Winter / Summer Bash 2022

Drew Reese

12:23 AM

GG this year

starball

1:25 AM

Thanks, Catija, the rest of the CM team, devs, and the artwork designer!

5

This was my first bash and I had fun :D I got #9 network-wide and #4 on SO so I'm pretty proud. I was too new to get some or just too lazy.

Ankit Sharma

5:55 AM

I am no 2 on Movies & TV for the first time, I do have a complain to make :p but then I just got busy to participate or to try many hats

Nordine Lotfi

7:50 AM

@starball same, was my first one I think. I don't recall my ranking, but I think I was pretty far, maybe 2XX or something like that? either way, I had fun too

Others already said it better than I would, but thanks to everyone for this event :)

SPArcheon

9:19 AM

@Ginger And now I can tell you that I posted a picture of Kaa because the tag was indeed "python".

also, @Slate

0

A: Let's check in on Sparkles the Unicorn!

Thanks to the powerful magic of online anagram solvers, almost no one actually noticed that the solution to the first riddle in this game actually had at least two valid solutions. The string "RERSOMESRFTSBO", obtained from the rot crypt offsets used when decoding the various lines of the first m...

@Slate still waiting to know if at least I was the first gullible mind to end up on that page...

Drew Reese

@SPArcheon Curious... what was the other page you were mentioning?

SPArcheon

@DrewReese Hint: look at the link just above the post :P

Drew Reese

Oy, I see now.

SPArcheon

9:37 AM

BTW, still for @Slate. I also mentioned that initially I went for a complete different meaning of the second riddle.

> SURELY A COMPUTER COULD NEVER SOLVE SUCH A PROBLEM.
THE WEIGHT’S THE KEY, YOU SEE.
AND COMPUTERS WEIGH NOTHING

Cody Gray

I thought that last line was odd. Every computer I've ever had weighed something.

SPArcheon

the "COMPUTERS WEIGH NOTHING" line gave me a weird idea.

Remove all the letters in "COMPUTERS" from the stones

Then try to solve the resulting equation system...

and find the combination of letters that would add up to 100

Lucky, there were simply too much letters to try to solve the resulting equations, but that probably would have been a little more diverse (since rot13 is used every single year)

Cody Gray

Hm. Clever!

CDJB

9:59 AM

I think the idea was that the knapsack problem is NP-complete, right? So by solving the problem you prove you're not a computer? It's been a long time since my sole computational complexity class :P

SPArcheon

10:12 AM

@CDJB yet the solution was easily found by brute force.

Nordine Lotfi

I mean, there are different ways to approach brute-forcing. If you don't care about doing the worst kind (eg: exhausting the whole and every possible search space) then yeah, but if you're brute-forcing a specific property or for a very specific thing over a limited range, that doesn't really count

U13-Forward

12:36 PM

This chat room shouldn't die out :)

Cody Gray

Didn't you used to be U12-Forward? Did you get an upgrade?

U13-Forward

@CodyGray Yes I did :D

Cody Gray

Any new features?

U13-Forward

@CodyGray Haha! No not really.

Cody Gray

That's too bad.

U13-Forward

12:49 PM

Changed the name for the blog.

Cody Gray

What?

Slate

1:48 PM

@SPArcheon I'll look this up in a bit because I think it's cool! You did, however, miss my favorite variant, winterbash2022.stackexchange.com/sorbetsformers

James Risner

@U13-Forward Hoping the blog will say U12 so you can say: “that wasn’t me, I’m U13”?

Catija

Stats page is up - winterbash2022.stackexchange.com/stats

Ginger

eyy event 14

huh, exactly 500 K-Pop hats

also wow only 62 people got Defender

CDJB

First person to defend the unicorn :D I'll take it

Ginger

@Catija are we going to get any more trigger reveals?

also did yall have to do special coding for Solstice?

Cody Gray

2:04 PM

@Slate Oooh! That's very nice. :-)

> Note that these values may still change; for example, a user who is currently opted-out but later opts in can end up grabbing a top stop.

Unlikely? Also, that should be "spot".

CDJB

Oh, and Cubed Away - although I seem to be user48148 rather than CDJB :P

nobody

So there were less than a hundred people across the network that actively tried collecting hats.

Ginger

oh boy I've always wanted to be a member of the Council of 100 :p

Cody Gray

@nobody How are you deriving that number? I earned a fair number of hats, but I didn't try to earn any of them, save for playing the game to save Sparkles (and that wasn't really for the hat, so much as for the challenge and the quiz). When you're a mod, you can earn a bunch of hats just by doing the stuff you normally do.

nobody

@CodyGray From the number of people who have the Verified hat. Anybody who was actively trying to collect hats would probably have it, because it was fairly trivial to get. (Of course, that number includes some people like you, hence why I didn't state an exact number)

Ginger

2:13 PM

we do minor amounts of star abuse

Cody Gray

Ah, right. Check a hat that is trivial to abuse. Good heuristic.

Meanwhile, I'm over here relying on my natural cleverness. I have no idea why I thought that was a good strategy. :-)

Ginger

why do that when you can make a bot that stars every message sent in a room? :b

SPArcheon

5 hours ago, by SPArcheon

@Slate still waiting to know if at least I was the first gullible mind to end up on that page...

Because I am pretty sure that you had that logged.

Cody Gray

2:31 PM

She said she was going to take a look

@Ginger Aren't there, like, rules against that?

Catija

@CDJB Yeah, it's doing something weird. I'll see if Adam can fix that.

Slate

2:49 PM

@SPArcheon Yes - congratulations, you are the first :)

SPArcheon

@Slate as expected. Fell free to reference that next year if you want.

Slate

I'll make a note ;)

SPArcheon

So, if you want to make a yellow pony mask and call it "a pony in a forest", I won't protest (actually, that would be kinda funny).

SPArcheon

3:20 PM

12

A: Let's check in on Sparkles the Unicorn!

Thanks to the powerful magic of online anagram solvers, almost no one actually noticed that the solution to the first riddle in this game actually had at least two valid solutions. The string "RERSOMESRFTSBO", obtained from the rot crypt offsets used when decoding the various lines of the first m...

@Slate ^ added a notice about the ice creams too.

Slate

Hahah, thank you

pinckerman

4:09 PM

So what were the actual triggers for emperor and running?

Ginger

4:45 PM

@Catija ^

Catija

5:18 PM

@CDJB Fixed

Thank Adam. :D

@pinckerman If I tell y'all, we won't get to use them again. :P

For Running, I think @JamesRisner was practically there - delete 50 comments older than 6 months.

SPArcheon

5:38 PM

@Catija to be honest, did someone finding the trigger ever stopped you from reusing the same one next year? :P

James Risner

5:50 PM

@Catija Woot! thanks

@SPArcheon It helps with reuse because they get to have mystery hats that the trigger isn't known.

CDJB

@AdamLear thanks 😁

SPArcheon

7:17 PM

@Slate Just wondering. Can you find out how many users completed the Sparkles quiz without ever getting "Yes, a robot"?

pinckerman

@Catija d'oh, I was close.. I gave up after 20+ deleted comments

Catija

@SPArcheon I did? :D

Well, I got the unicorn hat first and then went back and got the robot hat, so I'm not sure what counts as "ever".

Slate

@SPArcheon Maybe! I don't think I can query Winterbash data. I'll poke around internally...

SPArcheon

@Catija exactly. I want to know if I was the only "idiot" to refuse to get the hat even afterward :P

Vickel

9:15 PM

The Winter/Summer Bash 2022 Hat Cafe is now closed!

Final Stats for Winter Bash 2023

@SPArcheon the answer is 3

Final Stats for Winter Bash 2023 ... not my typo :)

Drew Reese

11:21 PM

@Ginger I feel for the 3 that made it to the quiz and didn't save Sparkles.

Cody Gray

11:51 PM

Yeah, that would be super frustrating. That's why I was encouraging at least providing some hints. I mean, it's supposed to be fun after all, and we know that, after a certain point, fun can get overtaken by frustration.

Some people do need to learn to help themselves, but... you can't help that, unfortunately.

Drew Reese

I was almost one of those people. The quiz was when it went from being a fun puzzle to a no-as-fun trivia hunt.

Cody Gray

I had the opposite problem! The quiz was extremely easy for me (save for the chat question). I struggled most just trying to get to it. Mostly because the URL manipulation didn't work quite like I expected it to.

Transcript for

Winter / Summer Bash 2022