Discuss Logain Potpourri I here

[Neo]

The long awaited return of Potpourris to the GL! This is one in a series of X, where X>1.

Link to the Puzzle(s)

Good luck, happy puzzling, and remember not to blurt out the answers!
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_{Ad Astra}

[toothpick*]

So I just came across this site.

I think I solved part I) of this puzzle, but of course I would like some sort of confirmation.

How can I check if my answer is correct?

[Salty*]

Hi Toothpick. You can post your answer here, but you should be sure to use spoiler tags. Any sentence you type that might give a clue to the answer you should highlight and click the Spolier button. That will give other people a chance to solve. You may not get confirmation that your answer is right, but someone will probably post whether they agree with you or not.

I need to dig out where I tried this one, but if it helps confirm your answer, I think I got something like: Every 260 seconds they both arrive back to where they started and will have shared the common stretch of ice for 12.5 seconds, so 520 seconds is the answer. I may have mis-remembered this cos it's a few weeks since I looked at it.

[toothpick*]

Thank you, yes that's what I got, although I didn't notice that the pattern repeats itself after 260 seconds.

So any hints for part II) ? I don't know what to look for

[Oscar]

You might try looking for prefixes especially those that may or may not fit in with the opening hours

[Tahnan]

[Antrax]

I don't think the aforementioned answer is more elegant than brute-forcing, unless there's some intensely clever way of getting to it that I've missed. It's easy to compute cycle length but I don't see how that gives you information on mutual time spent on ice other than going through it step-by-step.
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After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Chuck]

My computer simulation sometimes gave me 520 seconds and sometimes 537½ seconds, depending on the size of the increment that I chose to move the skaters. It took me awhile to realize what was going on. Due to round off error, one of them would finish the last leg slightly ahead of the other so that their total time together on the center was slightly less then 25 seconds, so they'd have to go through another loop and finally break the ice when they were both on the center again, 17½ seconds later. I was lucky that I did more test runs instead of turning in the first answer that the simulation produced.

[Antrax]

Chuck, for future reference it's better to just work with ints - I used 30 ticks per sec and just advanced the simulation tick by tick.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Courk]

I just used a list of numbers in Excel and had some entries that were equations, etc. It wasn't pretty by any means, but it gave the answer. Brute force all the way!

[Chuck]

People in the southern hemisphere are lucky. They could go outside and try it for real.

I eventually used increment sizes that were powers of ½ to get rid of the round off error. They all gave exact answers.

[Tahnan]

I tried using Excel first. It hurt. Man, I miss Lotus 123 sometimes.

[Salty]

My solution was entirely inelegant. I used the same method that Courk did although given the cycle length observation, it halved the work.

[Neo]

Note that the change of image has no impact on any of the puzzles. Courk just rocks and provided this wonderfully awesome new image to use for Potpourris.
_________________
_{Ad Astra}

[Courk]

I noticed that the cycle started over after the ice was at half strength, but I didn't fully trust myself and finished it to double check.

[Salty]

Gone Amiss was the one that caused me most trouble. I think I got mostly there, but didn't get it over the line.

Observations:

the words in the clues may all have been missing their initial letter, so:

?
(s)hoe (l)inks -> laces = L + aces
(s)lightly (o)pen -> ajar = A + jar
(t)all (c)hair -> stool = S + tool
(p)ants (h)older -> hanger = H + anger
(b)lack (l)umber -> ebony = E + bony
(s)word (c)over -> sheath = S + heath

that gave "lashes". I thought maybe splashes had obscured what was written on the page or eyelashes (I lashes), but I wasn't too sure on where to go from here.

Also worth noting that the title follows a similar style G+one A+miss

[Samadhi]

For number 1 I used java. Took about 12 lines. [Edit: Not including the public static void and all that]
I also used java for number two. That took a few more lines.
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And he lived happily ever after. Except for the dieing at the end and the heartbreak in between.

[phw]

I got the same as Salty for Gone Amiss except that I used
(b)lack (n)umber = eight (as in 8 ball)
not that it really mattered, since both give an E. I think I answered eyelashes.

[Gomez]

Damnit. I had pretty much exactly the same as Salty except that the only thing I could think of for lack umber was (b)lack (n)number and got Dress (as in 'little black number'). As such I got LASHNS which was enough to throw me off

[Oscar]

I should have thought by symmetry the final answer would be in the same form as the other clues
e.g. (w)hip (b)lows = (l)ashes
The problem of these two words not being directly derivable from the discarded letters on the left means that other similar solutions are possible
e.g. (p)irate (b)lows
The lack of vowels in the left hand leaders means that it's pretty much impossible to find any such confirmation that you've found the definitive clueing, although I think the flavortext 'blink of an eye' is confirmation of the lashes theory

[Logain]

Gone Amiss was definitely one of the ones I could make some comments about after seeing the slightly wrong paths some of the answers took.

There were several people who solved this one so I wouldn't want to say anything that could spoil it yet.

[k*]

[Chuck]

[L'lanmal]

Brute force is really the proper (easiest) way to solve #1.

But if you want to make sure you didn't make a mistake, there is a "back of a napkin" type of calculation to make. Skater A should be on the strip about 25/100s of the time, and skater B about 25/130s of the time. If they were randomly bouncing around the rink rather than skating in a circle, they should overlap about 25/130*25/100 = 25/520 = 25 seconds per 520 seconds skating. So you should expect your answer to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 520 seconds.

Since they are skating in circles, their positions are not necessarily independant of each other, so this should not be trusted as exact answer.

[Kd]

I think I ended up with 539 seconds, or 8mins 59s, but I did work it out entirely on paper and my rounding was a bit dodgy... I didn't twig at the bit where it's meant to start over, mostly because my working meant it didn't.
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Guess who's back, back again, Kd's back, tell a friend.

[louswon]

Number 3 must be the moon, causing anger, man in the moon, defying gravity, whatever[/spoiler]

[Gomez*]

I had (invisible spoiler) Straw. Line 1 - The last straw. Line 2 - Straw man debating. Line 3 - The short straw. Line 4 - A drinking straw.

[Salty]

I got the same as Gomez. It's one of those ones that once you think of the answer it seems very easy, but it can take forever to think of the answer!

[Duke Gnome]

Before it disappears, could someone spoil 'Now open from 8 to 5', the only one still unsolved on this thread?

[phw]

8 to 5 answer

uni + corn / verse / form / trust
bi + got / pedal / shop / king
tri + fling / dent / angle / vial
quarter + staff / master / lies / back
non + fat / stop / sense / zero
dec + ant / ease / ode / law

[Logain]

So far the answers for IV, Gone Amiss are close but not the intended answer. I think that puzzle had the most clean cut division of points ranging from from the 0-5 scoring than any other. Salty's official answer was the only wrong answer that fell into a different scoring division based on his explanation though.

[anon*]

For Gome Amiss: I was thinking that the first part of the puzzle was the first letter of the solution. I went with ? (?) = Can Snap - Fingers, for a solution of FLASHES (in the blink of an eye).

[anonymous*]

i think the third part of this is (the what am i?) is a STRAW.
The last starw brings out anger in ppl (this is the last straw!)
yet the man in me is too weak to argue(a straw man argument doesnt put up a good fight)
the shortest starw puts u to the task (if u pull out the shortest starw , u hav to do the chore or w/e)
I will break under pressure (straws break, of course.)
Yet i help defy gravity (changing the air pressure and sucking on a straw brings things up wards)

i dont know if u guys still needed help on this one, and i hope not cuz it was the first thing i thought of. i have no clue how the website works. how do i "solve" the problem?

[Anonymous*]

Also, so sorry i kinda didnt invisible-ize my ideas, im totally new at his, member?

[Gomez*]

No worries. For future reference, if you want to make something invisible you need to put the words you want to hide inbetween two "invisible" tags, like this:

{invisible}I want to make this text invisible{/invisible}.

Of course, when you do it, you need to swap the curly { brackets for straight [ brackets. Welcome to the boards!

[Neo]

Anon, I edited your post to insert the invis tags.
_________________
_{Ad Astra}

[Salty]

I feel honoured - I got my own points division. I reckon I scored pi points out of five on this one

[Logain]

For Gone Amiss, the flavortext does mention blink of an eye for a reason which most people solved for...but the actual answer needs to satisfy the final inferred question in the text...namely what could actually cause the mess.

Also, so you don't overthink this one...look at the puzzle this way....what would your answer be if the puzzle was written with nothing at all missing and this was a very simple/basic two-step puzzle.

[anon*]

Gone Amiss: Using Logain's last clue, the first pair should be somthing like (c)leaning (a)gent = (s)oap, which would spell SLASHES, which would be all over the place to create the mess caused by a knife.

[John Dalbec*]

How about (g)one (a)miss = (s)tray?