Riddle Sandbox - 2016-08-30

« first day (7 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (28 days later) »

12:00 AM

But again couldn't be closed with the "subjective" reason being proposed

@Deusovi, since you're here: meta.puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/5369/5373

(ooh, post IDs on meta are rapidly approaching my user ID)

@Deusovi But are they puzzles? Perhaps they should be allowed but under a different tag.

Honestly, I don't think they're even puzzles.

Exactly.

user61230

Shit.

user61230

Sorry about that, @Alconja.

user61230

I tried to star it with a keyboard shortcut.

12:06 AM

It's more "recognition" than "solving" - in fact, I'd argue that there's no solving at all.

Man these mods are out of control!! ;)

user61230

But 's' and 'd' are right next to each other, and I deleted it instead.

heh, whoops

user61230

:[

I don't think trivia are puzzles. Puzzles require you to do something, trivia just requires that you know something

4

12:06 AM

@Emrakul Could be worse. You could have flagged it and suspended poor Alconja - that flag button being right next to the star button and all.

2

user61230

There we go.

:) all good

That's pretty much the position I stated in the "trivia only puzzles" question linked above.

Much less eloquently, of course.

There was a good example of a sequence of puzzles like this ... let me see if I can remember what they were called.

A whole bunch of them by the same user, and I think the titles all referred to some TV quiz show?

Slumdog Millionaire?

Nah, I think those were good. Part of it was trivia, but not all of it IMO.

12:13 AM

@Deusovi That was it!

Urgh, I really disliked those puzzles. I think I downvoted every one I saw.

@Randal'Thor do you have a link to anyone of those?

@Areeb puzzling.stackexchange.com/search?q=slumdog

@Areeb Here's one. You can find a bunch of others from there by looking at the "Related questions" in the sidebar.

Yeah, Thanks! I'll look through em

My internet is slow today, so people keep ninja'ing me in chat :-/

12:18 AM

I liked some of them, but they are dangerously close to being trivia.

I read the first one, it wasn't really that trivia oriented but I'll have to see the rest

12:30 AM

They're clever alright but that's some serious trivia

15 hours later…

GentlePurpleRain

3:06 PM

@Randal'Thor Something to note as well: If a "riddle" reaches HNQ, it seems to get crazily upvoted, regardless of its quality.

@GentlePurpleRain The same applies to pretty much any question on any site that reaches HNQ. Bad questions hitting HNQ is always a problem and always will be.

But the way to solve it isn't by channelling all questions through a community approval system on meta! That's not how SE works: the whole idea is that people can post questions and get answers right away, without even having to register. (Admittedly Puzzling has deviated a lot from the Q&A norm of SE, but still.)

3:49 PM

@Randal'Thor Yeah, that's why it's more of a problem here. On other sites, anyone can edit a bad question to make it clearer. Here, though, anything can be part of the puzzle - bad questions can't be edited as easily without potentially changing the meaning.

Many questions aren't salvageable by editing even on another sites.

In fact I've just come out of a heated discussion about one such question in another room.

user61230

@Randal'Thor The fact that we deviate so much from the norm is part of why I think as a whole we're willing to float and test ideas that aren't canonically accepted.

I have a puzzle to post, however I don't know if it counts as a riddle or not.
There are two Ciphers you need to solve (pretty easy ones I'd think but that might be my bias), A riddle-like area, not formatted so much as a riddle. and another more message-type part. would that still have to go through the riddle sandbox, or would I be able to just post it? Seeing as the 'riddle' part is one of two different information parts.

user61230

@ObviouslyJake On this point...

user61230

4:04 PM

FYI: I just edited the sandbox, and the close reason is deactivated. We're keeping the sandbox around as an optional tool for if you want to improve your questions, but it will no longer be required to post on the main site.

4

Oh, awesome. so it's not mandatory as of now?

user61230

Yeah. I'd still suggest taking some more time to double check, and would still suggest getting some feedback first, though ;)

@Emrakul Yay! :-D

Oh good, right on time for my next riddle :D

I'm a biased little *insert bad word of your choosing here* and think my puzzle is the best thing in existence, even though it most likely isn't anything worth the time of day (It's my first puzzle ever.) and I have a friend patiently waiting to see if he can't steal the winning spot (He doesn't know the puzzle yet I haven't shared anything with him haha) But yeah, I feel like for this one, I am going to post it now, then work on improvement from how good/bad people take it.

(Hey there Avigrail xD)

4:10 PM

Oh hello

So you finally made it here ;)

I did indeed

So where can I find your puzzle?

I haven't posted it yet

Cheek

I was just checking see if the ciphers actually work again for safe measure haha

4:13 PM

It's always good to take your time. Sometimes I found mistakes after a day or two

0

Q: The name of MY woodcarver's toy

A friend of mine who I met online, who lives is Spain was talking to me on messenger and the topic got onto music. He went ahead and sent this message. R'n nfxs orpv Krmlxxsrl rh gl Tvkkvggl, mlg zh z hlm ml... gslfts nb nvzmrmt wlvh xlmgzrm zm l. R xzm gvoo blf dsviv nb Tvkkvggl rh uiln.....

I hope you enjoy

xD

I can usually not be arsed to look at ciphers but to provide feedback I'll give it a shot

@ObviouslyJake I assume the first word of the first message is "I'm"; that gives us something to work with.

Also Tvkkvggl appears several times, so it can't be a Vigenere-type cipher with a key.

That may be the case, though the hint I gave was in another form.

4:19 PM

It's Atbash.

There's also a standalone "z" sometimes

Could be "a"

a-z, b-y, c-x...

And the second one is rot-2.

@ObviouslyJake another tip: make sure to post your puzzle when Deusovi is asleep

:D

xD

friggin Cipher peeps, I'm new to this... I knew they were easy, but come on xD

4:22 PM

@Deusovi you should be more careful - it's his first time

Yeah, I've found there's not usually a happy medium when it comes to ciphers. Either they're ridiculously easy or quite literally impossible.

I was going for a Vigenere Cipher for the secondf Cipher at first, however I couldn't get it to work as I don't understand them all that much, so I left it out

Is that a challenge

(Also, to be honest, I used QuipQiup as well. :P )

Those tools are a plague

4:24 PM

@Deusovi I would've done too, but I couldn't remember the name of the thing. Was trying to search the internet to find it again, and got a different site instead.

Please be gentle with me :')

So, someone downvoted, then it went to 0 and I got 3 rep

how does this system work? xD

Upvotes give 5 rep, downvotes lose 2

@ObviouslyJake I'm on your side. As you might remember I usually never look at ciphers because I'd want to solve them without external help and some [insult] comes a long and just rips it apart using QuipQiup ;)

@ObviouslyJake A downvote is -2, an upvote is +5 on a question or +10 on an answer.

ahh

4:27 PM

@Avigrail It would've been solvable with Rumkin's Cryptogram Assistant manually, too. It would take slightly longer, but not too much IMO.

Yet, almost no one does it traditionally anymore

It's sad imo

I made a riddle-cipher combination once too, but I found it easier to get people to solve the riddle first and then use its solution for the cipher:

12

Q: Multi-part challenge: riddles and cipher

This is a multi-part challenge; you will need stamina to complete it! The style of this problem may remind you of some of my friend avigrail's riddles, and I will admit to having pinched a few ideas from him. Anyway, let's get down to business. The real answer is in the ciphertext at the very bo...

@Deusovi this would eventually lead to a www.solveAnyRiddle.com where you just paste whatever you want to be solved

Which is our death really

I don't see how that follows.

Of course not

Anyway, @ObviouslyJake you need to hide your gems more carefully in the future ;) Other than that you did well I guess

Keep up the good work

4:30 PM

Yeah! The riddle seems interesting to me - haven't been able to solve it yet.

@Avigrail That wouldn't work though, because riddles (at least the good ones) need tricks and interesting interpretations etc, whereas ciphers can be solved by dumb computers.

Thus, riddles >>> ciphers :-D

Yes, I know what you mean. I was just thinking ahead to the very far future where that might be possible with riddles probably

I doubt it. Not for several decades at least.

To avoid that I want to encourage people to use their heads again

Also this is somewhat inevitable. The better the tools the more complex the puzzles

Because people will always use the tools available

Yeah, puzzlers have always adapted.

4:33 PM

@Avigrail And then you end up with massively complex and brilliant puzzles like those of Alconja and BmyGuest.

As I said, I'd like to keep it pen and paper

Riddles are nice in that they can be relatively simple constructions and easy to make while still presenting solvers with a challenge.

Almost just died on my waterbottle

And 3D of course :D

rip

4:33 PM

@Avigrail Yeah, I loved that 3D one!

I could send you the file so you can print it out and put it on your bedside table

But you won't be able to look inside I'm afraid

I could always smash the center of the magnifying glass with a hammer.

That would let me look inside :D

I tried hard not to make the riddle too much of a stretch

But unfortunately I don't have access to a 3D printer

You could also print it big enough to climb in

Like 3 m edge length

4:38 PM

xD

who has a printer that big

Some big automotive companies I guess

But I don't own one

It's always been a dream of mine to live inside a puzzle

(both company and printer)

Isn't that what we call life?

I mean

the human brain is a puzzle]

and that's where all your cognitive abilities and such come from

@Deusovi just get drunk in the morning and every day is a puzzle

4:40 PM

so technically you Do live inside a puzzle ;)

xD

Nah, puzzles have an actual satisfying solution

:c

Would that puzzle have several partial solutions or just 1 solution in the end?

which puzzle is that

Deusovis Life

Anyway I need to go

See you lot next time

Guys

I wanna just say, I'm sorry. I forgot to include the Music tag on my post

5:03 PM

@Deusovi Like this? :D

5:35 PM

I have wondered for a while now, though i'm not pressing the upvote button for a superstition that doing so would result in something bad. though I was thinking. Is it possible to upvote yourself? what happens when you do click that button?

I'm simply too scared to do so xD

I wouldn't actually do it, if it were possible... that seems stupid and unreasonable. it's like saying your car is the best simply because you own it

6:09 PM

@ObviouslyJake It simply doesn't work. You get a little error popup saying you can't vote for your own posts.

Go ahead and try it. It doesn't do any harm.

That solved that mystery xD

6:32 PM

It really makes me feel great inside when people actually start solving little clues to the answer that don't mean anything on their own xD

7:31 PM

1

Q: A Riddle Within a Riddle

MY friend, your luck has Turned. i've made tHIs Riddle and it is the best, anD "soon iT sHould bE solved. if it is not, then a QUIet miNd mighT let sEedS be Sown, within which idEas caN grow. in essenCE: at THE end, in one small day, seCRetly, Our vieW regarding the solution caN be tO...

riddle word wordplay enigmatic-puzzle steganography

8:06 PM

@TheSphinx @GentlePurpleRain Nice puzzle!

GentlePurpleRain

@Randal'Thor Thanks!

2 hours later…

10:04 PM

0

Q: My Two Strange Friends

I have two strange friends; they don't seem to get along, and they say phrases that make no sense. The following are some phrases my first friend has said: great trees feared axes caged war gave a start tears were dared And the following are some phrases my second friend has said: ...

« first day (7 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (28 days later) »

Transcript for

Aug '1630

Riddle Sandbox

For conversations involving the new Riddle Sandbox - meta.puzz...

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile