The Sphinx's Lair

Will

12:32 AM

I swear if the CCCC turns out to be what I think it is I will scream

Deusovi

What do you think it is?

Sphinx

1:45 AM

0

Q: What is a Nowerk Word™?

This is in the spirit of the What is a Word™/Phrase™ series started by JLee with a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. If a word conforms to a special rule, I call it a Nowerk Word™. Use the examples below to find the rule. $$\begin{array}{|c|c|}\hline \bbox[yellow]{\textbf{Nowerk Wo...

Sp3000

2:15 AM

waits for Will to scream

Silenus

2:37 AM

I was thinking, probably like everyone, that it's a ddef involving illegal aliens. DETAINEE or something.

Sp3000

If it helps, clue #1: alien is not part of a def

Will

Good, I won't have to scream. :)

Sp3000

Wait what did you think it was? D:

Will

That's for me to know and you to maybe find out ;)

Sp3000

(Read: Will just came up with something good and will torture us with it in their next clue)

Will

2:44 AM

"just" is incorrect
as is "torture" probably

"good" is debatable too while we're nitpicking that statement

Deusovi

3:21 AM

-4

Q: The Puzzling Phone

The amazing "Puzzling Phone", comes in two models, one sold by "Super Puzzling Inc", and one sold by "Mega Puzzling Ltd" Phones need to have government testing before they can be sold on the market. Through this testing, it turns out that a third of the "Super Puzzling Inc" models on the market...

mathematics probability no-computers

Now it's a pure math problem. Do you all think this should be closed?

Mike Q

3:32 AM

Not yet. It's freshly back from the dead; maybe the community should be able to see it for a bit longer before the mods drop the ol' guillotine.

Deusovi

...They can still see it.

Closing isn't to punish users, it's to get rid of questions that don't fit the site.

Mike Q

True, true. I'd suggest that if Gareth's answer is marked as the solution, then yes, it's a pure math problem.

Deusovi

I don't see any way it could not be a pure math problem.

Mike Q

It now mentions colors that are seemingly unrelated. Possibly a clue. Not likely, but possibly.

Then again, that is newly added, and so it could not have been part of the original solution. Just extra wordiness on a mostly mathematical question.

Deusovi

No, it's definitely not a clue.

There's no non-mathematical tags except no-computers.

Gareth McCaughan

3:47 AM

@Deusovi I would VTC as a routine mathematics problem if it weren't for the fact that I can't because I already VTC'ed yesterday. But I still want to know what CR's alleged solution to the earlier version of the question was. I am increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of ever finding out.

Mike Q

Hmm... "A puzzle designed to be solved without using calculators or computers."

Deusovi

Should I modhammer then?

Yeah, you don't need calculators to do basic arithmetic with fractions.

Gareth McCaughan

I'd give it a little while to see e.g. whether CR accepts my answer (evidence that he really doesn't have anything cleverer in mind) and whether he is willing to tell us what non-stupid solution he thought there was to the earlier version.

It should absolutely end up closed unless there turns out to be something ingenious that we've all missed. But there's no particular urgency about closing it right now.

Deusovi

Low-quality questions that aren't closed attract bad answers.

Gareth McCaughan

(Even though I would VTC as an ordinary user, I wouldn't instaclose it if I were a mod. Am I right that there's no way for a mod to cast an ordinary close vote?)

Boring low-quality questions don't usually attract bad answers very fast. (I think.)

Deusovi

3:51 AM

(Yeah. I really wish I could cast a regular close vote.)

Alconja

4:15 AM

I've VTC'd. I'm pretty convinced that it's not a puzzle. The fact that OP is claiming it is, and the fact that this audience is predisposed to look for puzzles (even where there isn't one) has already caused it to get more attention than it rightfully deserves.

Rubio

4:32 AM

given that previously, in response to my comment that it was exactly what it turned out to be, OP commented in essence that he believed such 'puzzles' were acceptable because there was some alleged debate on the subject on Meta that hadn't yet made math-problems-posing-as-puzzles definitively unfit ... his argument that there is a puzzle here, per se, is something I find entirely unconvincing.

Unfortunately I've already VTCed yesterday.

Alconja

(re: that meta question, herein lies the other issue with VTRO a non-puzzle "just to see what OP had in mind", the more vigilant VTCers can no longer keep quality in check because it needs to be closed twice)

Deusovi

@Rubio Yep, OP's been doing that for a while.

Rubio

@Alconja which if I'd known, would have made my VTRO answer even more vehement.

@Deusovi I'm not sure how much clearer it could be: there's a specific VTC reason for it, what more proof is needed?

Deusovi

Apparently there's "no consensus about what actually is a math problem".

Rubio

oh horsepucky.

Deusovi

4:46 AM

Whoa, took me that long?

Ankoganit

lol

Deusovi

(from here: meta.puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/5523/…)

(above the +2 comment I made, there was a link to "examples" of questions that were closed and reopened after being edited)

Ankoganit

@Deusovi I don't think I have any tag badge. Yet.

Mike Q

@Deusovi Possibly silly question: Why can't these math problems go to the Math.SE site?

Deusovi

They can.

Well, sometimes.

Math.SE doesn't accept things in a 'puzzly' format.

Ankoganit

4:53 AM

Well, they tend to close questions on math.SE unless you show your own work.

"Solve my problem and that's it" is not a good thing there.

Deusovi

Yep.

Alconja

5:11 AM

Hey @deus, with the current CC... The '?' a the end implies that the def is a non-standard/wordplay-ish one, yeah? Does it also thus imply then that "loss" or "at a loss" is the def? Or could "restrained" still be the non-standard def?

Deusovi

Could be either.

It just means that something fishy is up.

Alconja

Ok, so the trailing "?" just indicates that something tricky is going on with a def

cool

Deusovi

Not necessarily with a def.

Ankoganit

It could even be something tricky with the wordplay

Or nothing tricky at all

Alconja

Oh.. ok. So, will it still follow the wordplay+def split, or is that part of what could be tricky?

Deusovi

5:16 AM

It should follow the split.

Rubio

5:53 AM

the trailing ? could also signal a ddef, but even there the two would be distinct

Alconja

@Rubio Ah, ok. So my previous (unwritten) thought that it could somehow be CLUELESS where, if we pretend that "alien" = "clue", then a restrained/subdued clue may be a lesser one, or a clue-less and "at a loss" is also a def.

Rubio

sure. if clue equalled alien, of course.

Alconja

which it clearly does and that's obviously the answer, so let's move on with the next one...

Ankoganit

:p

Alconja

Whilst trying to solve this one, I accidentally made a new one of my own, but I was wondering oh, cryptic gurus... Is there any way to have a word do double duty in a clue?

Like could I say "two Xs" to indicate 2 different X synonyms, or "X beside itself" to indicate XX?

Rubio

6:06 AM

As opposed to simply repeating it?

Alconja

Yeah

To improve the surface reading more than anything

Will

If I'm understanding you I'd even think just "Xs" would be acceptable

Rubio

I'm not sure there's a fair way to do that, actually

Xs would imply a single synonym, and a plural one at that

as opposed to two separate singular synonyms.

"two Xs" is, if anything, worse; it suffers the same faulty implication, and adds the additional word "two" to deal with

Alconja

Probably easier just to work from the actual example...

Rubio

7 hours ago, by Rubio

Mr. McMahon left the twisted, twisted fools. (5) - this might be ok

Alconja

6:11 AM

"gratuitous extraterrestrial inserts itself (8)"

Rubio

^ duplicated words needn't ruin a surface reading too badly

Alconja

The non-double duty version being something like (though with a flipped synonym & answer):

"extraterrestrial extracted from exterior extraterrestrial (6)"

So the first one is COSMETIC (gratuitous = def, COSMIC inserts ET) though I've just realised the "inserts" grammar is a bit off...

And the second is COSMIC (ET extracted from COSMETIC, extraterrestrial = def)

Will

I don't like the "itself" construct because it heavily implies sameness

Alconja

Yeah, that's what I thought too. I couldn't see a "fair" way to use the same word in the clue in two different ways.

Will

I can't think of a fair way in this instance for container/deletion either; but I can definitely see "Xs" or "two Xs" being fair in the case of a charade

Ankoganit

6:21 AM

This for example:

Dec 19 '16 at 6:50, by Deusovi

Two girls, one cup (5) [NOTE: DO NOT GOOGLE THIS FOR YOUR OWN SAKE. IT IS THE NAME OF AN INCREDIBLY DISTURBING SHOCK VIDEO (that also happens to function as a valid cryptic clue) .]

Will

yes, exactly like that

Ankoganit

Or there's a classic one: "Two girls, one on each knee"(7)

Mike Q

7:45 AM

My goodness, why would Deusovi do that?! (Also what was the answer?)

Alconja

8:08 AM

@MikeQ GLASS ("two girls" = G + LASS, one cup = def)

Rubio

9:06 AM

I just spent a few depressing minutes looking at cryptic crosswords in The Guardian - even with the answers I couldn't figure out the composition of several of the cryptics, and I would probably go mad trying to solve even one full crossword. The ones I understand make me despair of ever setting a clue that good.

Mithrandir

... I still don't understand cryptics...

Sp3000

9:24 AM

I tried the UK ones for a bit and gave up - it's surprisingly hard to do crosswords from other countries because of culture differences...

Rubio

Yeah that's what I was finding, a lot

Or not even culture, but local people, places, things and current events and ideas that are (heh) foreign to me

Sp3000

Isn't that basically culture? :P

But yeah that and also cluing conventions

TheGreatEscaper

9:58 AM

Hullo

Ankoganit

Hello @TGE

Re clues of the form "2 X's": a very recent example.

TheGreatEscaper

'What a strange and eventful year I have had so far', a statement that doesn't belong here nor one I will elaborate on, but one I kinda need to say anyway.

Here's a short cryptic with a surface reading that actually sounds normal: 'Tells lies again' (6)

Hang on

so would 'Missing two present' (7) be an acceptable clue?

Ankoganit

I think you could make that two 'presents'

which actually improves the surface reading

"Missing two presents (7)" sounds just perfectly misleading

TheGreatEscaper

but isn't that a plurality issue

Ankoganit

Umm why so?

TheGreatEscaper

10:10 AM

Ohhhhhh

So you literally pluralize it

Ankoganit

exactly

TheGreatEscaper

I just assumed 'two Xs' would have to become Xs Xs

But I forgot how plurals work :P

I had a moment

Yeah, that's a lot nicer :)

Sp3000

Would probably stick a ? in the case of that one though

TheGreatEscaper

'Missing two presents?' (7)
Oh, to deal with the nonconventional definitions?

Sp3000

More because neither of the "presents" is usually pluralised, and it very much relies on the fact that there's two of them to have that reading

IMO anyway

TheGreatEscaper

10:15 AM

Ah, gotcha

But the 'two girls' gets a LASS, which is definitely one girl

Oh right, but presents has a VERY different meaning to present

Which is not the case in the two girls clue.

Woohoo I'm learning cryptic stuff

Sphinx

10:37 AM

0

Q: Can a 9x9 sudoku with sum 45 of (rows,collunms,3x3) not be valid

Is posible a sudoku solution, that all rows, all grids and all 3x3 grids have sum of 45 to not be a valid solution? Is possible to achive that sums with some duplicates? I make an algorithm that check sudoku solution and i try to find the most efficient way of achive that.

sudoku

TheGreatEscaper

11:11 AM

I don't like this question at all, and the OP seems convinced that it's an interesting and valuable question. I'm convinced otherwise.

Sp3000

I think if you post a solution or family of solutions that'll be fine (hopefully)

I don't know whether they were expecting all, that would be annoying if so

TheGreatEscaper

But all 5s is such a trivial solution :\

It's a solution, and he acknowledged it in his comments

And then continues to say it's an interesting logic puzzle.

Maybe I'm a bit moody right now, but I really fail to see the value in this question, however it's interpreted at all.

I posted a family of almost 3 million solutions. You can increase that number exponentially with a few more lines.

Neil's answer is a family of at least 1296 * 5 billion solutions

Volatility

...in any case, I'm not sure the question belongs here

TheGreatEscaper

The question is either trivial or pointlessly strenuous.

Does it belong anywhere?

Finding a solution is as simple as making everything 5, or indeed, Neil's family of over 7 trillion solutions

The only way to extend such a question is to enumerate how many solutions there are, which believe me, not even a programmer would appreciate being asked to do that.

Volatility

11:26 AM

Did you see the update? It's become an algorithm test question, although it looks more mathy than SO-y

TheGreatEscaper

Yeah, I saw the update. It's still asking almost the same thing, and it's just as easy to solve (555555555 still works?)

Oh, he put SQUARE.

...it's a number theory question now.

(also, I don't think it's an algorithm test question)

(it's a 'find 9 numbers which sum to 45 and their squares sum to 285, which are not the digits 1-9')

Volatility

Well, I guess it's both. He wants to know whether his/her algorithm is tight, but the basis for that is number theory.

Sp3000

It almost sounds like they want to code golf a Sudoku validity checker or something and are trying to find a short rule that works... in which case this might go on for a while

TheGreatEscaper

You know

maybe you could compare the numbers in each row, column, and square to the list [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]?

:P

The number theory question seems morbid. I'm not going to try it.

do the numbers have to be integers from 1 - 9?

Scratch that, I'm not bothering.

Volatility

The additional problem is that he/she doesn't give us much info about the algorithm

TheGreatEscaper

11:43 AM

He/she does. It's just not well expressed.

All it checks is: is the row/column/box sum a constant, 45?

Is the row/column/box SQUARE sum a constant, 285?

Volatility

But what exactly is it checking?

as in the "sudoku solution"

TheGreatEscaper

I have a counter example if we're allowed non-integer reals.

I assume it's checking a 9x9 grid of values.

Volatility

well, he/she hasn't told us that

TheGreatEscaper

Fair enough

They haven't specified a domain either. Integers 1-9? Positive integers? Positive reals? Any real?

Anyway, the question has just ticked me off in a bad way, really, possibly undeserving of my exceedingly negative reaction, but I can't see it as a good question in any perspective.

The original question clearly didn't have much thought put into it (the trivial solution of 5s everywhere), so since the edit condition wasn't included in the original question, and there is no apology of leaving it out accidentally, it was added to 'beef up' the beast we're against. Which is not great in my opinion.

Volatility

@TheGreatEscaper This has given me an idea for a (complicated) grid deduction puzzle though: a sudoku variant involving two grids and fractions, where one grid gives the numerators and the other gives the denominators, and the resulting fractions have to satisfy a number slope grid. No idea how many (if any) valid grids there are though.

TheGreatEscaper

11:50 AM

Strictly sloping? Or just a monotonous slope :P

Let me know if you ever do make a puzzle like that, anyway.

Hiya @NeilW

Volatility

@TheGreatEscaper I don't get it. Aren't they the same thing?

TheGreatEscaper

No... 4/8 1/2 wouldn't be allowed on a strict slope.

Neil W

Hi @TheGreatEscaper

TheGreatEscaper

What're your thoughts on this 'sudoku' puzzle?

Volatility

Ah sorry, forgot "monotonous" included 0-slopes as well

Neil W

11:55 AM

The one that keeps getting more complicated?

TheGreatEscaper

Yes.

It's now a very very vague number theory question.

I have a solution using positive reals.

But if I post it, they'll say 'integers 1-9'

Neil W

Yes, the goalposts do tend to move don't they?

Not sure then's any obvious proof that's the conditions are sufficient though I suspect they are for integers 1-9.

That's just a gut feeling. I'm not inclined to prove it though.

TheGreatEscaper

It's not a particularly inviting question, anyhow.

You can probably do some arithmetic/quadratic mean thing.

Neil W

No from what I know about multiple sums of different multiple squares being equal, you would have to do an exhaustive search.

TheGreatEscaper

Yuk.

Neil W

12:07 PM

And if they are just writing a validator why not just check that the numbers are 1-9?

TheGreatEscaper

I mentioned that above.

Ankoganit

Bingo. Just replace the tuple (1,...,9) with (1,1,4,4,6,6,7,7,9) in any valid grid and we've an example.

TheGreatEscaper

what fun

Neil W

@Ankoganit nice

There must be a nice equation behind that since we also have (2,2,3,3,5,5,8,8,9) and (1,2,2,5,5,7,7,8,8) and (1,3,3,4,4,6,6,9,9)

Neil W

12:43 PM

(n-3)^2+(n-2)^2+n^2+(n+3)^2 = (n-4)^2+(n-1)^2+(n+1)^2+(n+2)^2

= 4n^2+ 22

(n-3)+(n-2)+n+(n+3) = 4n - 2 = (n-4)+(n-1)+(n+1)+(n+2)

so can map {n-3,n-2,n,n+3} to {n-4,n-1,n+1,n+2}, for n=5,6 though

Maria Deleva

2:48 PM

Hey people! :)

I am working on a puzzle and I sort of need an opinion on a question I have :)

Considering my poor graphic skills, I intend on using an image as a base from internet. I would modify it, of course, but would a disclaimer stating the image is courtesy of so-and-so site be OK? Considering that I wouldn't use the image as is?

Gareth McCaughan

That depends entirely on the terms on which whoever originally made the image (might or might not be the same as whoever made the website you're taking it from) is prepared to let it be used. If you're lucky, they'll say somewhere. If you're a little less lucky, they won't but they'll give enough information to contact them and ask permission.

In practice, the chance that anyone will notice is small and the chance that anyone will object if they notice is small. It depends a little on how much of a creative achievement the image is (or they think it is).

Maria Deleva

3:04 PM

Thanks, Gareth.

The site states you can use their images in school projects, presentations and "more". Whatever "more" means. I guess it would be fine to use it then.

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