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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> The Puzzler Frequency
        
(Message started by: william wu on Sep 15^th, 2003, 6:50pm)

Title: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by william wu on Sep 15^th, 2003, 6:50pm

another poll; btw, if anyone else has poll questions they are curious about asking our community, feel free to make suggestions and we may adopt them

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Sep 16^th, 2003, 2:17am

Quote:

another poll

How many polls do you need to change a light-bulb?? :D

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by BNC on Sep 16^th, 2003, 2:48am

on 09/15/03 at 18:50:49, william wu wrote:

another poll; btw, if anyone else has poll questions they are curious about asking our community, feel free to make suggestions and we may adopt them

Real question: Do you think this forum could use more sections, and if yes, which?
Examples are: Chess puzzles, physics puzzle (I would vote "yes").

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Sep 16^th, 2003, 3:25am

Quote:

(I would vote "yes").

Me too.

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by wowbagger on Sep 16^th, 2003, 3:57am

on 09/16/03 at 02:48:48, BNC wrote:

Real question: Do you think this forum could use more sections, and if yes, which?
Examples are: Chess puzzles, physics puzzle (I would vote "yes").

Me too, for both of these. Although I'm less sure about the Physics section, maybe something like "Real World Riddles" (including chemistry, for instance - or broken computer fans (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_easy;action=display;num=1056672183)) would be more appropriate.

Hm, could turn out to be some work for the admins to find and move the existing threads that should belong there...

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by william wu on Sep 16^th, 2003, 5:13pm

Chess sounds very good; physics I'm also uncertain of.

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by Icarus on Sep 16^th, 2003, 6:31pm

Perhaps a section or two for pure mathematics questions that are inappropriate for the Putnam section.

Chess would be good, I suppose - though you could expect to see me in there about as often as I visit the CS forum!

(Nothing against chess - I've just never been interested enough in it to even figure out the notations.)

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by mistysakura on Sep 16^th, 2003, 6:41pm

on 09/16/03 at 18:31:56, Icarus wrote:

Perhaps a section or two for pure mathematics questions that are inappropriate for the Putnam section.

Correct me if I'm wrong, although not all pure maths problems fit under putnam, all putnam problems fit under pure maths? Then we could have just a pure maths forum.

By the way, chess sounds good, and have you realized that we're going towards grouping by type and not difficulty?

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by SWF on Sep 16^th, 2003, 9:10pm

Each thread has an icon displayed which is pretty much wasted. Except for polls, most threads just have the meaningless piece of paper icon with an occasional question mark icon. Why not make that icon convey some sort of useful information: maybe level of difficulty if the threads get reaaranged by topic, or category if they stay as Easy, Medium, and Hard.

Could also include a poll in threads so the members can vote on difficulty level.

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by James Fingas on Sep 17^th, 2003, 6:52am

I think a poll for each thread would be too much trouble just to rank the difficulty. The problem that we're having is that this forum has strayed (not a bad thing, in my opinion) from a riddle forum to a forum for all sorts of mental endeavours. A pure riddle requires no knowledge that Joe Average doesn't have, but a lot of thinking that Joe Average almost never does.

But a lot of the new puzzles here (including most of the ones I've contributed) don't follow this description. You need to understand thermodynamics, geometry, math (there are many sub-areas of math!), physics, computer science, or even combinatorics. These puzzles are applicable in a narrower arena.

The benefit of splitting the puzzles up by difficulty is that we can let newcomers gradually build their skills, perception, and general "riddle power", without becoming disheartened that half the riddles are way too hard (at first).

The benefit of splitting puzzles up by type is to let the person who doesn't know enough to even understand the question ignore it (easily, and without feeling like everybody else can solve it). This is achieved admirably by the markings William puts on the puzzle pages (M, CPU, etc.). If we had appropriate icons, we could classify puzzles like this using their icons, and let people know when special knowledge is needed.

The drawbacks to splitting puzzles up are that it takes longer to look through the puzzles or forums (though this is a small effect if there are hundreds of puzzles/posts in each group!), and it segregates the people who come to the forum (we start to form multiple communities instead of one big happy family).

I think there is room for both, as we are currently doing, but some classes of puzzle (e.g. Chess) do not require a whole lot of uncommon knowledge, so splitting them off by type would not be terribly useful. I see no point in classifying the riddles per se. Splitting them up is only useful when it helps people who would otherwise be disheartened and confused.

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by Lightboxes' Clone on Sep 23^rd, 2003, 2:48pm

Adding a chess section with its OWN easy, medium, and hard would be okay, I think, if it was called more like puzzle games/board games/etc... instead of just chess.
OR
Just leave the things the way they are and add little pics next to chess puzzles links beause that way, we can have mutiple titles of "mate in 2" and still see the difference between them. Or pics to ANY puzzle that can end up having the same named puzzles.

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by Icarus on Sep 23^rd, 2003, 7:40pm

There is no restriction on thread titles requiring them to be unique. You could post any number of "Mate in 2" threads without causing any problems - other than for William, Towr, James, and I, who would have to go in and give them unique names so that people could tell which is which!

Title: Re: The Puzzler Frequency
Post by mistysakura on Sep 24^th, 2003, 4:55am

I doubt I could thell what problem it was with the little pictures... bad eyesight ;D
Puzzle games isn't bad, but the sub-forums might be a bit pointless, at least until we get more problems. It would be annoying if there was like 1 problem in Hard or something,and still having the forum.