unreality

you have a stairwell outside with a certain number of wide steps on it. On each step is a 5 Liter bucket full to the 1 Liter mark with water. When you tip over a bucket, all of its contents are emptied, with 1/2 going down the stairs and away and the other 1/2 being distributed equally among all the lower buckets. In the case of the lowest bucket on the lowest stair, when you tip its ENTIRE contents will go away. Right after tipping a bucket, you place it upright again, ready to receive. If a bucket surpasses 5 Liters ever, the excess will run off and 1/2 will dissipate and the other 1/2 of the excess will be spread over lower buckets. There are ten stairs; ten buckets; ten total liters of water. EASY: (a) What is the method of tipping buckets to empty all buckets in as few of steps as possible? LESS EASY BUT STILL PROBABLY EASY: (b) What is the method of tipping buckets so as to prolong the eventual "total-emptiness" of the system as long as possible? How many steps can it go? ~~~ example of tipping the topmost bucket where '1' is the bottom stair, '2' the second bottom-est, etc: 10: 1 9: 1 8: 1 7: 1 6: 1 5: 1 4: 1 3: 1 2: 1 1: 1 tip #10, 0.5 liters go away and 0.5 get split over the remaining 9, adding 1/18 to each 1 10: 0 9: 19/18 8: 19/18 7: etc

The clock reads 8:42.... the detectives are proposing questioning people one-by-one in a separate room (aka PMs), and meanwhile lots of chitter chatter going on among the guests...

plutonic dingdong ras tafar

haha there's so much stuff going on under the surface, interlocked, it's fun watching this...

microdot tailless kazooman

Alliances are already starting to form behind the scenes (and i like how they're in character in PMs it's awesome haha) but remember - someone among you is the would-be murderer!

remember to... * in the beginning put your character's name in parentheses at the beginning of your post til everyone learns who everyone is (in izzy's case, (Maw) "..etc") * if you have an out-of-character question please PM me, but answering izzy's, feel free to make it up When there's anything in doubt about your character that would fit with the rest of the character, make it up and flesh out your character's past, present, etc, as much as you want

you guys might be interested in

also for your first few posts could you put your character name in parentheses at the beginning of your post? This will help everyone learn more quickly who everyone is, thanks! And from here on out, you are officially always in character, if you have a comment or question about the game itself please send me a private message!

All PMs have been sent out, and so it begins! Real Time: 8:23 PM EST ... Official Game Time: 7 PM galactic standard time aka five hours to midnight

first, if you want to have an abortion debate, take it to the Abortion topic (my personal stance is anti-abortion but i think the choice should be up to the mother) and L Jayden, why aren't you a pacifist? It doesn't mean you're against all war (at least not the way i would describe myself), it's just acknowledging how terrible war is and how all other options should be attempted first

I've decided I'll send out the secret-info PMs once everyone has selected their character. Once you have received this PM, you are eligible to start roleplaying haha

PERSONAGES Here they are: first come first serve. Just repost this list along with your username before your selected character to show it's been claimed. Some of the characters need you to make a name for it, such as Detectives A&B, Dockhand, Human Servant, Party Crasher, and Amnesiac Detective A - angry, insistent, by-the-book, impatient, wants answers Detective B - chill, laid-back, stoned out of his or her mind, but has interesting insight Dockhand - practical, rough around the edges, just getting dough for the wife and kids back on Earth Human Servant - careful, precise, very professional and always snaps to attention of Rombridge; rises in the ranks to be personal manservant to such an important guy Mr McCudgeon - victorian royalty, distant cousin of the prince. A heavily bewhiskered man who's here to pretend to be nice while gleaning pieces of informational meat to use in his business of interstellar commerce (being the CEO of Star Merchants Incorporated) Mrs McCudgeon - his wife; this is the person that gets drunk way before everyone else Chief Mlaku - leader of the human tribespeople that have assimilated into the local flora and fauna of the forest planet of Shoshth; Mlaku is very strange (and it's a running joke that the gender is unknown) and talks in somewhat broken english with even stranger social customs Maw(dry) Mivvelton - renowned poet(ess) and painter. Cliche artistic bohemian to the point of being a sellout. However, his/her work is absolutely loved by Rombridge and he invites him/her to every party and event like this Party Crasher - yep some punk kid with an astro-harpoon managed to break in with a video camera to prove his/her stunt to his/her friends back at the one of many orbital space station residence units. Except the video camera may have captured useful footage… Captain(ess) Fleur - the sharp-eyed captain of the LEVIATHAN, Rombridge's ship, and a renowned ex-space-stunt(wo)man. The only person here qualified for an exterior shell traversal procedure. Fleur is an extremely stubborn Baptist straight from Kentucky, drawl and all Amnesiac - this person had no clue what their name was until they saw it on their wallet ID along with 500 dollars in cash. They have no idea how they got here. Their name wasn't on the guest list. They've become sort of the interesting focus of the party, with all the rich patrons eager to hear & gossip about this development Hex4dash9 - special all-purpose synthetically-intelligent servant robot. TALKS IN ALL CAPS. Has to follow a certain list of rules only known to h4-9 ~~~ once you've made a selection, I'll PM you with additional details (either right after or reasonably soon after). The game begins when all the roles are taken. If you want to join, you still can before it officially begins! I can make more characters

OKay, LAST chance for any new members?

haha I was just going to post that Also, from Digital Fortress by Dan Brown: "It is said that in death, all things become clear; Ensei Tankado now knew it was true" his books may be incredibly formulaic but Digital Fortress is still one of my all-time faves

Thanks guys! And there really isn't a fixed time for a game hour, probably just about every day or two. I think I'll start the game later this afternoon so if everyone could please PM anyone that hasn't signed up yet and might like to play and let them know about it, that would be awesome (since there's so many fresh faces(avatars?) on brainden now haha, I can't keep track) edit: no dawh it's not real-time, you can be gone most of tonight and it will be cool. I'm thinking 16-32 hours as a rough estimate for an ingame hour

well what do you guys think. Should we wait a couple days to get any stragglers on board? It's my birthday tomorrow but sometime Saturday i'd be able to kick it off. Or I could at any point in the afternoon today

And the book Snow Crash is full of hilarious/amazing quotes. Its first sentence is: "The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory". But there are so many good lines in that book... like, just flipping through randomly, we've got "These are slum housing, 5-by-10s and 10-by-10s where Yanoama tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of burning lottery tickets".

Actually the word is 'elohim' which is the plural of 'el'. The Torah started out in polytheism (multiple Gods) and became monotheistic later chronologically, so the word Elohim changed from being plural to being "plural intensive" allowing it to be a single God edit: in other words the originally first sentence was "In the beginning the Gods created the heaven and the earth."

three different solutions have already been found above me (although only Hugo's follows the official rules) but here's a fourth:

i'll be gone all day Friday, so maybe we should get this rolling midday thursday (tomorrow)? Either that or saturday morning?