The Sphinx's Lair

Q: Meredith uses two pieces of string

6:11 AM

0

Meredith uses two pieces of string of the same length to make a square and a circle. What is the ratio of the area of the square to the area of the circle?

mathematics

Anonymus 25

7:20 AM

Wait x10, the C4 is a TRIPLE Schrodinger?!

3:10 PM

puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/51493

That is a COMMENT. It is a useful comment that should be upvoted AS A COMMENT. It is in no way a full answer. frustrated noises. I can't even flag it as such anymore

3:27 PM

@bobble I flagged it too

5:04 PM

@bobble @AncientSwordRage The person who wrote it didn't have enough rep to make comments. It is a slightly weird feature of Stack Exchange that the rep threshold for commenting is higher than the (nonexistent) rep threshold for answering. When someone with no rep has something to say that ought to be a comment, there really isn't a good solution.

I have transformed their answer into a comment (which I fear will take away all the rep they got for their answer, which is sort of a pity, but never mind).

Of course it's also a kinda-obsolete comment now since the error it was pointing to has been fixed, but no harm leaving it around.

I do not think it is productive to get angry and frustrated at the fact that someone who had useful information to provide, and was unable for technical reasons to provide it in the officially approved way, chose to provided it in an officially-unapproved way rather than not at all.

@GarethMcCaughan the standard solution is for them to earn rep before commenting, anything else circumvents how the site works (for better or worse)

@GarethMcCaughan I'm not sure a comment-as-an-answer should get rep?

@GarethMcCaughan this is why it should have always been a comment or not posted... Somebody else could have spotted error

@GarethMcCaughan I think ( and I don't speak for bobble ) the frustration is that after the fact, the answer/comment is no longer needed and should be removed

But instead it was kept as something it's not by reviewers

Also frustrated at the system, that there's not a better way for low rep users to contribute, but I'm not frustrated at the user

Lukas Rotter

5:22 PM

Comments are hard to moderate, so I think the 50-rep limit is pretty much necessary to reduce spam.

@LukasRotter definitely

It's also possible to suggest an edit, though correcting a mistake is a nebulous area between useful and 'not posters intent'

Sure, someone else could have spotted the error. As it happens it was that person who spotted it. They did everyone a service. I agree that the answer should have been removed or, preferably, converted to a comment, which is why I did that. I do agree that the problem here is the system not the user, though maybe as Lukas says this is the only realistic way to avoid spam.

(I don't have a strong opinion on whether the person should have posted an answer rather than earning some rep so that they could comment in the future; as you say, strictly speaking they were breaking the rules.)

It's catch-22 in all honesty, but I think you did the right thing

It would have been good if the two reviewers also did that

@GarethMcCaughan what I'm not sure on, is if the system will register what the two incorrect reviewers did as incorrect based on you converting it to a comment 🤔

@GarethMcCaughan I was not frustrated at the answerer. I acknowledge that was the best they could do. I was frustrated at the reviewers. My ideal outcome would have been a conversion to comment and upvoting as a comment.

I thought it would a simple "ain't an answer -> Recommend Deletion/Delete"

5:41 PM

@bobble yup!

@bobble I also acknowledge that the reviewers couldn't convert to comment but it sure wasn't an answer

I forget: can anyone other than mods convert answers to comments?

Q: Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

713

I think we can all agree, this sucks: If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as "The Answer" by well-meaning1 forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-observ...

discussion link-only-answers not-an-answer

This is normally my yard stick on these matters

Because if they can't then "ain't an answer -> recommend deletion/delete" continues with -> delete, and then the thing never becomes a comment and the helpful info in it is lost.

(And I'm pretty sure they can't.)

Moderators can see NAA flags after some amount of time, I was rather hoping that would occur

@GarethMcCaughan certain answers are auto-converted to comments upon posting, but that's it

5:47 PM

To be clear, I agree that it's unsatisfactory to have an answer that isn't really an answer. It just isn't obvious to me that anyone there did anything particularly wrong. The person who answered was trying to be helpful and it's not clear that they'd have been better to be silent. The people who didn't vote to deleted saw that the answer was helpful despite not being an answer and therefore didn't want it deleted, and it's not clear that they were wrong.

(I haven't checked the timings. Perhaps some people voted that it was fine after hexomino's answer had been fixed; I can't approve of that.)

> The user had enough reputation to post a comment at the time, but they lost reputation from downvotes, removed posts, giving bounties, etc.
The user is currently suspended, causing their reputation to show as 1.
The user commented on their own question or answer, or any answer to one of the user's own questions. (source)
Here on Meta Stack Exchange, the reputation needed to comment is 5, not 50. (source)
The user flagged to close the question as a duplicate, resulting in an automatic comment beginning with "Possible duplicate of" or "Does this answer your question".

(how to have a <50 rep user with a comment)

@GarethMcCaughan the people reviewing it can leave a comment for hexomino...?

6:52 PM

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, I guess so.

@GarethMcCaughan don't take my word for it though, plenty of good advice is given in the TL

Q: The Divisibility Graph... Again!

7:10 PM

0

The divisibility graph of a set of positive integers is the graph whose vertices are the integers, two of which are joined by an edge if one divides the other. What is the smallest positive integer the divisibility graph of whose proper divisors is non-planar? And the first two such consecutive i...

mathematics number-theory graph-theory

7:37 PM

You'd think, since there are three different solutions to the C4, with presumably three different (at least somewhat different) wordplays — you'd think you'd find at least one of them. I mean, your chances are much better, right? And yet, and yet…

Oh, I have one of them, I think. I'm not so sure what the policy on partial solutions is with C4s.

But I'm drawing a complete blank on the other two, so a group effort might be in order.

@MOehm Nor do I. Personally, fwiw, I've no problem with your posting one or two of the three solutions. Who gets to set the next one is, of course, a separate question.

Well, we'll cross the brifge of deciding who's up next when (if) we come to it.

"When", I assume.

I've got the (10): AMELIORATE (To enhance, upgrade) = (studi)O (directo)R (cinem)A (artis)T, all inside AMELI.E.

7:46 PM

Oh, nice. So I'm guessing at least one of the others has "film" (or possibly "in film") as its definition.

And their enumerations make film titles somewhat likely. Or maybe a personal name, with definition "artist ultimately in film".

Yes, That's what I think, too. I can imagine a re-use of the last letters to get (something with four letters) BORAT, but it doesn't really fit.

I also thought about "cinema artist, ultmately" as STAR for a film called (something) Star.

WILL SMITH, for example, went from rap to television to the silver screen, and thus is an "artist ultimately in film". I don't see how the wordplay would work — but there are many others with a similar career trajectory.

Others are NICK JONAS and DIANA ROSS and MARKY MARK.

Can "studio director" mean "first letter of STUDIO"?

If you give it a little leeway so that you can write a triple clue ...

Q: Number Sequence - 1 3 5 59 245 2491

0

Solve this sequence: 1 3 5 59 245 2491 ? Hints: I'll show a hint, next day.

number-sequence sequence

Jafe

8:29 PM

@MOehm confirmed, two to go

Thanks. Can I post a 33% clue already? ;)

@MOehm You can post a triple clue like this last one, but list only one of its enumerations. :-)

Sure. Easy. :)

8:51 PM

Apparently, a studio director in radio and television is (or was) called an SM or a POA.

10:26 PM

@MOehm Among the top 100 results here, the only 5,4 titles are Night Star and Third Star. (Unless I missed something, which is certainly possible.)

Q: Building equilateral triangles by reflecting tokens

11:25 PM

0

Three tokens are placed at the vertices of an equilateral triangle with side length 1. A move is to reflect a token at any other token. After several moves the tokens build again an equilateral triangle. Which side lengths are possible for this new triangle?

mathematics logical-deduction geometry

Q: Trivial and non-trivial solutions on grids

11:51 PM

0

Let's have a 10x10 square grid with 7 empty squares. This GRID is to be filled with skinny trominoes, with zero arrows pointing to the empty squares. The solution has to be non-trivial. On the grids above is an example of a 10x10 grid with a non-trivial solution and another with a trivial soluti...

mathematics logical-deduction optimization