English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:32 AM

Heloooo!

Hi pal :-)

Hi!

I have to admit I didn't see it.

Did you?

Nope

I think the car being backed into the spot is a hint.

Is it?

I looked it up, of course.

The answer.

icic

it's more fun to struggle through it :-)

12:53 AM

Haha I'm not a puzzle dog.

1:46 AM

A: Longest word in English

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis takes the prize, I believe. It's a miner's lung disease. Outside of a doctor's office in a coal-mining community, however, one tends to hear it only when people are discussing the longest word in the English language — perhaps only slightly less often...

@Cerberus ha. puzzle dog is your name now.

@Cerberus Well, what kind of puzzle are you, then?

@Mitch Silence!

@Robusto I know. We just made one that's longer. I will use it in again so that is it no longer a nonce word but a twonce-word. Or twever.

@Cerberus nyah nyah nyah

@skillpatrol It's not backed in, it's just badly drawn.

@Robusto All I can think of is Jeder Kann Malen.

1:50 AM

Picasso's first work.

I don't know why.

Sooo worms, huh?

@Cerberus I didn't know the Germans had paint-by-number.

Is that what you call it?

Yup.

I know only the German name.

1:51 AM

Jeder koennte nicht zahlen

Who thought of it first?

It's kinda obvious. That was Leonardo's genius. He did the plan for Mona Lisa first with numbers.

Paint by number

Paint by number (or painting by numbers) describes kits having a board on which light blue or gray lines indicate areas to paint, each area having a number and a corresponding numbered paint to use. The kits were invented, developed and marketed in 1950 by Max S. Klein, an engineer and owner of the Palmer Paint Company of Detroit, Michigan, and Dan Robbins, a commercial artist. In children's activity books, simpler activities are often presented to children and are called color by numbers. == History == In 1951 Palmer Paint introduced the Craft Master brand which sold over 12 million kits. This...

The trouble was, everything looked posterized because you couldn't blend paint by number.

@Robusto ha. ur some kinda scrabble player. also, 'ur' is allowed now I think.

1:54 AM

Ah, I see.

@Robusto If you do it well. If you're like me, it's all a big smudge.

@Robusto Looked, or still looks?

@Mitch Like Jupiter?

@Cerberus It's the nature of the beast. Look at the dog in Malen nach Zahlen.

@Cerberus ha ha. yes. 'Look there's a big spot. but what is everything else?'

See how his coat is white with gray "shadows" all the same shade?

1:55 AM

@Robusto Right, that's why I wondered about the tense.

@Cerberus Because I was reminiscing about my childhood, which was the last time I had any first-hand exposure to that.

Ah OK.

The big red spot on Jupiter and Earth, to scale.

So @Mitch please don't smudge our planet while you're at it.

slowly pulls back thumb

6 hours later…

SmokeDetector

8:01 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected, offensive title detected: Something is *shit* versus something is *the shit" by anon on english.stackexchange.com

4 hours later…

12:07 PM

@Cerberus I remember a neighbor lady, the mother of a childhood friend, who had a collection of her paint-by-number efforts on display in her living room. She was so proud, and I felt bad for not thinking her works were anything more than ludicrous.

@skillpatrol The answer is ㄥ8.

Ding, ding we have a winner :D

You're up kinda early.

i haven't slept yet

You're up kinda late.

not for me pal

12:17 PM

Well, welcome back to ELU chat in any case. Haven't seen you around recently.

Thanks ;-)

my computer broke down...

new fangled

contraptions

@skillpatrol I have to confess it took me almost a minute to solve. So I'm not as fast as a kid. But then, a kid probably has this on a sheet of paper and so could rotate the image for a quicker solution.

true, point of view is everything for that one

BTW, your boys lost to the Red Sox last night. It doesn't get much worse than that.

:'(

I have an idea that a kid would realize that the numbers must be in consecutive order

since no parking lot would scramble up the numbers...

12:31 PM

Maybe. For me the clue was 06. I first thought of hexadecimal, but then I realized few kids would tumble to that clue very quickly, and so the placement of the 0 had to be necessary to the solution.

good point

Once I got that, the image rotated immediately in my mind.

the numbers should be written so that the car drive can see them properly when pulling into the stall

I commonly back in, myself.

icic

12:34 PM

bonjour, @crl

Hello Robustesse :)

trying to find out the number under the car

it should be an even number..

Don't check my answer above.

@Robusto Ouch, that is painful.

@Robusto Ah too late, yes upside down..

Yup.

27 mins ago, by Robusto

@skillpatrol The answer is ㄥ8.

12:40 PM

not a valid number though ^

Turn it upside down.

yes, I know but it's not valid in both directions like others

What do you mean? That it doesn't read as a different number upside down as right side up?

Good news. All the rough spots in the pavement in my 16-mile course have been repaved. I feel like they did it just for me. That shaves over a minute off my time.

what's your average speed?

if you don't mind me asking :)

16 06 68 88 ㄥ8 98 // only ㄥ8 isn't "valid"
91 90 89 88 87 86

12:51 PM

but there is a "car" on the assumed number, we don't really know that it exists

@skillpatrol It's around 16 mph.

yes, we could also make the joke with less numbers, like 16 06 XX 88 but it would be harder..

@crl I still don't know what you mean by "valid."

an upside-down seven is not a number

I know, but to solve the puzzle you have to view it the other way. So it becomes 87 at that point.

12:55 PM

just like a eight lying on its side is not a number

infinity isn't a number

Lazy eight, as the ranchers would call it.

@Robusto a natural number.. what is "ㄥ" for you?

Oh @skill said it sorry

i tried to make the same argument in the mathroom

@crl A joke. An upside-down 7.

the whole question is a joke

1:00 PM

I could have just typed 87 for the answer, but that wouldn't reflect the upside-down nature of the puzzle.

that^ is the answer I got to my "an upside-down 7 is not a number"

1:24 PM

upsidedown(8) = 8
upsidedown(0) = 0
upsidedown(1) = 1
upsidedown(2) = 2
upsidedown(5) = 5
upsidedown(6) = 9
upsidedown(9) = 6

7, 3, 4 have no images

well in hexadecimal, upsidedown(3) = E

or upsidedown(4) = h, upsidedown(7) = L in another basis

1:46 PM

you see the "7" doesn't exist since it is under the "car"

for all we know the painter could have forgot it

2:17 PM

in Homotopy Theory, 13 hours ago, by Qiaochu Yuan

"children can solve this in less than 20 seconds" was the biggest hint for me

2:43 PM

Australians can solve it in 2 seconds

6 hours later…

8:22 PM

For all you high tech gamers :-)

8:49 PM

@skillpatrol I don't get it. Just a bunch of dudes talking. I want pixels exploding and eardrums bursting.

slaps on a couple more nicotine patches, kicks back a double shot espresso, punches self in face

I AM SO ALIVE