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A place to come and discuss the features of this site, as well as suggest/request additions and modifications. Oh yeah, and Bug reports too.
Stephen
2006-03-12 18:24:43
[suggestion] New Category of riddle

Sorry, I sent this as a "problem" to levik using "petition director" ;cause I didn't think about using forums. Here is the basic idea of how I petitioned Levik:

This is more of a suggestion than a problem.

One of my favorite types of riddles are those that require a group of people (such as this community) who ask a series of yes or no questions, to determine the answer. Here is a very basic example:

A man dies. What happened?

Answer, he was skydiving and his parachute didn't open.

The "riddle-solvers" would ask the "riddle-teller" yes-or-no questions to solve it. Note: Most of these riddles are more descriptive (like: a bell rang, a man died, a bell rang).

You could have a category for that (I'm not really sure what to call it), and perhaps require that the author log in once per day to answer the questions until the riddle is solved. This would be more of a group effort and anyone could contribute, unlike other categories where less riddle-inclined people just browse the site and don't really contribute.

A quick note... if you do implement it, then you should make it so that, after the riddle is approved by scholars/journeymen, the author has to activate it himself. That way it doesn't get posted when he is out of town for a while or something.

Anyways, just a thought. I have several of those types of riddles and they are usually very fun to solve.

Stephen
2006-03-12 18:27:07
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

Oh, and if you (levik) would rather, I could simply post those types of riddles here in the forums. I won't do it without your permission though, since it's expressly against the rules of this site...

brianjn
2006-03-13 00:46:34
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

Sorry, I do have other things in mind, I have briefly scanned this, and I apologise if I haven't taken this all in.

This looks a little like a game of "Charades", would this be close to your idea?
It would certainly be a possible addition to the site, but ...
I cannot perceive how that would fit with Levik's philosophy of this site
The 'ever-present' author seems to present a problem (I'd hate to suggest that
a 'committee' be given the task should the author default)
I am thinking that many other regulars here would not accept this; as for me,
in all honesty, unless you can prove some value in this, my outlook is
negative.
If other members can see merit, and means of providing responses (a la author),
then I have no problem. It could just be another Forum or addon
Chatterbox. :-)

Stephen
2006-03-13 03:40:02
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

I wouldn't label it as "charades"... it seems quite different than that to me. More like "20 questions"

As for the ever-present author, that is the biggest problem. Obviously, only those interested would post such a riddle. And perhaps it could be set up in such a way that only a user who has reached apprentice can post this type of thing.

I can see that it would be a lot of work, and if levik isn't excited about it, then it will probably never happen. Which is ok with me... I'm just making suggestions.

goFish
2006-03-14 08:43:32
Lateral thinking

Am I right in thinking that you are thinking about "lateral thinking" problems? These are good fun but have not featured in these pages. I think they are fairly within the ambit and would be well answered by this community.

Hugo
2006-03-14 10:11:46
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

Lateral thinking puzzles have been posted in the past on Perplexus, but the general feeling seems to be that this is not the preferred type of puzzle. Main argument for that is the fact that the set up of Perplexus is not ideal for solving latheral thinking puzzles, you need fast interaction between the solver's and the poster.

Before I landed here on Perplexus, I spend far too much time at the excellent site of Paul Sloane which contains hundreds of L.T. problems, with a number of very sharp puzzle solvers hanging around. I tried to find it again, but it doesn't show up in the first couple of Google pages.

Stephen, you are of course free to postr lateral thinking puzzles, maybe they get through. I for one can live with the Perplexus infrastructure when solving a L.T. puzzle once in a while.

Hugo
2006-03-14 10:30:12
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

Okay, found it: http://www.lateralpuzzles.com/
One fun side is mentionned by Stephen already: solving can be a group effort, or even a team effort. That's something I am missing here, that was much more present at the mentioned site.

atheron
2006-03-14 12:52:30
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

This might be a nice idea but really hard to make it work properly :{

Tristan
2006-03-14 20:39:55
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

A bit of Perplexus lore for you.

I think several years ago, at least one lateral thinking puzzle was posted on this site. I believe this is the one. Based on the response to this puzzle, Levik decided that LT puzzles would not work properly with Perplexus' structure, precisely because they require many yes/no questions.

Anyway, it's now an unwritten rule among voters that we're not to push lateral thinking puzzles, though there's a little grey area here. This is pretty much the only category that is "banned" on perplexus, except maybe string puzzles (inside joke).

Stephen
2006-03-16 01:01:55
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

In response to Tristan:

Aww, that's sad :(

I guess the best way for it to work in a way that the users get instant answers is to set up a time for a live chat. Perhaps several times to repeat the same puzzle (in case a few people can't make it that want to.

I tried posting one of these puzzles on my site (http://stevish.com), but I don't have very many readers, and only a few of them like LT puzzles. So I think I've answered about 4 questions in as many days.

I guess there's nothing left to do other than post the puzzle and hope I catch some LT-loving scholors/journeymen :)

Hugo
2006-03-16 12:26:21
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

Go for it Stephen, there are a number of new scholars and JM, maybe now it is possible to get three TU's on a LT puzzle.

Stephen
2006-03-17 14:50:19
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

Just did it. We'll see what happens

Gamer
2006-03-17 15:19:53
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

I don't think we should let history repeat itself. No reason to make the same mistake twice, right?

Hugo is right though, there are a lot of journeymen, so a minority can comprise of 3 TUs and thus get posted anyway.

Gamer
2006-03-17 15:22:39
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

I know a lot of the voters think they are cool, but just not good for this particular site. It looks like there are plenty of other sites though that you can try, like the site Hugo gave.

Stephen
2006-03-19 14:37:29
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

For everyone's information, Levik got back to me and said that Lateral Thinking puzzles kinda go against the idea of the site. So I'll keep all mine over at www.lateralpuzzles.com.

Gamer
2006-03-19 16:00:35
Re: [suggestion] New Category of riddle

lateralpuzzles looks like a great site though; thanks for trying to contribute anyways. Don't hesitate to ask about problem types in the future; problems like t1eq6n (http://perplexus.info/show.php?pid=1200) were interesting and led the way for another type of problem.

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