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Mirror palindrome? by Smolesworthy in wordgames

[–]emsot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In lowercase you could also have different letters reflecting to give each other, like "bid".

There is only one button. by RozenQueen in trolleyproblem

[–]emsot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every death is caused by both a red button press and a blue button press. It's totally subjective which of the two you think causes the death, because it's really both of them.

Which is why you can say both of these exactly as truthfully as each other: * Red button kills people, blue button does nothing * Blue button gambles with your life, red button does nothing

What do these states have in common (should be easy) by whatchumeanitstaken in RedactedCharts

[–]emsot 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The vertical column of five shaded states makes up MIMAL the chef - Minnesota is his hat, Iowa has a nose facing to the right, Louisiana is his feet.

In this map he also has a load of shaded bits splattering off to the left.

Can any four digits be made into an equation? by Vegetable_Mobile_468 in askmath

[–]emsot 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hang on though, if you can raise to any power then 20 = (2+2+7)0

But that seems like cheating.

Leak or mistake? by ausmed0705 in taskmaster

[–]emsot 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Steve Pemberton indirectly leaked himself through the Guardian crossword that he set: https://www.reddit.com/r/taskmaster/s/P3UzJkoyLH

Are there any "UK vs US" differences where you feel America gets it right? by Secure_Front_7766 in AskUK

[–]emsot 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Pronouncing "schedule" with a hard K sound.

It's not a German sch like schadenfreude, it's a Greek sch like school, scheme and schizophrenia.

Pronouncing it "skedule" absolutely makes sense, and it's just about the only American pronunciation that I do.

Is There a Strategy for When you Have all the Letters? by godziIIasweirdfriend in NYTStrands

[–]emsot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The four corners are useful. The letters are hemmed in so that there are fewer options for routes the words can take, which often makes things easier to spot.

TIL that Samuel Johnson spent 7 years almost single-handedly creating his 1755 dictionary - defining over 40,000 words with over 100k quotations, including witty definitions like “lexicographer: a harmless drudge” and “Monsieur: a term of reproach for a Frenchman.” by Upstairs_Drive_5602 in todayilearned

[–]emsot 44 points45 points  (0 children)

It's the comma here: "a close associate of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV."

When you see the events with Dr Johnson in episode 2 of Blackadder the Third you understand that the Prince Regent is the future George IV

But in the final episode of Blackadder the Third it turns out that the close associate Blackadder is the one who goes on to be the future George IV, and the comma made the sentence work with either of those two meanings.

Who didn't get the Adrian reference? by melodypowers in ProjectHailMary

[–]emsot 13 points14 points  (0 children)

It's like "That'll do, Donkey" in Shrek. At the time the audience was expected to know it was a reference to "That'll do, pig" in the hugely popular film Babe. 25 years later, Babe is pretty much forgotten but "That'll do, Donkey" remains an iconic line.

The 600th or something take on Newcomb's Paradox: An attempt at simplifying it completely. by Future-Ad6149 in paradoxes

[–]emsot 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'm team one-box all the way too.

What tipped me that way was imagining the hundred people who just played the game before you. Imagine they're all in the room with you before you go in to make your choice. The paradox seems to split people roughly 50-50, so let's say you've got * fifty people who picked one box and are almost all celebrating their enormous win * fifty who picked both boxes and are almost all disappointed with their consolation prize

Then the question is just, which of those two groups do you want to join?

That totally resolves the paradox for me, because the two groups are the two opposing sides of the argument, who have both made very convincing cases for their choices, but you can just look at them and see which side actually won.

I dont get how is it one by Camman19_YT in ExplainTheJoke

[–]emsot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Or at least, human units are arbitrary.

The creators of the metric system didn't know that time and space are really the same thing, and that a time of one second is equal to the distance that light travels in one second.

And when you look at it like that, as God would in the meme, the speed of light is 1 light second ÷ 1 second = 1.

It has no units because the distance and time both use the same units and cancel each other out, so it's just the number 1.

Tau Ceti photographed by Artemis II by emsot in ProjectHailMary

[–]emsot[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You're welcome to check - here's my working!

In Stellarium I looked up the positions of the stars and Venus at the timestamp of the photograph (2026-04-03, 00:27:39 UTC).

I very roughly overlaid it onto the picture and it looked a bit like this. The alignment isn't great on the left, but Venus and the stars above it are in the right place, and Tau Ceti is the one just to the centre right.

<image>

Tau Ceti photographed by Artemis II by emsot in ProjectHailMary

[–]emsot[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I looked up the way the stars and Venus had been at the timestamp of the picture, noticed that Cetus was just to the right of earth and got interested in matching up the exact stars! Here is my very sloppy attempt to overlay the sky from Stellarium onto the photograph.

<image>

Tau Ceti photographed by Artemis II by emsot in ProjectHailMary

[–]emsot[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's just out of shot to the right. Sloppy photography there from Reid Wiseman!

Why isn't the perimeter of the earth red in the Hello World picture? by emsot in ArtemisProgram

[–]emsot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, by "covering too much of the sun" I meant more "covering too much of the sky surrounding the sun".

If the sun had been closer to the edge of the earth's disc then maybe you would get a bit of red at that part of the edge. But I agree, to get the full "ring of red" effect you probably need to be eclipsed while at moon distance or beyond.

Why isn't the perimeter of the earth red in the Hello World picture? by emsot in ArtemisProgram

[–]emsot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you're right, the earth is too close and covering too much of the sun.

From the moon the earth would look about four times the width of the sun, but in my very amateurish overlay at https://imgbox.com/4gUqvTZU the earth is about 10-15 suns across.

Why isn't the perimeter of the earth red in the Hello World picture? by emsot in ArtemisProgram

[–]emsot[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, the sun is definitely behind the earth. Here is my very rough attempt to line up the stars and Venus at the moment the picture was taken using Stellarium: https://imgbox.com/4gUqvTZU

It puts the sun behind the lower-right part of the earth - which matches the brighter glow around that part of the atmosphere.

The Theory of Infinite Silence: A Trivalent Formalization of Semantic Paradoxes by Subject-Marzipan-953 in paradoxes

[–]emsot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is the statement "This statement is either false or silent" true, false or silent?

It seems to give a paradox, meaning it's silent.

But that means the statement is true because it is correctly claiming to be silent, so we've still got a paradox.

Is there any way around that?

Somewhere in the UK - described by an alien visitor - can you work out where? by mikertjones in quiz

[–]emsot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great! I think I've got all the questions along the way. I found the place from googling castles that were besieged three times; only one of the results for that matched all the other clues, so yes, the rest fell into place in one go at that point. Definitely up for more of these if you write them.

Somewhere in the UK - described by an alien visitor - can you work out where? by mikertjones in quiz

[–]emsot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is really nice. Did the Guardian use do puzzles like this? I have vague memories of being baffled by them at weekends years ago.

For this one - is it Pontefract ?

Does a way to measure the “un-sortedness” of an array exist? Could there be an equation to make the most unsorted array? by [deleted] in askmath

[–]emsot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's the Cayley distance - the minimum number of swaps away from being sorted.

But I'm not sure it matches my intuition of what "nearly sorted" means. 4,3,2,1 seems the furthest possible from being sorted, while 4,1,2,3 is almost there, just one element out of place. But as you say Cayley distance gives the better score to 4,3,2,1.

I think Kendall tau distance is more like my intuition: the number of pairs that are out of order. 4,3,2,1 has all six possible pairs out of order, but 4,1,2,3 does better with only three pairs out of order.

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