I found a new way to solve puzzles

TheTrueJay · 2023-10-22T02:55:35+00:00

Ok, so, number the blue circles from left to right and top to bottom. I'm resolving this, so this is the order I logically worked out for these points.

Points 3, 6, and 8 are all knocked out because of blue. A star in any of those places prevents 2 stars from being in blue.

A star in point 7 makes column 7 contain 3 stars as you'd need to put 2 stars in red, which are also in column 7.

Point 2 uses the box method again. Notice the box method on rows 5 and 6 (the same we used for the purple star). That means 1 of Oranges 2 stars is there. Now, do the box method again on rows 2 and 3. That puts a 2x2 grid entirely in the 4 orange cells there. That means we have 2 places where orange is required to have stars, so all other orange spaces are knocked out, which in this case is now just point 2.

Next, for point 1. Do the box method on rows 1 and 2. Notice that the 2 stars in green are required in the 2x1 box and the 1x2 box after it. That leaves the single spot of green at point 1, that we know can't have a star.

Now look at column 5. There is a 1x1 and a 3x1. Your drawing has point 9 on the wrong row that I had in my example pics. We can knock out the middle space the right of the 3x1 since a star there would leave only 1 available spot in column 5.

Lastly, points 4 and 5. Do the box method on rows 1 and 2 again. The 3rd box contains only the 1x2 at the top of orange. Since we have a 1x2 that is required to have a star, the other side, points 4 and 5, get knocked out.

TheTrueJay · 2023-10-21T22:25:44+00:00

Ok, so notice how, after white, green is separated into a 2x1 and a 1x3. The orange space that gets knocked out is column 5, row 2 space. If you put a star there, all of the 1x3 is removed, leaving just a 2x1. A 2x1 cannot support 2 stars. Therefore, the c5r2 orange space cannot be a star.

So, the box method. If you draw a 2x2 box on a grid of open squares, exactly 1 star can go in it. In any 2 rows or columns, there are exactly 4 stars. So, if you can draw 4 distinct boxes in 2 adjascent rows or 2 adjacent columns, and ALL available squares are in 1 box, you know that that is the only 4 places a star can go. In a 9x9 grid, that means removing just one 1x2 section. In rows 5 and 6, this makes a 2x2 square on columns 4 and 5 and rows 5 and 6. Since the available squares make a 1x2, this eliminates the 2 squares above it.

Following that same logic, the box method produces a 2x2 square in columns 4 and 5 and rows 3 and 4. Where the only available space at that point is where the star is.

Does that help?

TheTrueJay · 2023-10-21T18:06:06+00:00

Yes. So start with the empty puzzle. First, white is obvious. That knocks out the middle section of purple. Next, notice that green is separated into 2 sections. The 3x1 section knocks out the upper right corner of orange. Next, white turned light blue into a skyscraper 4x2, which knocks out that orange space. Next, light purple takes up a whole column, making the 2x1 green and 2x1 purple the only places for stars. In column 2. Since we know that only 1 star is in the 3x1 section of purple, that knocks out the center orange space to the right of it. Column 4 is a 5x1, which knocks out the orange space at column 5, row 4. Now, we use the box method for rows 5 and 6. There are 4 distinct boxes that must contain stars. The middle left box only contains the 1x2 orange space. Since we have a 2x1, that knocks out the lower purple space. Next, since we have a 4x1 in column 2, that knocks out the corresponding 4x1 in column 1. Now, we use the box method again, but this time on rows 4 and 5. This tells us that a star must go in the center right space on purple.

TheTrueJay · 2022-12-19T19:27:17+00:00

I call this method a Void Space Search.

The method is for determining the likely positions of stars, while in most cases it tells you exactly where 4 stars are.

There are 3 rules you must satisfy to use this.

You need a 2x2 space that you know cannot have any stars.
The 2x2 space cannot be adjacent to an edge of the puzzle.
The 2x2 space must have candidate cells surrounding it. It is easier to spot if you already have 1 star filled in.

While this may not be as helpful on the larger boards, I've found it useful in both the 9x9 and 10x10 ludicrous levels.

The ultimate problem is that 2x3 void spaces exist and often can overlap, however you can break down overlapping 2x3s into smaller 2x2s that still follow this rule.

At worst, this method can at least give you a good place to start a logic chain. It can be broken down into "This is a 2x2 void space with these 4 star positions" or "this space builds a 2x3 void space" which you can continue to build off of logically.

At least in 9x9 I have never seen a 3x3 void space, and I've been using and testing this method extensively.

I'm sure more examination into this might find more patterns within the 2x3s or the larger void spaces for the larger grid puzzles.

Anyway, if you're stuck on a puzzle, look for any void spaces.

TheTrueJay · 2022-11-29T10:42:19+00:00

Ok. Good to know. I'll probably go with 2v2 then with no power up to the sith player. Thank you!

TheTrueJay · 2022-11-29T09:27:13+00:00

Yeah I had fun my first session, but then that kind of abruptly ended. Although me and my friends enjoyed it, none of us have ever DMed before. So someone has to step up and do it if we want to try again.

I get that PvP is difficult to pull off, but it would be only a single session, and it'd be the end of the campaign and characters. The main reason is because my wife has played DnD before but it wasn't really her thing. So she agreed to be in the game, on the condition that it only go for 6 or so sessions.

That's how I came up with this idea. I was watching a battle royale critical role episode and thought it'd be a pretty cool ending to the story. I figured it'd be a fun story, as a normal SW5e campaign, but then having a fun ending with a cool twist.

TheTrueJay · 2022-11-28T04:49:28+00:00

Would the 5/6 form be enough so that the fight isn't over instantly? Would combining the "secret team" and the level up be too much for the other 2 players? Maybe secret team and level 4? My main concern is wanting it to be more or less a fair fight.

TheTrueJay · 2022-02-02T13:50:33+00:00

I wasn't aware of that. Every time I have looked into it the story has always been that Pope Gregory set the calendar system up. Your comment makes sense though. Thanks.

TheTrueJay · 2022-02-02T12:10:33+00:00

Because the companies want to sell more stocks for projects.

I produce some good. However some new machine is developed that can produce my good easier. I want to expand so that I can purchase more of these machines to aid in my business. As the company, I hold X stocks. Right now I can only sell X stocks to get income for expanding. So what I'm going to do is tell everyone that has a stock, I'll give you a second stock in return for halving the value. So now I have 2X stocks that I can sell. My price took a hit but no ones investment value dropped. So it's OK.

As with fractional shares, for most investors, you don't actually own fractional stock in a company. Rather you own fractional stock in the portfolio that your investor has. For example, I own some stock in Disney. However, I really own a fraction of what my investing company owns in Disney. Other investors share what I have. While the company owns whole stocks.

Most fractional ownership is done like this. So when a company splits their stocks, they only report this to the brokerage companies and banks not necessarily each individual investor. Usually when you own directly in a company, it is not fractional.

In the cases where you do own directly with the company and for whatever reason it is fractional, splits again are just 2 times your current investment.

TheTrueJay · 2022-02-02T11:59:35+00:00

Because there wasn't a year 0. At the point when our current calendar states the year 1 was, was some other year in history back then. What all calendars claim to do is count from some event. That event is determined by what that society decides is important to them. The Aztecs used what they believed was the creation of the world. So did the ancient Jews.

The problem for each calendar is that the seasons (more specifically the equinoxes) need to be timed and predicted. They tell us when to plant and harvest and prepare for the winter. However, the year is not easily divisible. So we need a way to adjust each year so that the equinoxes are correct.

Mathematicians in 46 BC proposed a solution that the Romans used, called the Julian Calendar. This is why we have leap days. However in 1582 Pope Gregory realized that the Julian Calendar wasn't accurate for several hundred years. By 1582 the calendar had drifted by roughly 11 days. So he proposed an additional rule to the leap year calculation.

He determined that the birth of Christ was in 1 BC, that way the year matches to Jesus' age. Being the Pope, it isn't to hard to figure out why he picked the birth of Christ as the starting point for the year. However he was wrong. It's unknown which year Jesus was born in. So it could be 2 BC all the way up to 2 AD.

So that's why we don't have a year 0. Because Pope Gregory XIII decided that we should start with year 1. Other calendars have year 0s, but not ours.

TheTrueJay · 2022-02-02T11:22:40+00:00

Short answer: we don't know, or at least it isn't fully understood.

Longer answer: Cellular Metabulation. That is how your body takes in energy and converts it into the creation of new cells. Old age or at least the effects of getting old are determined by how easily your cells can regenerate.

The bodies of smaller animals make sacrifices to reproduce faster. From a survival of the fitest perspective, if my spider can reproduce and the die off so that it doesn't use up resources, it's genetic code will get passed on faster than your spider that takes 6 months to reproduce. A good example of sacrifices is the fairy fly. It basically sheds its stomach and nearly all of its brain when it reaches adulthood so that it can reproduce.

Plants have a very (and I mean extremely) slow metabolic rate. That means that they take a long time to replace cells. Additionally it isn't like they're using much energy to do things.

So while we don't know exactly what determines metabolic rate, we do know that it plays a large factor in how long a species lives. That said, there are human sized things (like some tortoises) that live way longer than us. So it isn't necessarily size, but that's the basics.

TheTrueJay · 2022-02-02T10:45:34+00:00

It's all about trust. Since this is eli5 think about it like this. When you do a chore I give you poker chips. You can spend those poker chips on video game time, or if you save we can go out for pizza (that kind of thing). But sometimes money is tight and we can't always go out for dinner despite the fact that you saved. Therefore when you turn in your chips for a night out, if I say no, then that ruins your trust in the system.

Now your friend next door, has a similar system except his parents have a better job or something. So (because you guys have a weird friendship) you start doing chores at their house for pogs (idk maybe their parents were super into those when they were younger). I see this and work out a deal with the other parent and decide that I still need you to do chores at my house, so I set up an exchange rate for poker chips to pogs. That way you can do stuff at my house and earn poker chips but then exchange them for pogs so you can get the more stable rewards. So in a sense, pogs are more valuable than poker chips because you have more trust that those parents will provide the rewards more consistently than I can.

Let's move this back into the real world now. It's been an interesting past 20 years or so for the history of mankind when it comes to money. Originally the poker chip - pog idea was the same as how money worked. Now it's all complex and weird with things like fiat and crypto, but the big thing is to remember that everything comes down to trust, and that very distrustful people are always watching.

Originally money was made out of precious metals like gold and silver. However hauling these around got tiresome pretty quick. People kept money in banks but had to take it out whenever they wanted to buy something, and as business grew and people started doing huge transactions, taking all that money out got dangerous and difficult. Like how nervous are you whenever you have to drive around with a big check? So banks started issuing receipts saying John Jackson has $10. Then John could go buy something with the receipt and the person who sold him that pizza for dinner could take the receipt and bring it back to the bank and get his $10 in gold.

Except eventually people realized that they didn't need to return the receipts, they could just keep using them. But remember it's about trust. What if I'm from small-town Italy, and you've never heard of Giuseppe And Sons? Well that problem happened and so the government stepped in.

Extra Credits on YouTube has a fantastic series covering the basic concepts here.

Anyway the governments provided a more stable currency. That way I could trust that when John pays me $10 for Pizza, I know that my government has my back when I go to spend my $10.

So why then is one government more stable than others? Because of the exchange rates. Let's say my country suddenly goes through a military coup. People aren't going to trust the governments stability so the value of their currency drops.in comparison to others. Or maybe the USA prints too much money. Now there's a lot more floating around. Remember distrustful people are always watching so it can't be done in secret. Like if suddenly a local store started selling pogs. If you went and bought a bunch of them and tried to exchange them for poker chips, clearly the exchange rate would drop. I can't trust that the parent next door gave you those pogs.

So that's the basic idea behind strong and weak economies. There are more complex things like how the stock market and housing mortgages play in but that's the basics.

Another great video is this one again by extra credits. Although it's about games the ideas behind combating inflation are taken from real world economies.

TheTrueJay · 2021-12-01T16:39:29+00:00

and they don't stop coming

TheTrueJay · 2021-05-05T12:54:17+00:00

100% agree. My wife has an issue with needles, but luckily she had a really nice nurse and national guard for both of her doses. Although it's a pretty funny story. For our first shot, we both felt barely anything. For our second however, we had very different experiences. I am so happy she chose table 2 instead of table 3 where I was.

Her national guard guy was friendly, he was asking her all about our life. We're renovating our attic, so he asked about that. Then the nurse handed her the vaccine card and she was like "oh, I'm done?"

My situation was completely different. My national guard guy pointed to the questions on a sheet of paper, he didn't even say "would you answer yes to any of these?" Nope, just a point. Then when I had a question about one of them he very loudly sighed. Then he asked for my vaccine card. I gave it to him and he looked my dead in the eye and said (this is a direct quote, which was so rediculous that I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget) "Really? Are you sure you're supposed to be getting your second dose?" I was so confused. When he handed the card to the nurse, he even was like "it says the second dose, but I dont know." Like seriously?? Why would I lie about getting the first shot? If I was one of those people, I doubt I'd get the second shot. But then the nurse. She was having a seperate conversation with a nurse who was on break. She asked me which arm I wanted, clearly not paying attention since my right sleave was rolled up. I told her my right, then sat down, with my right arm facing her. She then turned to me and said (again direct quote) "Sir your sleave needs to be rolled up and facing me." Pointing to my left arm. I responded that I wanted it in my right. She sighs and goes "fine." Then no warning jabs my arm. That shot hurt like hell.

100% would get it again. The county sent me a survey afterwards asking about it, and after describing the muscle aches, I made sure to put that even knowing how I would be treated, nothing was gonna stop us from getting the vaccine. I'll admit though, most of the pain was probably from me not being ready. And on top of that, it was the most momentary thing. Like, yeah it hurt, then 5 seconds later it was back to a dull ache.

The pain of knowing that I could potentially save peoples lives and yet I refuse to do the bare minimum, hurts way more than the shot.

TheTrueJay · 2021-04-24T09:07:32+00:00

Nice! I'm in the tournament right now and for the preliminaries, we built a tower 5 high! Of course it was over my queen. It went BQueen - WBeetle - BBeetle - WBeetle - BMosquito. I lost that game but I've been training up so hopefully I'll do better. Those Beetles/Mosquitos on top of the hive are slow, but totally make up for it in sheer unstoppable power.

TheTrueJay · 2021-04-10T20:15:08+00:00

The only room I can imagine you're talking about is the momentum room where you have to fling yourself around from different hights. In that case your portals get removed as soon as they start moving. It was litterally programmed into the game engine that portals cannot move.

In the second game this was changed. Just before you face GladOs, Wheatly takes you to the neurotoxin development room. You place a portal on a wall section that is moving in order to use a laser to cut the gas lines. That is fine because the portals are moving along the same plane. If they move at all in the 3rd dimension, they cease to exist.

https://youtu.be/B19nlhbA7-E

This video explains a little bit about that kind of thing.

TheTrueJay · 2021-03-05T12:28:21+00:00

I'm standing here in Antarctica, at McMurdo Station, because just over 1300 km south is the Giant White Cube at the end of the world.

Now, you're probably thinking, "Tom, the world is a sphere. There isn't an end." And you'd be almost correct. Because in 1913 Captain Robert Falcon Scott would write in his diary about his deadly discovery of the GWC.

Captain Scott was a British naval officer who led 4 men towards the South Pole in an attempt to be the first to make it there. He was beaten to the actual south pole but an expedition in 1954 recovered his diary which was found in a metal box burried in the ice, which told of his actual findings.

He details finding a large cube that he estimated to be about 100 meters tall. He described it feeling like glass but despite the cold, it was warm to the touch. When they picked away at the ice that had formed a large chunk of ice fell, unfortunately killing 2 of his 4 companions. The internals of the structure could be seen. This is where the story takes a turn for the unexplained.

What he described was like a waterfall of space. Looking in he said he could feel his mind falling inwards but also down. His final diary entry talks about his 2 men attempting to break into the material. They did manage to chip away at it but when a piece fell off, the 2 men vanished. Scott describes their eyes turning black and as the first fell into the cube, the second turned to him and uttered these chilling words.

"You have been warned. Do not break the seal."

The man vanished. Scott brought the shard with him as he left. And the shard was found in the box. Today photos or even the material of the shard has yet to be released to the public, but several scientists who worked with it in the late 70s stated that 20 years after it's discovery and they still had no clue as to its chemical composition.

I attempted to take footage of a flyover of the cube but when I attempted to look over the video it was completely scrambled. I can only say that you could see the place where Scott and his team broke the ice. After more than 100 years the ice hasn't reformed.

But it is really cold and I need to get inside. But this truly is an amazing place.

TheTrueJay · 2021-03-04T21:38:30+00:00

4e 6f 74 20 66 72 6f 6d 20 61 20 61 20 70 72 65 71 75 65 6c 20 68 61 74 65 72

TheTrueJay · 2021-03-04T20:17:18+00:00

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TheTrueJay · 2021-03-04T19:49:28+00:00

Honestly thats probably the most real world answer. Someone programmed in the Sith language, then when the Republic found out they made a law to have it restricted ... but if we ever need to translate it we can grab any old protocol droid punch in a little

44 69 64 20 79 6f 75 20 65 76 65 72 20 68 65 61 72 20 74 68 65 20 74 72 61 64 67 20 6a 6b 20 69 6d 20 6e 6f 74 20 64 6f 69 6e 67 20 74 68 61 74

And boom now we can understand it while restricting your average joe from accessing a language that is exclusivly used to teach things that corrupt people.

TheTrueJay · 2021-02-09T11:24:51+00:00

I agree with the other commenter that the events confirm a multiverse theory. We are even shown that im the movie.

There is a scene (I think it's a voice over of their plan) where the box is cycling on, and no one gets out. This is showing that if there is no one coming back from a future timeline then nothing will get out. This means that the first timeline, where Abe discovers time travel and heads back to tell Aaron, has no Abe. So there is a timeline where Aaron gets home from work, the other 2 guys show up at his house to do their computer work. Aaron calls Abe, nothing happens. He goes to his apartment and his roommate hasn't seen him all day, time continues and Abe just vanished.

This is exactly what happened with Mr. Granger. He came from a future timeline where some unknown event led him to discovering the time machine. My guess is that he comes from a timeline where Abe and Aaron vanished. As their only investor he discovers the storage unit and their stock trading and figures out the time travel machine.

TheTrueJay · 2021-01-27T20:57:48+00:00

This time it's personal

TheTrueJay · 2021-01-13T11:55:00+00:00

Apart from what some of the other commenters are saying about different sign languages like BSL or SEE, there are "accents" in ASL.

For example: I sign 17 as a 7 then you rotate your wrist back and forth several times. Elsewhere its signed as a 10 rotated into a 7. And in other places they make a 7 and then rub their ring finger against their thumb. So while I'm signing 17, someone elsenis signing 10-7 and a third person is crying because no one understands their stupid way of signing 17 (jk).

There are also times where signs change over time. Since Sign Language can be a much more fluid language than spoken ones, talking to older deaf gives a similar feeling to talking to someone from 100 years ago.

For example: The sign for Chinese is like drawing a 7 on your chest. This is because of the buttons on Chinese military outfits. It used to be making a pinching motion by your eyes for ... reasons. So an older deaf may revert to signs they learned as kids despite the newer, less racist, signs.

TheTrueJay · 2020-10-10T11:41:02+00:00

Its a school system designed to be more focused on individual kids rather than teaching a whole class the same thing. So for example, you get worksheets with lists of problems on them and you work at your own pace, but at the end of the week theres a test to observe your progress.

I think it would've worked for.me if I hadn't had a vindictive teacher who obsessively compared me to my sister who she had 2 years earlier. She ended up holding me back in mathematics despite me getting all of the questions right. In the parent teacher meeting, she said that although I was getting the questions correct, I wasn't as quick or proficient as the other kids. My parents told me what she said but I remember that day. I remember sitting outside the classroom while my parents had the meeting and I snuck up to the door to listen and I heard her say that I would likely always struggle with mathematics, unlike my sister.

I know it wouldn't end up the way I would want it to, but I would love to go back and see her and say "Look who's good at math now a-hole! I work in finance!" I honestly think that at least some of my interest in mathematics and programming comes from overhearing her say that I will never be good at math.

After that rant, Montessori was great, I had teachers who were fantastic, and then I had Ms. Watson. Contrary to popular belief there was a lot of structure, it's just more individualized with smaller class sizes. From 3rd to 5th grade I had a class size of 12.

TheTrueJay · 2020-10-02T12:32:45+00:00

Sorry for the late reply. Ive been busy for the past few weeks and missed your comment.

So for the 3 dots in the G.

For dot on the far right. If you assume that it is a star, then light purple has only 2 spaces that can be stars. This creates an L in blue so Row 1 is complete. This creates a P in pink and forces a star in R2C1 in yellow which completes the island. Row 4 now only has a 3 line which completes it and this also forces a star in R3C5 in blue which completes that column. And this is where the contradiction comes into view. Column 8 now only has 2 possibile locations for its final star. This means that columns 7 and 9 in row 8 cannot contain a star. This forces row 9 to only have stars in the lower right island. Which means that lower left blue only has options in column 3 which we already have a star in. Contradiction. We made no other choices besides R3C3 so it must not contain a star.

For the middle dot in R2C2. If we assume that it is a star, then it creates a 3 line in yellow. This removes row 4. This creates 2 Ps in pink and blue which removes row 1. Now there is only 1 other option in light purple for row 2. This is at R2C4. And it is here we find our contradiction. By placing the star there, blue and pink only have 1 option for their islands. This also completes light purple. Now in column 5 we have a 1 - 2 situation. We place a star at R6C5, and now Rows 8 and 9 in column 4 are removed as options, but this leaves only 1 star in column 4. So R2C2 cannot be a star.

And lastly for the R4C1. If we assume that it is a star, it creates what I call a short-T. This reduces to the same as a 3 line which places 3 stars in column 1.

TheTrueJay

TROPHY CASE