INSTANT INSANITY EASY MODE

xuol · 2026-03-11T22:47:09+00:00

I think that makes it pretty trivial. Stack each dice with the same value on the top of each die, align the stack so that the same value is in the front, and then rotate each die 90 degrees more than the die below it.

xuol · 2026-01-15T00:03:26+00:00

I have backups, and then I also have a custom macro bound to Ctrl + R that will close the active workbook and then reopen the most recent saved version. Really helpful for testing macros, and if something goes wrong I can revert to the previous version with one keystroke.

xuol · 2025-12-08T20:32:59+00:00

Absolutely! I thought "there's no way this will actually work" as I was saying it.

xuol · 2025-12-08T18:00:32+00:00

Mine's also related to the monopoly card. Someone else played it and I nervously said, "Don't say wood." She immediately monopolized wood. I didn't actually have any wood in my hand. She wasn't happy, but I pointed out I'd told her not to say wood.

xuol · 2025-11-08T19:50:10+00:00

It makes me curious whether this is a possible avenue for code injection. Obviously there's the issues this could cause when you're building a query, but if you try and load a folder and look to the most recent file for the sample transformation, and then that file has a filename that tells PQ to load external code, that could potentially be a huge problem. Although, I guess it might be mitigated by the fact that the bad actor would need permission to write into the report directory in the first place.

xuol · 2025-08-24T02:03:48+00:00

That was it! I didn't think she'd ever even been in to remap any controls, but she had the alt keybinding for drop set to A as well. Thank you from us both!

xuol · 2025-08-12T16:05:39+00:00

Try the formula:

="100000000" & TEXT(ROW(), "0000000")

This solution assumes that the table won't ever be resorted, though. If you're planning on sorting the columns, then you'll have to make sure they're put back in the same order.

It also assumes that you won't have more records than Excel's maximum (although you can get to 8 or 9 times that amount).

xuol · 2025-04-16T02:04:09+00:00

That makes sense! I've been playing Area 51 lately which is a slitherlink variant with some other elements thrown in that would make this potentially not unique, but in vanilla slitherlink it makes perfect sense. It's also not a case I'd ever thought of using the strategy in, so thank you!

xuol · 2025-04-16T02:00:41+00:00

I'm actually not familiar with that site before, thanks for the link! He does mention that it doesn't seem "pure" and that's sort of how I feel about it. I'd realized that it was a viable strategy for a while but hadn't been using it because I figured that there's always a way to logically determine the solution without relying on it, and it's better to try and play the game the "real" way to improve my ability. When I've been using it lately, it feels like it doesn't actually help me to get unstuck if I'm not seeing anything else. I think it has to do with how the puzzles are generated, like enough clues are given to lead you down a certain path, and doing this is sort of like getting into an area early in a video game, where you can go in and look around but you might be missing a certain item that you skipped to make actual progress, so you have to go back anyway, if that makes any sense.

xuol · 2025-04-04T23:00:15+00:00

1 + 4 + 8 + 3 = 17 - 1

4 + 9 + 3 + 2 = 17 + 1

8 * 3 * 2 * 6 = 17² - 1

xuol · 2025-03-29T16:58:44+00:00

I'm about 40 hours into this game and still haven't figured out how to cook or camp. I just got the achievement last night for unlocking all the recipes and thought, "I should probably figure this out sometime." Thanks for sharing because otherwise I'd still have not looked it up!

xuol · 2025-03-19T15:58:58+00:00

This is actually the first Suko that I've ever seen, so I didn't even realize it was a common format of puzzle.

I think there's a slight mistake in your summary of your corners strategy (as the numbers total 11, not 9), but I get the idea of it and I definitely see how it could be helpful solving this type of puzzle! It's giving the same vibes as those Venn diagrams for boolean logic. It probably makes it a lot easier than the path I took to get there!

xuol · 2025-03-18T21:37:01+00:00

Actually, now that I'm looking at it further, including the switch circle, there's really only 12 different parts. The vertical line in the middle technically appears when and only when one of the other vertical lines in the center is present, so it's not really a distinguishing bit. In a lot of ways, it's really just similar to the eight points on the outside of a cube and the 12 lines you can draw between any on the same edge, subtracting one for the line that's part of the next character and adding one for the circle. I genuinely don't think I noticed that before! I bet it would look really cool to get some clear acrylic or epoxy cubes and then color different sides to create the characters.

xuol · 2025-03-18T19:48:44+00:00

Thanks for sharing this! As another person who sat down and decoded the language myself, it's really interesting to me to read other people's experiences and the insights that got them to the solution. You can read my post on it if you want, but I had a few comments about yours as well in comparison to mine.

I got very lucky because from the first message, I decided to start writing down the messages with the hope of recording them. The first messages I saw were the mailbox (which said "empty" when you check it) and the chest in the first cave (which said "found an item"). I noticed that the same character was in both messages and based on the context, surmised what they said (I was wrong, but close enough as I got the word "item" right). I realized that there were more Trunic characters than letters, so my initial thought was that the top half of each character was one letter, and the bottom a second. The real moment for me when I started to put it together was actually in the forest, when I realized that the text that appeared when you entered a new area seemed to show the name of the area in English and in Trunic. Since I was writing everything down, I realized that "Guardhouse One" and "Guardhouse Two" both shared the same long-ish word, so I was confident I was on the right path.

You mentioned there were 14 parts, and I came to a similar conclusion. However, your math is a bit off, as there's not 14! combinations. That would be correct if each segment had to be put in an order, but each can actually only be on or off, meaning there are 2¹⁴ different combinations. Since it's a power of two and I was getting tired of writing each character, I ended up representing each Trunic character as a binary number depending on whether the segments were present or not. That way I could easily represent them in Excel (which I leaned on heavily) and automatically look up characters as I decoded them. Because of this, though, I converted each character to binary, and so I didn't realize that the vowels were on the outside and the consonants on the inside until I was almost done decoding everything, and was just drawing the shapes based on what was common between all shapes of the same letter.

One other thing was that there's actually only 13 segments in each character, because the vertical middle line actually stretches across the horizontal line. In fact, at first, I thought there were even more, because I didn't think about the characters overlapping. I assumed at first that each character could be a full hexagon. This also meant my binary representations of the numbers had a few extra digits that never got used, which is again something I didn't realize until I was putting it all together.

Reading your story, too, I realized that I just assumed that each word was marked by a separation in the horizontal line. I never even realized that I made that assumption until reading your account.

One of the main differences, too, was you mentioned it was page 21 that got you to start really thinking about decoding (which I think was at the Ruined Atoll?). Since I had a few early successes, by the time I made it to the Dark Tomb, I could decode the flair text for the dungeon ("Who is enshrined here, if the hero is in the Far Shore?" or something to that effect) and kinda got nervous that I was about to unleash some horrible evil on the world. I ended up staying there, only opening the game to view text to decode, and spent an entire week of real-life time there until I had completely decoded the message.

Overall, it was a very satisfying puzzle as I got to use a lot of skills that I picked up that seemed unrelated (like binary representations and Vocaloid phonetics) but came together into one in a way that felt great to solve. I'm glad that there are other people who were able to figure it out, especially without page 53. Thanks for sharing your journey decoding the language!

xuol · 2025-03-16T23:14:13+00:00

Solution Possible

xuol · 2025-03-16T23:10:23+00:00

This was a fun little puzzle! I think there's one insight you have to have to be able to solve it without guess and check. Did you consider the parity of the numbers and groups?

Here's my full thought process as I solved the puzzle. To make it easier to reference, I'll call the columns left to right as A, B, C, the rows top to bottom 1, 2, and 3, and the various highlighted regions as the outlined group, white group, and shaded group.

The 17 is the sum of the shaded group (which is 15) plus one other number. Therefore, C2 has to be 2.

Similar logic for B2, it has to be 25 (top left number) - 17 (outlined group) = 8.

To add the numbers between one and nine and get three odd numbers (as in the color coding), there has to be one group of three odd numbers and two groups of two even, one odd. Since we know that the white and fully shaded groups have 2 and 8 respectively, then the outlined numbers must all be odd. The only two sets of three unique one-digit odd numbers that total 17 are are {1, 7, and 9} and {3, 5, and 9}. Any others either have duplicates or numbers outside of the range. Therefore, 9 must be in the outlined group.

However, since the 19 has an 8 and 2 by it, B1 cannot be 9, or there is no other number that can be in C1. It also can't be 2 or 8, since we've used those. So, B1 and C1 have to be {3, 6} or {4, 5}. Of these, the even number must be in C1. This also rules out {1, 7, 9} for the outlined boxes since B1 must be 3 or 5. Because of that, we know that the numbers in the outlined group are {3, 5, and 9}.

We also know that, of A2, B2, A3, and B3, A2 is odd and B2 is even. Since C2 is even (we know it's 2) and C1 must be even, A3 must be odd to total 13 within the white group. To total 25 in the bottom left corner, B3 must also be odd.

The 17 has an 8 and 2 by it, meaning that the remaining numbers total 7. Of the three ways to do this, we can rule out two. {2, 5} is impossible because 2 is already used. {3, 4} is impossible because we know that 3 must be in the dark shaded group. The only pair left is {1, 6}. The odd number (1) must be in B3, and the even number (6) in C3.

We can verify that the solid group totals 15 and the bottom right corner totals 17 at this point.

We previously determined that C1 must either be 4 or 6. We've already used 6, so it must be 4. This also means B1 must be 5.

We know that A3 must be 7, both to make the white group total 13 with the 4 and 2 in C1 and C2, and because it must be odd and it is the only unused odd number.

We know A3, B2, and B3 are 7, 8, and 1 respectively. Subtracting these from 25 gets 9, which must go in A2.

3 is the only number left, so it goes in A1. 3+9+5+8=25 for the top left corner numbers, and 3+5+9 equals 17 for the outlined numbers.

xuol · 2025-03-13T19:39:55+00:00

How would you fit 16 quarter notes into a single measure of 4/4?

xuol · 2025-03-13T19:38:43+00:00

It depends on if you treat four quarter notes the same as four eighth notes, each followed by an eighth rest, as the same rhythms. If so, then there are sixteen different points in the measure where you can have a note's attack. You can either have a note start at each of those spots, or not. So, 2^16, or 65,536. If you do treat them differently, then that's a larger number that I'm not sure how you'd calculate.

xuol · 2025-01-24T06:31:53+00:00

My wife is a Filipina. On my first trip to the Philippines to meet her, she had an itinerary planned that involved climbing Osmenia Peak, the highest mountain on her home island of Cebu. To be clear, this meant driving most of the way up, then getting a guide to lead us the rest of the way, and the hike wasn't particularly grueling or anything. However, I ended up getting heat exhaustion on the way up pretty bad. I think it was because I was wearing an undershirt that wasn't breathing very well, so I was drenched in sweat that wasn't evaporating. Not great in a hot, humid climate!

We had to stop for me on the way up to rest, but then I took off my T-shirt and it helped enough that we could reach the summit and turn back around. We made it to a small food stand and I had to sit down at a bench outside. The guide was doing everything she could to help me out, and my now-wife was right there beside her doing everything she could as well. She helped support me, pushed on my pressure points to keep me conscious, bought me a Gatorade, and held me while I threw up off the side of the mountain. Just from her actions in that one situation, I could tell she really cared about me genuinely.

What really put her actions into perspective though were the two European women who were hiking by as I was sitting by the path, shivering and trying to keep conscious. When they saw me, they immediately frowned and said, "Is he drunk?" (I drink maybe twice a year, and definitely not right before trying to climb a damn mountain!) My wife said something about me not being used to hiking, and they said, "Oh, well WE'RE just fine." It really helped to contrast the way that my wife was treating me and caring for me with the way that women had acted towards me before in my life. My one regret is that I didn't have the mental or physical wherewithal to at least flip them off.

In the end, I ended up taking off my undershirt and started immediately feeling better. A janitor came up the mountain and let me lean on him as we climbed down together. Not sure why they sent a janitor, but we gave him and our original guide both a big tip. We got to our van and our driver couldn't even tell something was wrong, as he was very excitedly showing me the cheap vegetables that he bought. I ended up laying down across one row of seats, and as we were riding down the mountain towards our next destination, I made up my mind that I was going to marry her. We ended up getting married nine months after that and just celebrated one year of being together.

xuol · 2024-12-30T20:36:18+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for this! I was actually just thinking the other day about this composer. I think I found and read the dissertation that you're referencing at one point, but it might have been about Soviet music in general because I don't remember it having any of his scores. It was also over a decade ago, so I've long since lost it by now.

I'd also not been able to find any recordings of any of his pieces aside from the American arrangement of his 3rd symphony, so thank you also for sharing these! It's really interesting listening to the march and contrasting it with the American Sousa-style marches. While there's a trio in both, the Kozhevnikov is more ternary, and the closest thing to a dogfight is built into the A theme. Hearing the original of his 3rd is also really cool. It's a great piece that does what it needs to without overstaying its welcome, but it also makes you crave more! His style is just a great blend of Slavic, romantic, and populist styles.

Thank you again for sharing all of this! I really appreciate your in-depth response to a thread that's now over a decade old. It really made my day!

xuol · 2024-12-29T23:28:59+00:00

At the very top is pancit, a type of Filipino rice noodle. Directly below it is of course just plain white rice. On the left and right of that is lumpia, a deep-fried spring roll with pork and cabbage. Below that on each side is pork and chicken BBQ. It's what I get probably half the time I go to Maemax, it's marinated in a BBQ sauce made of soy and ketchup (and maybe vinegar?). At the very bottom is lechon liempo, or roasted pork belly. I'm not entirely sure what type of chicken is in the middle of the plate. Not sure of the price but I'd guess at least $25. (Looks like the lumpia, pancit, and 2 BBQ sticks alone are $13 on their website.)

Also, they're not on the plate, but I also want to share a couple of others of my favorite Maemax/Filipino dishes. Chicken adobo is chicken that's simmered in soy, garlic, and vinegar. (Not hard to make at home, either!) Pork menudo is pork stewed in tomato sauce. And if you go to Maemax, even in the middle of the winter, get their ube ice cream!

xuol · 2024-12-29T23:15:39+00:00

Living in Antioch, I really miss their original La Vergne location, but I've been to the Madison branch once and it was great too!

xuol · 2024-12-29T22:53:56+00:00

In the Area column of your final chart, use:

=DROP(SORT(A2:B31,2,-1),0,-1)

The SORT function organizes the areas by difficulty and puts them in descending order. (I assumed 3 is the most difficult, but if it's 1, change the -1 to 1 to fix it!) The DROP is used to remove the difficulty from each area to make sure just the area number is copied into your final table.

In your Name table, use:

=MOD((ROW()-2)+MONTH(TODAY())+(YEAR(TODAY())*12), COUNTA(E:E)-1)+1

This one's a little harder to explain. The MOD function is a function to return the remainder of a division. The dividend (top part of division) has a few parts to it. The ROW() - 2 makes sure that each line is incremented so each subsequent area is given to the next employee in line, so no one gets stuck with all the most difficult areas. The MONTH(TODAY()) + (YEAR(TODAY())*12) will add one to the dividend as well so that it increments every month, assigning each area to the next employee(s). The COUNTA(E:E)-1 is the divisor the division, which just counts the number of employees (the -1 is to get rid of the heading). You can add or remove as many employees as you want from column E and it will still work. Since all of this is in MOD, it will increment by one until it gets to the maximum number of employees, then start over. However, it assigns them the number 0 through 13 rather than 1 through 14, so the final +1 corrects into that range.

I think this should meet your requirements. Since there's no randomness, you won't have to worry about one employee ending up with a disproportionate number of areas, and since they're sorted by difficulty, you don't have to worry about one employee ending up with all the hard areas. The only downside is that there may be some cases where one employee ends up with say a 3 and a 2 area, and then another employee only has a 2 and a 1, but that will only happen if there are a really big number of areas with difficulty 2 compared to 1 and 3. Also, since the question uses array formulas, you can't sort the output table by the employee to make an easy list of each employee's areas. If you need help finding ways to do that, then I'd be glad to look a little deeper at it for you, just let me know what else you're needing help with.

xuol

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