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plasmid

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Posts posted by plasmid

  1. On 12/13/2018 at 2:16 PM, CaptainEd said:

    Plasmid, In what sense is this not a total solution?

    Well, I've shown a lot of ways where Arcsin could win, but I don't actually prove that Arctan can win in cases that aren't covered in the above ramblings. An ideal solution would be along the lines of: "If the composition of the Praesidium meets these criteria then Arcsin has a strategy that's guaranteed to win, and if it doesn't fit those criteria then Arctan has a strategy that's guaranteed to win."

  2. 23 hours ago, tojo928 said:

    My try at it

      Reveal hidden contents

    Consider the middle pin to be any color (since it doesn't matter) so lets say "o". Now consider all the pins adjacent to it and note that the adjacent faces of the hexagon have to have either both be the opposite color of the center or one has to be the same and the other has to be different from the center. There is only one way (really a bunch with mirroring and rotating) that this can be accomplished without creating the same color triangles

          x     x

    o        o        o

         x        x

    No consider the bottom two corners of the larger triangle. They would have to be "o" in the schematic because of the bold underlined "x"s. With both of those the top would have be an "x" because of the largest triangle possible would be the same color but this can not be because the triangle created by the top 3 pins.

    Therefore this is not possible and this guy is clearly hammered since he couldn't see this.

     

    I had to think about it a bit to convince myself that the statement at the end of the first paragraph is really true, but I believe it is. For anyone not seeing it easily:

    Spoiler

    Imagine drawing two equilateral triangles in a star-of-David pattern connecting the six pins that surround the central pin (connecting B, F, and H and connecting C, D, and I as shown below).

    ...A...
    ..B.C..
    .D.E.F.
    G.H.I.J

    Since those two triangles are equilateral, neither of them can be all one color. Pick one pin from one of the triangles and color it the central pin's color (say pins E and B are both red), and you know that the other triangle (C-D-I) must also have at least one pin that's the central pin's color so it's not monochromatic. If either C or D is the same color as B and E, then they'll form an equilateral triangle, so the only possible solution would be if pin I is the same color as B and E.

     

  3. I'm not a picture frame. Tough in my mind to interpret it as having been found only by those now dead.
    Also not a skydiver. I'm something more commonly known for grabbing everything.
    Not an excavator. I don't envision him hanging and then being hung by the same "man".
    And also not a shovel for similar reasoning.

  4. I watched the video, and overall liked it. Since you asked for feedback: with the video format, I think I would prefer to see the question and be told to pause to have time to think of the answer before it appears instead of having a set amount of time for each question, since with at least some of them you either know it or you don't right off the bat. As it is, I got a little annoyed waiting a minute for the answer if I already knew it.

    The other main comment is something DejMar sort of alluded to, that there are potentially multiple answers that would make sense for some of the riddles. In particular the second one, I also interpreted it as most likely being a gotcha where each number in the sequence is (n)/(n+1), so the final term x/1000 comes after 9/10 and should equal 10/11, meaning x = 10 x 1000 / 11. Only after realizing that it wouldn't be an integer did I decide that it probably wasn't what you intended to ask, so the answer should be the other thing I had in mind and be x = 999. With the light switch, when I saw it here I thought there must be three positions with something like "off" going to "medium", "medium" going either to "off" or to "high", and "high" going only to "medium" so there would be a unique answer -- after any even number of flips the switch must be back at "medium" -- whereas with the youtube version if you change directions during flipping you could either end up at the original position or 180 degrees away. For the question of painting 8s, I could have interpreted a couple of ways: you could argue that he would only paint 8 once (if it's referring to house number 8, or just the number 8 and not other numbers that happen to have 8 as a digit), that he would paint it 20 times (if you mean the total number of digits that are 8), or maybe even 19 times (if you mean the total number of houses with any 8 on them, although that's a less likely interpretation). DejMar commented on the ambiguity of whether the question with Little Johnny is talking about making it home with the original $300 dollars or the money that the man is offering, but I suppose that ambiguity needs to be present or else it wouldn't be much of a riddle. And the last question seems like it might be a bit offensive if asked to a woman.

    It might not be possible to make the questions entirely unambiguous, especially the question about Little Johnny since the ambiguity is what makes it a riddle in the first place, but sometimes simple things like saying "how many times does he have to paint the digit 8" can help make it unambiguous. In general, I would say to check for (and ask other people to check for) unintended ways that the questions might be interpreted.

    • Like 1
  5. I’d grab ahold of all I can
    Relentless in my spree
    Amidst the crimes I hung a man
    And then the man hung me
    I met some more of my own kind
    We really got along
    In open hid where none could find
    Except the dead and gone

    A pretty easy one to follow up on that walloping

  6. Maybe it would help to have a picture of the pins to color

    1380148241_bowlingpins.png.39ae47dbe15a2f9fcc6751b0ec0b48cb.png

    So if he had that arrangement Captain Ed showed and X's were red striped while O's were black striped, he would have the equilateral triangle of red pins shown in blue (plus a horizontal mirror image of it connecting three black striped pins in an equilateral triangle).

    754229360_bowlingpinscolor.png.78bdf4f4151812c7bebbb46a683ebb90.png

    And your task is to prove how many cold ones he had when he made that statement.

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