Comments | sylvanstargazer: Back from hunt

sylvanstargazer

Back from hunt

Jan 14, 2011 19:37

A longer post will follow with more of my hunt experiences, but first, before I forget it all, I want to share a minor *cough* frustration I encountered.

( cut for explaining a puzzle, and the answer I got, and why I think my answer is better than theirs (besides just that I'm just that egotistical). )

Comments 7

leighjen January 17 2011, 14:53:50 UTC

I have the power to punish at least one of the writers. If it was he that was mean, I will do that for you, just say the word. :-)

sylvanstargazer January 17 2011, 19:19:34 UTC

Well, I realize he didn't intend to be mean; he just had incomplete information. They actually had a box that said "I am backsolving this", which wasn't visible to the people on the phone (presumably so they wouldn't say things like this? I'm not sure), but the issue could probably have been avoided if it was.

leighjen January 17 2011, 19:55:37 UTC

As much fun as it is for the running team to mock the backsolvers (and I am sure you have heard the ACME story about it), if the person on the phone can’t see the “yes, I backsolved it” button, it seems only polite to ask the solver if they did, in fact, backsolve before they pick on you for backsolving.

So, let me know. I have access to Plot. ;-)

saizai January 18 2011, 01:59:41 UTC

FWIW: It wasn't visible to us from the phone queue. It was visible in the previous answers log (as gray italics), which is an entirely different page.

Also, god damn is that a huge tangent to get launched into because of one letter. *forwards this post to team*

Thread 5

okosut January 18 2011, 21:34:35 UTC

I'm one of the authors of this puzzle. I can't imagine I can say anything that will prevent you from hating me forever, but I'm extremely sorry you got so frustrated working on it. The red herrings you found are truly astonishing, though, and I do kind of wish we'd written the puzzle you describe (though I'm sure our editors would have rejected it because it sounds too constrained to be writable).

All in all, I have no idea why we were supposed to prefer "ALLINCLAPC" to "ALLIN" which followed the pattern established up to that pointBasically, there wasn't a good reason. What we were thinking was that generally siteswaps are cyclical; for example when you juggle 441 you generally do 441441441441... So if you juggling ocarina, grail, illogic, conceit, and catnip in 75364 and repeat the pattern, you'll get ALLINCLAPCALLINCLAPCALLINCLAPC, so the exact start position doesn't matter. The problem is that the siteswaps in the rest of the puzzle aren't cyclical, so as a solver you're not necessarily thinking about it that way. Originally we ( ... )

Commenting before reading. yandros January 19 2011, 02:40:44 UTC

I can see that Jen responded, so I'm guessing that other constructors/running team members might also. To be clear, I'm responding now before reading any of the comments, and I apologize ahead of time if I'm unknowingly offending anyone who commented farther on ( ... )