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My guess is that the answer is [twelve]. What's another way you can group the digits and still get sequential sums?
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Jun 15, 2022 08:14
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by the logic you used, I think you could also put _six_ in that block
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Jun 15, 2022 08:17
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I'm convinced that: It's even, because the sum of any row is odd, and the sum of any column is odd. After reading your idea a few times, it is compelling but I still think the intended answer was eight on the grounds that the sum of the upper right 2x2 is 27, the same as the sum of the lower right 2x2. The sum of the top left 2x2 is 25, which matches the sum of the bottom right 2x2 when the blank is 8. Also each pairing contains two identical values, and two values that are increased/decreased by 1.
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Jun 15, 2022 23:36
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The correct answer is you're all right and it's the friends you made along the way!
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Jun 16, 2022 02:55
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:I'm sure most of you are familiar with or at least heard of Picross, which is a logic based puzzle where you have to determine a grid of squares based off of clues that tell you the length and order of contiguous blocks in the rows and columns. However, I was introduced to this in the mid oughts by stumbling across conceptis' version called 'pic a pix' which is like the picross you'd get on nintendo consoles but on steroids. TBH I've always been unsatisfied with the limited size of the Picross series on the switch and 3DS, since you can get puzzles of 100x100 or more from Conceptis lol. I've always been a fan of Nonograms, which is like Picross rules except it's less about making a picture than it is just trying to be a challenging puzzle. This site has daily and weekly puzzles as well as a large bank of nonograms of all different sizes. My other favorite puzzle game is and always has been Minesweeper. Not just because I spent 90% of an office job playing it over six months but also it's just fun. I also love hearing every single person who ever sees me playing it say, "Oh I don't know how to play that, I just click randomly." I recently found a freeware version called Minesweeper X which is basically a better clone of the original Windows 95 version.
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Jun 16, 2022 03:25
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burexas.irom posted:So I just found this picture of a random daily local newspaper puzzle I took 10 years ago. I've tried solving it several times but I'm just dumb I guess. It's just the first 16 numbers of the well known Chauchy-Boltzman series. As everyone knows, that one goes 6, 8, 10, 5, 9, 2, 8, 4, 11, 3, 7, 8, 5, 8, 105396837693012567, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0...
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Jun 16, 2022 07:13
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its zero because (96 + x) / 16 = (96 + 0) / 16 
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Jun 16, 2022 08:59
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Prototype with a few artifacts, but I've never seen a circular weave maze before. So then, start at the bottom (outside edge) and get to the top (or the left): I'm gonna try to wrap this in a rectangular weave next. ps, I do not intend to place rectangular regions with mostly horizontal channels only at the left and right. That is left as an exercise for each goon to visualize. PhantomOfTheCopier has a new favorite as of 22:43 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 22:38
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I have written my first symmetrical cryptic crossword! It is a loosely Garfield-adjacent one, as it's a patreon reward for the horrid Garfield review podcast I make with my wife. I won't post the whole puzzle here (though it's super easy to find and circumnavigate the paywall tbh), but I will drop a couple of clues that I like, because I'm kinda proud of these for a first stab at a cryptic! Animal explodes: BLAM! (4) This is a bit of a toilsome clue, on reflection (4) Brutus achieved this score in his time (6,5) More sticky than a lubricated camel rim (8) (The podcast is I Don't Like Mondays, and is here on soundcloud, and here on patreon, but I promise this isn't a "please listen to me and my wife talk about anything other than Garfield for an hour" plug and is an actual "I made a puzzler and I like bits of it" post)
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Aug 2, 2022 10:29
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That's awesome. I wish I could do those but they break my brain, I really just need to sit down and force myself to learn.
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Aug 2, 2022 17:22
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burexas.irom posted:So I just found this picture of a random daily local newspaper puzzle I took 10 years ago. I've tried solving it several times but I'm just dumb I guess. I think it's [eleven] because column 1 + column 2 - column 3 + 1 = column 4
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Aug 2, 2022 18:49
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What the hell, when did Washington Post start just delivering the LA Times' crosswords instead of its own? I've gotten back into crosswords lately and LA Times was always my go-to, but I wanted another today. WP used to always be second on the list 
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Aug 3, 2022 21:28
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Captain Hygiene posted:What the hell, when did Washington Post start just delivering the LA Times' crosswords instead of its own? I've gotten back into crosswords lately and LA Times was always my go-to, but I wanted another today. WP used to always be second on the list
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Aug 3, 2022 21:38
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cant cook creole bream posted:Maybe it's just a coincidence. There are only so many variations, after all. I thought maybe so at first, but I pulled more up and they all literally have LA Times on the title popup now. I honestly had to doublecheck that I didn't have a brain fart and go to LA Times' page again.
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Aug 3, 2022 21:55
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ieatsoap6 posted:I think it's [eleven] because column 1 + column 2 - column 3 + 1 = column 4 Looks like it, but the solution is then twelve, no?
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Aug 4, 2022 13:44
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TAPA https://www.puzzle-tapa.com/
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Aug 4, 2022 14:23
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burexas.irom posted:Looks like it, but the solution is then twelve, no? gently caress
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Aug 4, 2022 15:02
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Oh nice, thread's going again. Flint_Paper posted:I have written my first symmetrical cryptic crossword! It is a loosely Garfield-adjacent one, as it's a patreon reward for the horrid Garfield review podcast I make with my wife. I won't post the whole puzzle here (though it's super easy to find and circumnavigate the paywall tbh), but I will drop a couple of clues that I like, because I'm kinda proud of these for a first stab at a cryptic! Congrats on writing a cryptic! I love me some cryptics myself, but I'm not great at coming up with clues. Let me see if I can take a crack: 1) LAMB anagram 2) backwards in "A TOIlsome clue" = IOTA 3) ?--may need to consult with a couple smarter friends on this one, will edit if I get it. 4) CLAMMIER anagram In crossword news: a Boston crossword tournament (Boswords) happened in person and online last weekend, and the puzzles were quite nice. I had a decent showing myself, though nowhere near the fastest and with a single error total . The puzzles are available at https://www.boswords.org, and they are doing a weekly themeless puzzle league in the fall with some killer constructors participating.There is also a crossword tournament in New York called Lollapuzzoola with a nice variety of crosswords and games being advertised, in person or online. The site is here: https://bemoresmarter.com/lpz2022/ and you can purchase an online ticket for $20. In puzzlehunt news:On August 26th, team Galactic Trendsetters is running the fifth of their annual Galactic Puzzlehunt, ostensibly themed around a standardized test. There will very likely be a hidden theme revealed later in the hunt though, and you can expect some challenging puzzles of all types. These folks once wrote a hunt where you had to decipher a full-on alien language, and I expect there may be something crazy afoot this year as well. If that's not enough pain, the week after on September 3rd, Mark Halpin will be releasing his Labor Day puzzle suite, this year called "Cross Purposes". The puzzles are usually *hard* but high quality, and previous years can be viewed here: http://www.markhalpin.com/puzzles/puzzles.html.
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Aug 4, 2022 15:47
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somekindofguy posted:# Correct! I Other Puzzle news, there is a YouTuber who's entire deal is "I am rich, look at what I do", albeit in a marginally less unforgivable way than your Misters Beast. His current Thing is a fancy golden fish (cf Masquerade) which has been "Hidden", with the instruction to find it as a song at the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXzD4p3TR2A From the looks of it, it's a person you have to contact, rather than a location you have to go to (his last one of these was ten grand in a bag with a set of clues pointing to its What.Three.Words location). Apparently everything you need to know is in the song at the end of the video. As much as I loathe dancing to the tune of the wealthy, armchair puzzles (again see Masquerade) are a fun thing, and I was wondering whether you folks fancied having a pick at this? I've got a couple of thoughts about what things could mean, which I'm happy to share, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!
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Aug 5, 2022 11:27
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On a tangential note, what happened with those old book based geocache things? Did any of them ever get found?
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Aug 5, 2022 15:17
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:On a tangential note, what happened with those old book based geocache things? Did any of them ever get found? IIRC, two did. The author died recently, taking the secrets with them.
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Aug 5, 2022 21:52
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I found another ancient screenshot of a puzzle I couldn't crack. This was the last question on a sketchy job site test, so, again, might just be poo poo. The only pattern I caught is the first grid of rows 2 and 3 is a 90° clockwise rotation of the last grid in the previous row. Alas, assuming that the puzzle loops, the correct answer is not offered in the choices below.
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Sep 18, 2022 11:10
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burexas.irom posted:The only pattern I caught is the first grid of rows 2 and 3 is a 90° clockwise rotation of the last grid in the previous row. Alas, assuming that the puzzle loops, the correct answer is not offered in the choices below. I almost suspect it might be a red herring, since as you say that answer is not an option. Also it's interesting that almost all the possible answers are very "regular/ordered" compared to the input. Ugh I keep finding other small patterns that almost work but fail to hold up
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Sep 18, 2022 13:23
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darn almost had itpre:this translation table: XOA X XOA O AA_ A _XO works for the first row EXCEPT the middle cell ;_; XAO AOX AXA AOA + AXA = OAO (should be OXO) XXO XOO XOA similarly, doing it by first column is very close: XOA X AXO O O_X A OX_ XAO XOA AXX AOA + OXX = XOO (should be AOO) XXO AOA OXX (should be OXA) Carthag Tuek has a new favorite as of 17:06 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 16:59
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I call BS. IE they're trying to find out who's going to have a mental breakdown, or ask afterwards, or complain afterwards, or who has the initiative to pick one. Was the earlier part of the test also written to look like an IQ test? I'd expect to see this in the middle to test speed / willingness to be wrong, versus obsession over perfection. I don't claim there is no pattern, however I'd claim there isn't a reasonable one. There are only 3^9th (20k) binary operations, and only 8! (40k) permutations and... computer says no (but I didn't scan them sequentially). I haven't found a binop that satisfies either row (or either column). It reads as a permutation (given there are three of each letter per grid) but I've not found a permutation that satisfies more than two pairs. Note that any procedural operation like rotating and sliding (which matches some of the visible behavior, and was the second thing I noticed without "cheating"), those have to be permutations, but naup. There may be two (nontrivial) operations, but I'm concerned with the middle row where all three have an unchanged upper row. It may be that each is a computed target of its 2d location, but I haven't checked that and the base3 values of each don't really suggest so. Maybe when I'm awake I'll have an idea, but I suspect they came up with some cute rule but screwed up implementing it and didn't notice their mistake(s).
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Sep 20, 2022 00:57
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ps I made this while mentoring someone years ago. Is it likewise impossible?
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Sep 20, 2022 01:02
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burexas.irom posted:I found another ancient screenshot of a puzzle I couldn't crack. This was the last question on a sketchy job site test, so, again, might just be poo poo. It's B Each adjacent grid has the same number of shapes in common. 4 in the top 2 rows and 1 in the bottom row and all columns. B is then the only grid from the selection that fits.
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Sep 20, 2022 12:12
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Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying 
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Sep 20, 2022 13:14
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Carthag Tuek posted:Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying Illustration of the logic of the puzzle:  e: How long did it take you to figure out Beezle? I figured they were aligned in a 3x3 format for a reason but couldn't figure it out; most of my ideas were based on comparing the aligned rows and columns in the grids. Count Uvula has a new favorite as of 13:57 on Sep 20, 2022 |
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Sep 20, 2022 13:48
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About 10-15 mins maybe. Wouldn't have been able to answer it in a job interview setting I'm sure.
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Sep 20, 2022 15:00
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drat i would never have gone that way lol. well done
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Sep 20, 2022 15:27
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Beezle posted:About 10-15 mins maybe. Wouldn't have been able to answer it in a job interview setting I'm sure. Watch it be a captcha to see if you looked up the answers to the test beforehand
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Sep 20, 2022 20:19
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Sentient Data posted:Watch it be a captcha to see if you looked up the answers to the test beforehand Now I wonder if an AI would be able to solve incredibly fast, or if it would take quite some time. On the one hand, AIs are really good at pattern recognition, on the other hand, that's one obtuse pattern there.
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Sep 20, 2022 21:17
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thread starting to unironically live up to its subtitle
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Sep 21, 2022 00:06
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Yeah I'm not sure raven's progressive matrices are actually fun
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Sep 21, 2022 00:12
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cant cook creole bream posted:Now I wonder if an AI would be able to solve incredibly fast, or if it would take quite some time. That way lie Bongard problems.
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Sep 21, 2022 05:22
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The lamest pattern recognition test I have ever seen in the wild during an interview was a bit bullshit. It went something like this. 2,10,8,6,12,3,15,-,9,- Fill the two blanks. Of course I don't remember the exact numbers anymore, so this example may be simple, but it looked like there was a pattern and I kept on searching only to fail by the fourth or fifth one. I wasted several minutes on that one, while I did the others in seconds. I think I literally slapped my head when I saw the correct solution.
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Sep 21, 2022 10:40
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I'm just curious what kind of jobs have these pattern tests during the application.
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Sep 21, 2022 15:36
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Captain Hygiene posted:I'm just curious what kind of jobs have these pattern tests during the application. Okay imagine you were a "gifted child" when you were a kid and everyone always told you how smart you are, then you get promoted to a hiring position in a company
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Sep 21, 2022 16:01
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Captain Hygiene posted:I'm just curious what kind of jobs have these pattern tests during the application. I work at a software company and they do testing like this for every single role. You have to complete it twice, once online and then in-office.
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Sep 21, 2022 18:19
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