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A CLOSE VOTE IS NOT A SUPER-DOWNVOTE. Sorry for shouting. But this is a really important point which far too many people apparently fail to grasp. Downvotes are used at the discretion of the individual voter, and mean "this is a bad question". They can reflect the voter's opinion of the quality of the question, rather than any objective criteria. You can ...

How I'd answer your questions: Question of consistency: Is there something about this puzzle that lands it in the same bin as a mathematics “problem” vs puzzle? Sort of. I admit when I first read it, I thought you were merely asking us to explain a natural phenomenon you'd observed, which I think is why some people thought that Physics SE was a better ...

One problem with them is that you can make a serious case that any answer to these problems is valid. Mathematically, what these problems are asking is, there is a function $f : x \rightarrow y$ that is unknown to you, and you are given some inputs $x$, corresponding outputs $y$, and whether the examples are correct or not. The thing is, $f$ could be ...

I think it's important to distinguish between puzzles which change the premise slightly, but in a fashion which requires a totally different solution, versus those whose solution would be readily apparent to anyone who could solve the original. Indeed, I find particular elegance in puzzles that at first glance might appear to be rehashes of other well-known ...

Leave it open. I'm going to start this answer in a controversial way, by quoting part of the site tour which actually doesn't usually apply here on Puzzling: Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Obviously, this guidance is much better suited for sites like Stack Overflow or Software Engineering or Parenting than less practical sites ...

too broad the question has already 3+ answers that all look plausible/acceptable I can easily think of one or more answers for this riddle Op has been contacted: -- OP states the intended answer is similar or even worse -- OP can't show that some of the clues haven't been used properly OP revealed the path of solving to me and I doubt the uniqueness ...

These questions are already officially off-topic. I'm not sure if that policy is still applicable, however, considering its lack of enforcement these days. Today I've gone and voted to close a bunch of questions that clearly run afoul of this policy (I ran out of close votes for the day, I may continue tomorrow). I'll see how these fare in the review queue....

I've been thinking of a method of classifying the level of duplication (actually, the level of difference) of two questions for a while. I'm not suggesting this as a site-wide standard or anything, I just think it helps to discuss exactly what the problem is. Difference Level 0 This is just a special case. If two puzzles are exactly the same (ignoring ...

Leave it open. While questions of the form "What is the best X?" ought to be closed as "opinion-based", I think this question can easily be salvaged simply by removing the word "best" from the post. There is no ambiguity in the question, "How can a Rubik's cube be scrambled efficiently, especially by hand?" which is ...

I don't have VTC privilege on this site yet, but, if I did, I would be inclined to leave It is related to a type of mathematics game closed because it is a mathematics problem and not a mathematics puzzle.  A question shouldn't be reopened just because the original close reason has been resolved; it should be reopened only if it is worthy to be open. Maybe ...