plasmid

Thanks for kicking this one off, Thalia. I'm not anything having to do with the immune system this time around. While the clues in this one are relatively subtle, there are some words scattered about that wouldn't really be invoked by a description of the immune system so much as by what I am.

We're being intruded by migrants secluded Who stowaway past our frontier They're costing us green and will linger unseen Unless I should get into gear Their nature I'll dredge as I perch on a ledge And twisting the truth's my endeavor Exposed to the nation, and next: deportation They thought they'd endure thus forever? I promise the answer has nothing to do with politics

I think phaze is right about the most practical answer. If that fails, I tend to agree with bonanova.

Right on, Thalia. And I guess the bright side is that that wasn't a handwritten assignment.

Monty Hall was out sick today, so his brother Donny Hall filled in as the host of Let's Make a Deal. But people quickly discovered why Monty was chosen as the regular host in the first place. It was a bad sign when Donny asked a contestant "Would you like to keep that $100, or trade it for the trip to Hawaii inside the mystery box?" Worse was when he offered prizes for drawing a heart or spade and zonks for drawing a diamond or club, but presented the deck of cards face-up for contestants to draw from. Although the producers are sobbing with their heads in their hands off in the production booth, they haven't yet had a commercial break to give young Donny a crash course in hostmanship. And now he comes to you with an offer to win a car, a donkey, or a lifetime supply of air behind doors #1, #2, or #3. You choose door #2. Donny continues with "All right, the first door you didn't pick was door #1 so let's see what's behind that door." It's opened to reveal a lifetime supply of air. Now you're given the chance to stay with door #2 or switch to door #3. (Donny also offered the chance to switch to door #1, but let's ignore that option for the purpose of this puzzle.) Which door should you pick?

My buddies and I were inseparable mates Til one by one were we split My teacher, she gave me a smack on the pate And off in the corner I sit Admittedly still I'm not hitting the books Though now I'm hugging a tree I guess in the end it's not bad as it looks; I went from a C to a B

It's just that this is really hard. We know there are operations on both the first and second input that make it non-monotonic (since 2 ||| 11 = 11, 7 ||| 11 = 16, 8 ||| 11 = 12; and 7 ||| 3 = 8, 7 ||| 11 = 16, 7 ||| 28 = 12). It's also alternating between increasing and decreasing multiple times based on the inputs with X ||| 11, so it's not just a matter of having the difference between the inputs (or some function along those lines) play a role. My best guesses are still that greatest common denominator or least common multiple or modular arithmetic are coming into play, but I don't see a solution emerging with any of those approaches. The strongest clue seems to be that so far, for any value of N, we've had 2 ||| N = N (so maybe it is monotonic in the special case where the first number is 2?)

There needs to be some sort of probability distribution of finding any given amount of money in the chests. That is, you ought to be able to say "there's an X% chance that the chest with the smaller amount of money contains between $Y and $Z." If you make Y be zero, then you should be able to say "there's an X% chance that the chest with the smaller amount of money contains $Z or less." Since the chest with the larger amount of money contains twice as much as the one with the smaller amount of money, you would also be able to say "there's an X% chance that the chest with the larger amount of money contains 2*$Z or less". And the odds that the chest with the larger amount of money contains $Z or less is obviously less than the odds that it contains 2*$Z or less. So should switch because, regardless of exactly how much money is in the chest, there exists some value for Z that proves that you're more likely to have randomly picked the chest with the smaller amount of money. Disproof of the above, obviously wrong, hand-waving argument is left as an exercise for the reader.

The other games I remember playing here are the EPYC games, and a programming game unreality ran where people wrote subroutines to play rock-paper-scissors against other peoples' subroutines within a program he wrote (which would obviously have a narrower audience than a game that doesn't need programming). And I remember Prof T posting a game idea on MM called Resistance that's mafia-like but doesn't have players being killed off as the game progresses. And there's always mafia. Any others you can think of?

"Slinky", so is that what the kids are calling it these days? I pick #1.

I pick #5

I'll go with #5

I'll go with #2

WORDS - zomothery 1. Room filled with smoke of a mind altering drug. 2. The practice of casting spells. 3. Origin of zumo. 4. An establishment specializing in saunas. 5. Medical treatment using raw meat, such as steak, on a black eye. 6. Act of taking in and raising wild animals. Players: dee - picks # araver - picks # plainglazed - picks # marksmanjay - picks # logophobic - picks # plasmid - picks #2 Nana - picks # Framm - picks # I'm torn between 1 and 2, but I think the real term for #1 is "Pink Floyd Concert"

DATES - January 12, 1964 1. NFL Pro Bowl: West beats East 31-17. 2. The first Super Bowl took place. 3. Verrazano Narrows opens as worlds longest suspension bridge. 4. The Beatles play live on the Late Show. 5. The Sultan of Zanzibar was banished from his country. 6. The Crunchy Captain's Cereal was renamed Cap'n Crunch. 7. First successful test of the repaired alien ship that had crash landed at Roswell in the 50s. 8. An avalanche buries a school, killing more than 100 children. Players: dee - picks #6 araver - picks # plainglazed - picks # marksmanjay - picks # logophobic - picks # plasmid - picks #5 Nana - picks #5 Framm - picks #

I have no idea. I'll pick #3.

These rules seem to promote chattering in support of your own definition to get more people to vote for it. It would look disingenuous if you argued for your own definition and didn't have your vote on it, but the only way to have your vote score points is if it's on the correct definition at the deadline. Now how would one go about handling that conundrum if you wanted both to get as many points as possible both from swaying people to vote for your definition and also have a chance to guess at the right definition? 1. School for Pokemon Beast Evolution 2. Society of Parrot Breeders and Exhibitors 3. self-performed breast exam 4. Society of Peanut Butter Exporters 5. Small People Big Emotions 6. Super Pokemon Balderdash Extravaganza 7. Society for Peace, Brotherhood, and Equality 8. Serum Protein Binding Exam Players: dee - picks 7 araver - picks # plainglazed - picks 2 marksmanjay - picks # logophobic - picks # plasmid - picks 3 Nana - picks # Framm - picks # My vote, which might or might not have anything to do with that.

PEOPLE - William G. Morgan 1. Famous Carribean Pirate under the alias "Captain Blood". 2. A pirate who became the model and namesake of Captain Morgan rum. 3. An entrepreneur in the steel industry who went on to found an investment company. 4. The first man to successfully swim across the English Channel. 5. A Major League Baseball second baseman who played for the Giants. 6. Gym teacher who invented the game of volleyball. 7. Morgan of Morgan & Chase. Players: dee araver plainglazed marksmanjay logophobic plasmid - pick #2 Nana Framm Yo ho ho and a-one o' those.

dee - voting for Number 1 araver - voting for Number 3 plainglazed - voting for Number 7 marksmanjay - voting for Number 5 logophobic - voting for Number 3 plasmid - voting for Number 3 Nana - voting for Number 3 Framm - voting for Number 2

Host - maurice Red - Blue - dee Green - Araver Purple - Plainglazed Orange - marksmanjay LimeGreen - LoGo Cyan - plasmid Brown - HotPink - nana Gray - Framm I'll be NCyan Cat.

I'm not sure how to even approach this analytically. But I was able to get some C code working very efficiently, and found that every number up to at least a billion can be represented by the sum of a triangular, square, and pentagonal number. This algorithm starts of with the pentagonal number as large as it can be without exceeding the target value and gradually decreases the pentagonal number if there are no combination of a triangle and square with it that can hit the target value, so finding a solution with a large pentagonal number is suggestive that there are many solutions for that target value. And when you get in the range of these large numbers, the pentagonal number is much greater than the triangular or square number. Output for some of the larger numbers (The algorithm only prints out solutions at every 1,000,000 values so it doesn't lose efficiency simply from printing out all the results, but it calculates a solution for every value, and would stop if it hits a value with no solution.) C code

I believe this gets honors as the best "cheating" answer thus far.

These partial differential equations are beyond me at the moment. But for the follow-on question, I'll posit the following: