Timeline for The end of open-ended puzzles
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 19, 2019 at 7:01 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor | I need to read this a few more times to respond fully, but one issue is that "challenging" is very subjective. What's trivial to you and me might be very challenging to someone with, for example, less mathematical background. We don't want - and I realise this is not what you're suggesting - to gatekeep out all puzzles which aren't so hard as to provide a challenge to all of our best puzzle solvers. (Edit: I hadn't refreshed the page and now see that Deus made the same point half an hour ago.) | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 6:47 | comment | added | Deusovi Mod | (To not clutter the comments, the rest of my response is in this chatroom.) | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 6:46 | comment | added | Deusovi Mod | Answer invalidation: I've responded to this many times already. Someone coming along long after an answer is accepted and posting a better answer in a 'normal' question doesn't make the previous one invalid, just "not as good". But in a "what's the optimal way to do this" question, a better answer does invalidate a worse one. | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 6:30 | comment | added | Deusovi Mod | Currently writing up a response, but as a preliminary comment - how do you propose to distinguish what is "challenging"? Should we add a "too easy" close reason? That seems problematic and pretty subjective. | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 1:41 | comment | added | Gareth McCaughan Mod | That's reasonable. For reasons I don't now remember, I didn't see much of the chat discussion, so it's entirely possible that my answer here is missing some relevant things... | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 1:14 | comment | added | Brandon_J | To summarize my abrupt summary - we came to the conclusion for pragmatic purposes, rather than purist purposes. | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 1:13 | comment | added | Brandon_J | IIRC, we came to the conclusion we did in the chat reluctantly, knowing that we would have to close a few good puzzles for the benefit of clearing the far larger number of lousy "puzzles" like mine. We couldn't really find a better distinction. As far as "challenging" goes - now that's a hard metric to pin down, IMO. Also, if I read correctly, a computer can show which answer in the Life puzzle is the fastest. | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 0:54 | comment | added | Brandon_J | No offense remotely taken :) Now I gotta take some time to read this very thorough-looking answer. And also look up what the heck a denizen is - I feel like it gives me a strong advantage the next time I play hangman. | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 0:51 | comment | added | Gareth McCaughan Mod | To be absolutely clear: the "friends, Romans, countrymen" framing is just for fun, and I do not in the least bit intend any deeper analogy; e.g., I am not suggesting that those who disagree with me are dishonest, or that they are in any way like assassins, or that they deserve to be torn apart by an angry mob. | |
| Sep 19, 2019 at 0:41 | history | answered | Gareth McCaughanMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |