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Topic: where [are the answers] ? (Read 25611 times) |
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tyler
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where are the answers/hints? just on the forums? I think I know at least a couple of the cs ones after a year in a c class but I wanted to check them versus these.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2002, 8:21pm by william wu » |
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Jack9
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This thread has been read 147 times and still nobody responds. Niiiice. I dunno, i can answer some of these, I think, but my ego wants to KNOW.
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Smokey
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from the intro page start of the 2nd paragraph:
No answers are listed here. If you need a hint or are itching to know if your solution works, feel free to contact me.
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Tom
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That's just plain stupid. You really think I'm gonna send an eMail and wait HOURS or perhaps DAYS for a reply EVERY time I try to solve a riddle ? By the time I receive the reply mail I might have gone mad ( like waiting for tst result in eg. high school ) or simply aint interested any more.
I wish I could peek in, eg. for a short break at work, solve one or 2 riddles and be happy I did them right. Just a matter of 5 minutes.
Sure, I could WORK through all riddles, note down my solutions and send the whole pack. But that's no fun at all.
Didn't the author expect this Site to be fun ? The way it is now it's just plain work. So, up up and away I am ...
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Eric Yeh
Senior Riddler
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Re: where?
« Reply #4 on: Aug 2nd, 2002, 8:52pm » |
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Guys! Come on!!! The beauty of problem-solving -- in the great majority of cases anyway -- is that YOU SHOULD KNOW when you have it right!!! If you figure out how to make the truth tellers and liars direct you down the right path, you know it! If you measure out that 12th heavier or lighter ball, you know it! And when you determine which god is Past, which is Present, and which is Future, guess what? You know it!!!
What you should really be saying is: "Thanks Will! Thanks for not tempting us into giving up too quickly and just looking up the answers. Of course, it's not a problem once I solve the puzzle because then I know I'm right."
Just earlier today I told a co-worker a riddle from this site, and after an hour he was begging me for the solution. But I held firm, acting on William's principles of perseverance! Now the guy says he's really angry with me, but on Monday morning after he's solved it on his own, he'll be thanking me profusely!!
So enjoy guys! This is a great chance to prove to yourself that you can not only solve these problems yourselves, but be confident in knowing that you are right!!! That is the essence of a truly great problem solver. 
Happy Puzzling!!!
Eric
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"It is better to have puzzled and failed than never to have puzzled at all."
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william wu
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Re: where?
« Reply #5 on: Aug 13th, 2002, 10:39am » |
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on Jul 24th, 2002, 12:56am, Tom wrote:That's just plain stupid. You really think I'm gonna send an eMail and wait HOURS or perhaps DAYS for a reply EVERY time I try to solve a riddle ? By the time I receive the reply mail I might have gone mad ( like waiting for tst result in eg. high school ) or simply aint interested any more.
I wish I could peek in, eg. for a short break at work, solve one or 2 riddles and be happy I did them right. Just a matter of 5 minutes.
Sure, I could WORK through all riddles, note down my solutions and send the whole pack. But that's no fun at all.
Didn't the author expect this Site to be fun ? The way it is now it's just plain work. So, up up and away I am ...
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Before my site got slashdotted, it was not well known except among a handful of friends. Thus, the e-mail system worked perfectly fine, and friends didn't have to wait very long for solutions. I didn't anticipate that one day I'd get this much traffic. Also, my original motivation for making the site was not to prepare for a tech-interview; actually, I just wanted to torture my friends  And denying answers was a great way to do that.
However, even if I could do it all over again in anticipation of slashdot, I don't think I'd do it differently. I have many good reasons for not posting answers.
One is that most people would be too easily tempted to view the answer before thinking about the riddle at all. This is particularly true for riddles with high initial shock value, such as CORK, BOTTLE, COIN. Put a coin in a bottle, and a cork in the neck; take the coin out without breaking the bottle or pulling out the cork. Most people immediately respond with "That's impossible. I give up." Immediately click the answer. What a waste of a great riddle.
A second reason, which I quickly discovered a few days after /., is that I don't always know the best solutions. The bulletin board threads have shown me many alternative solutions I've never considered. Also, I didn't fully understand some of the riddles -- sometimes I even had incorrect solutions. Imagine the flame mail I would have received from posting those! Even the smallest typo already sparks a dozen e-mails -- which is a very good thing actually.
Thirdly, answers alone aren't valuable to me unless accompanied by explanations of how I could have arrived at such an answer. Start out with some intuitions, make some cunning observations, explore different approaches, settle on one, eventually generate the answer. True, I could have tried writing such thorough explanations. However, that would have consumed an insane amount of time.
I think this bulletin board setup is the ideal solution. We get a glimpse of this problem solving process. Start with confused initial posts, suggest hints and approaches, eventually get an answer. Most exciting, we see multiple solutions to the same problem. It's so cool to see different solutions to problems that my friends and I have argued about over the years, thinking we had explored everything there was to see. They're like flashlight beams coming from different angles, exposing more and more new area. A visitor who is intent on just getting answers can do so, but he or she will have to see all of these things along the way, and perhaps be a bit skeptical to determine which solution is optimal. Finally, now everyone else writes the solutions for me, and that saves me tremendous time. Couldn't be any better!
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| « Last Edit: Aug 13th, 2002, 10:41am by william wu » |
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[ wu ] : http://wuriddles.com / http://forums.wuriddles.com
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Brian Lee
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #6 on: Nov 7th, 2002, 12:15am » |
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Hey.. what's the answer to the Coin, Cork and Bottle riddle? lol...
IT IS impossible.. because the bottle and cork are implied to be solid objects, as is the coin.. so how can a solid object pass through another?
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henjiredux
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #7 on: May 22nd, 2003, 5:35pm » |
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heh, when i first saw that cork and bottle thing a while ago, i also thought it was impossible. took me a little while to figure out on my own, but i thinkk that you...
just push the cork in.
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Lupin
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #8 on: Jul 16th, 2003, 12:22pm » |
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The most rewarding thing is getting the correct answer after you work it out by yourself. The second most rewarding thing is posting a hint without giving away the answer. The third most rewarding thing is helping out a fellow riddler in getting the answer by him/herself. The fourth most rewarding thing is hide-posting the answer so that other fellow riddlers may check their own answers. The least rewarding thing is posting the answer and spoiling what could have been a good supratentorial exercise (i.e. gray-cell work-out) for the rest of our fellow riddlers.
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Eric Maben
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Marble Jars and Caps : I too thought over these two for about a month. Dont know whether the answers are correct. Most of the answers posted by people like me reflect my line of thinking. Could you be kind enough to send the answers??
Thanks
Eric
on Jul 23rd, 2002, 10:43pm, Smokey wrote:from the intro page start of the 2nd paragraph:
No answers are listed here. If you need a hint or are itching to know if your solution works, feel free to contact me.
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rmsgrey
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Re: where?
« Reply #10 on: Mar 20th, 2005, 6:52am » |
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on Mar 20th, 2005, 1:16am, Eric Maben wrote:
Marble Jars and Caps : I too thought over these two for about a month. Dont know whether the answers are correct. Most of the answers posted by people like me reflect my line of thinking. Could you be kind enough to send the answers??
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If you've found the forum threads, you've pretty much found the best answers any of us have for any riddle (except the handful that have only been posted recently) OK, so in a lot of cases, you've also found a load of non-solutions, but if you've thought about the problem enough yourself to come up with answers, you should be able to sort through the threads and figure out what's accepted and what's set right a little later.
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atur
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #11 on: Feb 15th, 2006, 1:41pm » |
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Hi
I have tried to solve the SQUARE FORMATION (med) with no success .
I tried to get help in the forum, but ther was no solution/
Can you send me please solutios of this problem
Thanks
Abraram
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Some people are average, some are just mean.
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #12 on: Feb 15th, 2006, 1:57pm » |
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on Feb 15th, 2006, 1:41pm, atur wrote:Hi
I have tried to solve the SQUARE FORMATION (med) with no success . |
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I can't seem to find it. Could you post the text of the puzzle here? Or just start a thread in the medium forum.
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Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
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Eigenray
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #13 on: Feb 15th, 2006, 2:54pm » |
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on Feb 15th, 2006, 1:41pm, atur wrote:I have tried to solve the SQUARE FORMATION (med) with no success .
I tried to get help in the forum, but ther was no solution/ |
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That's because it's in the hard section, here.
(Tip: Google is much faster than the forum search.)
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| « Last Edit: Feb 15th, 2006, 2:57pm by Eigenray » |
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Technologeek
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Any problem? Contact me by MP
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #14 on: Jul 28th, 2012, 2:39am » |
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Guys! Come on!!! The beauty of problem-solving -- in the great majority of cases anyway -- is that YOU SHOULD KNOW when you have it right!!! If you figure out how to make the truth tellers and liars direct you down the right path, you know it! If you measure out that 12th heavier or lighter ball, you know it! And when you determine which god is Past, which is Present, and which is Future, guess what? You know it!!!
What you should really be saying is: "Thanks Will! Thanks for not tempting us into giving up too quickly and just looking up the answers. Of course, it's not a problem once I solve the puzzle because then I know I'm right."
Just earlier today I told a co-worker a riddle from this site, and after an hour he was begging me for the solution. But I held firm, acting on William's principles of perseverance! Now the guy says he's really angry with me, but on Monday morning after he's solved it on his own, he'll be thanking me profusely!!
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Against Wikipedia totalitarism - Proofs Wiki: The Mean value theorem proof and
Fundamental theorem of calculus
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jordan
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #15 on: Feb 4th, 2014, 10:20am » |
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on Jul 28th, 2012, 2:39am, atyq wrote:
Just earlier today I told a co-worker a riddle from this site, and after an hour he was begging me for the solution. But I held firm, acting on William's principles of perseverance! Now the guy says he's really angry with me, but on Monday morning after he's solved it on his own, he'll be thanking me profusely!!
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The more time and effort you spend on a riddle the more joy you get after you answer it
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My personal fashion blog for hippie and free women Boho and Flower
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rmsgrey
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Re: where [are the answers] ?
« Reply #16 on: Feb 5th, 2014, 3:52am » |
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on Feb 4th, 2014, 10:20am, jordan wrote:
The more time and effort you spend on a riddle the more joy you get after you answer it
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Depends on how satisfying the answer is - sometimes you get murderous rage instead (for example, bad versions of the "-gry" riddle - http://www.xkcd.com/169/ )
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