, it actually makes bounties useful

that is, if you want to attract answers to a question, driving a whole bunch of attention to the question works in your favor

So for normal sites where getting answers is... A Big Deal... bounties have this really important role, above the nasty little details of rep-transferring.

But there's also...

Alconja

Sure

Shog9

#2, oversight.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as the proverb reads.

Sorry, I'm tired, probably not writing cleanly

Alconja

06:51

All good, sorry to keep you up

Shog9

Folks have a harder time getting up to trouble when the entire site is advertised of their activities

Alconja

Also makes sense

Shog9

You wanna transfer 20K to your buddy for the hell of it? Ok - that's 40 bounties, two to 6 weeks of attention.

SOMEONE WILL NOTICE.

And chances are, folks on the site aren't gonna be too ok with this.

unless, y'know, your buddy is The Most Awesome Answerer Ever.

Alconja

Happy coincidence I'm sure :)

Shog9

Point is, keeps folks honest. Bounties require much less moderation, much less rules and restrictions, simply because so few people have bothered trying crap like that.

Those that have... They get dealt with.

Because it gets noticed.

Alconja

06:54

Good, good

Shog9

Which in turn serves as an example to others.

ok.

Now...

How would a bounty system for questions work?

Alconja

I'm imagining something similar to the current "reward existing answer" bounty

But the only "post" selectable for the award is the question

Shog9

@Alconja so, what? Is there a waiting period to offer? What about to award? If so, what is the justification? Who sees these questions? Why?

Folks cried out for bounties because they wanted to encourage good answers to hard questions.

The mechanics reflect this

Alconja

It's literally the same concept as "reward existing answer"... Same justification.

Shog9

Even the "award existing..." reason allows for the possibility that, when the bounty is offered, someone might post an even better answer.

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