plasmid

There are a number of trivial solutions that could fit the OP, like saying "move half of the chips in the middle pile into the leftmost stack, and move the other half into the rightmost stack" and then saying "move a chip from the left (or right) stack to the middle stack)" X times. I think we might need more details about what sorts of instructions are legal in this problem, and what sorts aren't.

Well look at what the Yuli-tide has brung! The place is getting overrun with mafioso (whistles innocently). Right on with the answer to this one.

And because I don't like to follow rules too closely I could also do with posting some more. For now, one that's not so tough as to scare away all but the seasoned veterans.

Entombed alive yet I survived To glimpse once again at the sun But legs to ground are shackled down Curtailing all efforts to run In body lies a dozen knives My crown's sure to split and to smell A robber's spear flew by my ear Be thankful this ended so well Apologies in advance if I'm not able to log in every day to check answers

Now you're cookin' with gas! Good to see you back, Wilson. A PM to rookie (or maybe a mod) to have a password reset should be able to get you your old account back, if you haven't already sent one. We can't have you just running around with an ampersand whatever that symbol's real name is like that.

I'm not a vampire, as it sucks blood rather than envenoming. Along those lines, I'll also preemptively say I'm not a poisonous snake, since the riddle speaks of a serpent's fang and I wouldn't put the answer in the riddle itself that blatantly. I'm something quite unrelated.

Thanks for kicking off the guessing on this one. I'm neither a porcupine nor a rose, though. When this one's solved, it should be fairly obvious without very much loose interpretation.

Ah, I should have kept current events in mind.

Nestled perched upon my cliff On either side the herd doth stream At wat'ring hole they catch my whiff The starving beast craves blood supreme I bear and bare a serpent's fang Inflicting burn with venom dear And thus my prey, away it sprang My fire's roar it's sure to hear

I can come close, but not quite get this one yet. But to get started: Are we allowed to use shenanigans like putting stacks of coins at different distances from the fulcrum of the balance? If so then it should become easier.

First things first, you could post an idea for a mafia and a preliminary design. Some of us old-bies could look it over and see if it looks doable and more-or-less balanced. I'd recommend keeping it smallish, maybe 8-9 players at the very most, so signups don't take forever. I'll be pretty tied up with a complex game elsewhere and not able to co-host for a while, but we could see who's available as a mentor host when it gets closer to game time.

Yep plainglazed, that's me. I've had time to read and think just a little bit about this... not enough to flesh out an algorithm, but enough to appreciate how slick that approach is.

Granted, we find yet another way to cure cancer in lab mice that ends up not panning out in human clinical trials. I wish for a Wolfgang (guitar). A standard, fully functioning one that was not stolen and is not filled with fire ants.

If a mod is reading this, it should probably be moved to the Games section. Granted, but it turns out that the universe is completely deterministic and nothing is decided by luck. I wish for all the dirty dishes piling up in my sink to be cleaned, undamaged, not poisoned, not on fire or at any reasonable risk of combustion, and sitting in their proper places in my cabinets. ("Sitting" implies that they are at rest and not traveling at near-light speed about to bore a hole through the walls.)

My answer would depend on a clarification of the OP. But I think I should put the clarification questions in a spoiler because I feel like understanding what clarification questions need to be asked is really the heart of the riddle. As for the video, curr3nt and Rob_Gandy already made the main points about not accounting for non-extreme cases, and not accounting for the possibility that interventions will fail. I would also add the need to account for the possibility that environmental destruction through pollution and whatnot might not be the factor that ultimately determines when humanity devolves into a mess of savages barely able to survive. World War III, comet collisions, and alien invasions might all happen first. In fact, excessive pollution might be just the thing that kills off a mutating multidrug-resistant bacteria before it fully evolves and spreads to cause a plague that makes the Black Death look like a case of the sniffles.

I'm no expert on the various different flavors of infinity, but would simply rephrasing Bushindo's answer do? Edit: If we're still not there yet, maybe giving us an example of what it takes to prove that you have an infinitely long sequence would help clarify the goal.

I'm not particularly good at puzzles like this, but some context might help. Is this riddle part of a story? Or one in a series of riddles where the previous riddles or answers might give us an idea of what it's getting at? Or from a website about the game Twister?

Ah, the dangers of interpreting medical research. The way the OP is posed - looking at data in the hospital over the past month and seeing how patients who got treatment A did compared to those who got treatment B - is what's called a retrospective study. These are generally considered to be the least reliable studies for comparing the effects of two different treatments, and the biggest confounding factor in interpreting them tends to be that the physicians aren't randomly assigning patients to different therapies (although there are certainly other confounders). For example: does having ICU level of care actually do people any good? If the survival of hospitalized patients who go to the ICU is 60%, and the survival of those who don't go to the ICU is 95%, a very simple minded interpretation would be that ICUs are no good and are actually harming patients. Of course, what's really going on is that doctors are sending patients to the ICU only if they look like they're in serious trouble and have a higher chance of dying in the first place. If you really wanted to find out if ICUs work, you'd have to do a randomized study - say anytime a doctor wants to send someone to the ICU, the study coordinator flips a coin and then either allows or prohibits sending them to the unit. (Of course, then you have to get informed consent from patients who are willing to sign up for a study that will randomize them to having or not having ICU availability; good luck getting people to sign up.) In this case, the docs are more likely to give treatment A to a woman and B to a man, and within each gender patients who got treatment B were more likely to recover. If you ask the docs why they're doing that, they might be able to give you a good reason. (Maybe B is a better treatment for motion sickness but causes excessive facial hair growth?) So to answer the question posed of which treatment to select for the hospital - there's not enough information presented.

This problem calls for a different approach. The reason is:

The Chad's edit has it; the clues and their meaning are hopefully clear when the answer's in mind.

Not any sort of timepiece. Time Out's heading in the right direction, but not there yet. Be sure to pay attention to what the "I" in the riddle is because, well, this is a "what am I" riddle after all.

Wealth you've amassed clinging on fast Spoils your highness has won Ominous day, harbinger grey Troops from the North on the run Route laid awry, hasty am I Leaving my herald in wake Arrow in flight level thy might Shattering visage opaque Under thy nose laden it goes Robbing for serf from the rich Plunder's their gain not without pain Surely their payback's a bit