plainglazed

hey fabpig - gotta hand it to you, correct on both accounts. that's the first of the parts and as had mentioned, put these together late night. hard to temper the difficulty on these types. hoping the common thread will help but am making some edits to the OP, too. good work.

if what you dont know wont kill you and what wont kill you makes you stronger, then what you dont know must make you stronger.

SLICE

wellll, yes and no. you picked a poor one am afraid. come to think of it, put these together fairly late last night so i'd better check them all. see this one has potentially two directions to subtract, the "don't" and "strip". A different "landing strip" is needed then subtracting ("don't") the word for "go toward" leaves the answer. makes sense from the perspective of a typical cryptic clue but not what's intended here you big ham .

Exorcise a man of the cloth Wig out in haste Don't go toward the landing strip hospital roof Wasn't in a rush to have sent That type of compliment is unsupported Storm shelter escape pod - or - Moved downwind from the beans Collapsed in a heap, barely alive Nullify John's advantages The business end of a gun A startling covert affair Each line describes with synonyms/short definitions, two different words and some kind of direction that one of the words should be subtracted from the other. The answer then remains with each of the ten fitting a general theme hinted at in the title. Like Somethings Fishy Here Also: the answer is present in its entirety within the main word and only separates the subtracted word in two i.e. there is no need to rearrange letters.

So sometimes/more often than not you would do better than 27 trials but no guarantee. This is actually more along the lines of what i was thinking of to reduce the number of trials. Can fairly simply guarantee in at most twenty one trials, the order of the twenty six cards. As for EH's 14-ish, starting to get a better grip on the ideas but as far as my high speed population counter - am still processing...

agree wholeheartedly. used to think the mark of excellence in riddling was that when all is understood and seemingly so simple after the answer is revealed. but the delayed headslap adds yet another level of excellence all together. very nice WoS!

ah, but you can drop the first letter and add to the end or vice versa, as well.

hey bub, watch where you're going. i mean, welcome to BrainDen. get your point, should have probably stated she shuffled the deck. this puzzle was kinda a continuation of a previous one so one could presume the deck to have been previously used. all true, save for that last bit. had figured this to be the logical starting point hello Assassin.MTS - ah yes, you've pointed out the dilemna quite well and welcome to the Den. and @ augustinus - welcome to you as well. had originally intended only black and red as responses but am curious as to your method mentioned above. sorry to have apparently abandoned this thread. have had a tough end of the week. didnt quote WoS above and am still working out Phil's extension of your reply. when first working out this puzzle, seemed to think that in the worst case, a comprehensive binary reduction would still take 26 trials. am rethinking/still thinking. and at EventHorizon, not a programmer but hope to try to follow your code to hopefully gain some insight into how that works. maybe should have worded the question differently and asked for descriptions of methods that did better than 27 trials rather than asking for the minimum number of trials. probably still would have gotten to this same place fairly quickly - i.e. in way over my head.

am thinking double digits at least. but by judging the local BrainDen logicians, especially after who's to say?

or the evil two-faced mega-Mastermind... tried to search to see if similar had been proferred. did i fail?

Yes, I believe so. The original sequence of the half of the deck in play never changes. First trial is basically, as you said, a binary sequence of Red and Black of length 26 with the responder stating the number of cards that are correct in color and position. The second trial would be another such sequence where presumably one or more of the elements is switched (so not necessary to repeat the first trial) and the responder again states the number of cards that are correct in color and position. Etc. EDIT: stating the correct position and color of all twenty-six cards counts as the last trial.

hope it's okay i skipped dessert and went straight to the drinks .

After safely landing and partially thawing in Yellowknife, the logicians returning from the ACofL Fresh Air/Fresh Ideas annual seminar began to settle their nerves as they settled down in the airport bar before continuing onto the next leg of their journey. As would be expected, not too many drinks later, one of the logicians pulled out their deck of complimentary playing cards. She cut the deck exactly in half, and proposed to the others: "Tell me the color of each of these twenty-six cards in succession. For each try, I'll tell you how many you have gotten correct. What is the fewest number of trials before I'm guaranteed to say, 'twenty-six'"?

ooh, that's excellent ColdTaco. then maybe...

nope, not a person.

Cant quite make all the connections. yet... fun stuff, definitely think something sweet would be well received, too.

neither, TheCube. granted, your first one above is pretty good.

hey Aaryan - not that. perhaps this one is almost like a plasmid "I'm not a..." (but with a sophomoric rhyming scheme and not as metaphoric)? both you and TheCube have hit upon the "story" but there is an intended underlying meaning describing What Am I.

That Guy - TheCube - he's back. not it though am afraid.

When approval is sought Maybe then i'll come to your aid Best you take my advise The day it was actually made Keep on hitting the books If you intend on making the grade Pounding out results After the price has been paid Bouncing back and forth Though this message must be conveyed Now tell me please, if you see These words i've hopefully displayed

my GUESS is it is six...

well, that puts me squarly in third place. am also curious if there is a way to eek out another (or more) mixing techniques or otherwise. very nicely figured EventHorizon. even i could manage being the assistant with this scheme. cheers