Trivia vs. Puzzles

[firemeboy]

I have noticed that lately the forum is filled with trivia related problems. I myself have posted several trivia questions and enjoy solving them, however, I enjoy the ture puzzles more. Do these topics need to be divided up? Maybe have one forum for trivia type questions, and another forum for the puzzles? It would have to be self moderated, but I think that most people would follow the rules.

Fire

[firemeboy]

There is also a discussion currently going on in the off-topic forum if you want to hear what people are saying about this topic.

Fire

[mithrandir]

I think another helpful feature would be a move topic feature, allowing the topic starter to move the topic to a different forum, if he/she/it decides its a riddle and not a puzzle, for example.

[firemeboy]

Makes sense to me. Even if we still end up with some riddles in the trivia section and vice versa, we would still generally have the riddles together, and the trivia together.

Fire

[Lupin]

Categories ... most people favor one puzzle type over another. In my experience, puzzles can be divided into several types:

• Riddles - good ole riddles
  
• Word puzzles - anagrams, word play puzzles
  
• Trivia questions
  
• Math puzzles
  
• Classic puzzles - "lateral thinking", situations, "bafflers"
  
• Logic puzzles - Liars and truthtellers, logic situations
  

So why not divide 'em and categorize 'em?



[This message has been edited by Lupin (edited 12-19-1999).]

[Andy]

One reason not to divide them (at least not too rigidly) is that some puzzles can seem to belong to more than one class. An example is this:
Start with a solid sphere. Remove material from a cylinder about an axis of the sphere so that the cylindrical hole has a length of 6 inches. What is the volume of material remaining in the sphere?
I don't remember the source of this puzzle. It could fit into at least two of the categories you mentioned. Putting it into the math class might make it seem too difficult for those whose knowledge of solid geometry is rudimentary, while putting it into the lateral thinking class might make it too obvious. Granted, most puzzles don't present this kind of classification problem.

[This message has been edited by Andy (edited 12-20-1999).]

[Andy]

Per Amy's suggestion in the Off-topic forum under Puzzles or Trivia?,
I request a new field be added to the Post New Topic page to accompany Subject. The new field should be captioned 'Category' or 'Puzzle Type' or something similar, and should be displayed on other pages where the Subject (Title, Topic) heading is displayed.

[Lupin]

Andy The webmaster is somewhat reluctant to make changes (after all, the discussions forums (fora?) are running smoothly and is yet too early to consider them). The UltimateBB program allows for certain options, but adding fields is not one of them. We may request, however, that message icons be enabled. These are like the smileys (or emoticons) that we can use directly in this UBB but instead of appearing within the text, they head your message. They also appear in a second column (after the folder icon The only problem left would be to build the icons.


[This message has been edited again and again by Lupin (edited 12-26-1999).]

My request would be to be to have the "preview your post" option allowed.



[This message has been edited by Lupin (edited 12-28-1999).]

[Amy]

As your message itself demonstrates, these icons are very difficult to use, and I think most users given the option of including them in the title of a new thread would not do so. It would be a lot easier to insert a *word* into the title indicating which type of puzzle it is, but I think people objected to that suggestion on the grounds that it would be too much trouble and no one would remember to do it. So if that would be too much trouble, I think inserting UBB icons definitely would be.

[Ghost Post]

I'm strongly considering breaking the Puzzle forum up into sub-forums.

However, I'm holding off making any changes to the Forums until I've finished my latest batch of infrastructure changes. But I thought I'd mention that I am watching this thread.

[Lupin]

Amy using the emoticons (smileys) available in this UBB bulletin board could not be easier: if you type a colon and then a parenthesis you will automatically get either of or - the other four smileys are also pre-programmed. When message icons are implemented, you are given a choice of the available ones and it's a simple click of your mouse. What I meant was designing the icons themselves, but that's the programmer's job. Having the "preview your post" option available is also a nice touch; I do change my posts a lot (misspelled words, dubious phrasing)

[firemeboy]

I am glad to see that the Minotaur is thinking about splitting up the forum into sub-groups, and is monitoring this thread. One quick thought, we don't need to over do the whole thing. I can think of many different sub groups; mathmatical puzzles, ryming riddles, word games, chess puzzles, puzzles that contain liars and truth tellers, puzzles involving the word cow... If we attempt to do this, we will just shoot ourselves in the collective foot. But, if we can come up with two, or three, maybe four big sub groups, I really think it would be a positive addition to the site.

On a side note, however many sub groups we come up with, I think one of them should be 'other' or miscellaneous so that we don't leave anything out. If we try and fit anything into a box, something will be left outside the box. And of all the sites on the web, this is the one site that will always have plenty of things outside the box.

[mithrandir]

How about grouping word puzzles, riddles, and trivia in one category; math, logic, and games(chess, connect 4, etc.) in another; and classic puzzles in another?

[Amy]

My only question about that: what do you do with puzzles that could be classified under more than one category? Do you have to post them twice? And what would be our definitions for the various types of puzzles?

[firemeboy]

I think if we get too nit-picky about this we will get into trouble. There are always going to be people posting puzzles in the wrong forum. There is no way around this. Even now we get threads that should be in off-topic posted in the puzzle section. But the fact of the matter is, if someone posts a math puzzle in the wrong area, people will probably not answer it because they are not in that forum to do math puzzles. The posters will eventually find the right forum.

As far as division of puzzles, I see three broad areas,

1- Serious mathmatical/theoretical puzzles (the Let Their Be Light puzzle would have fallen into this category along with Berry's number and the tricky math puzzles.)
2- Your basic riddles/puzzles (truth tellers, ryming riddles, etc. The Bush fire, The three hats, etc would fall into this category. I think a large portion of the current puzzles would fit into this section.
3- Trivia/Games (chess problems, conect four, dead presidents, etc. There have been quite a few of these lately as well.
4- I think that we could then either have a fourth 'catch all forum', or just say when in doubt, put the puzzle in 2.

For what it is worth, that is my two bits.

[firemeboy]

Any update on what might be happening with this? Something? Nothing? Just curious.

[Amb]

Ill be blunt. I think breaking it up is a bad idea. Instead of listing all the puzzles under separate forums why not make it look like this.

code:

---

Title..............Type..Starter..Last Edit


--------------------------------------------


Gomer Goes Home....MATH..Lupin.....10-10-00


Eschers Holiday....WORD..Firemeboy.10-10-00


How to implode


Yourself...........LOGIC


...................BIOLOGY


...................MATH..½ Wit.....09-10-00


--------------------------------------------

---

Maybe then it would be nicer, we can see all the puzzles together, but in our personal settings we could have it so Maths ones show up on top or so we see them all together. THis way everyone can see what they like, including a broad mix.

[Amy]

I suggested something like that before, but someone else (I think Lupin) explained that it would be impractical to add a new field to the puzzle listings. I don't remember why this was so.

[Quailman]

Or the Topic Starter could just put the type in the Subject field when posting a new thread. I just tried a post with abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890 in the Subject Field and it all displayed, so it's not there's not enough room. it's just something thread starters would have to remember to do. Maybe put it in CAPS.

[Amy]

I think the only problem with that idea was getting people to remember to do it (especially since some folks who are new to this place can't even figure out which is the right forum to post to).

[Amb]

I do actually like it how it is now. If it aint broke dont fix it

[firemeboy]

I believe the reason why we could not do it as Amy suggested was the limits of the Bulletin Board program itself. I agree with Amy though, it may be difficult to get people to do something with any sort of consistency.

I sort of agree with amb (who btw lives in New Zealand), the current way works ok. However, every once in a while there are quite a few puzzles posted at once, and I usually miss something. Then we get multiple posts, hanging threads, etc. There are several things I can remember that I want to comment, but I can't for the life of me remember which posts they were in. If I miss even a couple of days, the posts I was following can easily be off the chart and onto a different page. I don't have the time here at work to go back and read through every post...

[firemeboy]

Has anyone noticed an increase in posts lately? I am seeing a lot of puzzles slip through the cracks just because if nobody replies in roughly 12 hours, they move off the top page. Is this another good reason to try and come up with divisions? Or have we determined that this is simply not possible?

[Amy]

I think only the Minotaur knows for sure...

[firemeboy]

I thought it was the shadow who knew...

[Shadow]

Nope, sorry, haven't the foggiest.

[Amy]

Well, what about the evil that lurks in the hearts of men?

[cebrist]

I was thinking about this last night before going to sleep. If I were to divide the forum into sections, I think I would do it this way:

Math puzzles - pure math, like the furshlugginer sequences that I can never solve (I know, that's a topic somewhere else)

Wordplay puzzles - anagrams, matching words, signmaker, and perhaps riddles could go here

Trivia - self-explanatory

Everything else - again, self-explanatory

My reasoning goes something like this - The three specific categories are fairly well defined, and probably wouldn't have too much overlap among themselves. It also separates out categories that people might _not_ be interested in, like math or trivia, so they don't have to wade through those to get to the ones they like. The broad everything category catches those puzzles that might overlap categories, or defy description.

That's just my two cents.

[firemeboy]

Agreed. I had something similar above but I think this works just as well. I think just about anything would be a nice addition. It just depends on how much work it would be to do something like this.

[Amy]

I would also be happy to see all chess problems clearly identified as such so that I can skip them.

[firemeboy]

Amy, we will have to get together sometime and throw away a chess set.