What would you like for the next puzzle event?
More puzzles the better, so I voted for "Group puzzle themed event like March event (30 puzzle designers)", but my second choice would be "Group Puzzle pyramid with real puzzles only, no quizzes"...
Anyway, after all fun I had with March event I'm already happy that there will be any event from you ;)
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Since there are so many people here from different countries.
Why not use that.
Could let them design a puzzle about their home country.
Organize them by continent and then pyramid your way up,
where for the next level 2 puzzle makers mix questions about their country 5 / 5
So on until continent. And finally world and beyond at the top.
(I just woke up so, this might be deleted after the fog cleared up.
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Wow some of the greatest ideas happen when you are just waking up...
I absolutely love this idea... An international geography and cultural event... We could have achievements for conquering continents...
Too cool...
Because of content would be quiz and puzzles.
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"I absolutely love this idea... An international geography and cultural event... We could have achievements for conquering continents..."
This is what I sounded like in my head. (didn't come out as eloquently though)
I reserve both Belgium and Thailand if you ever decide to go through with it.
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problem is that many countries have very small representation on SG, while other have massive communities (look here: http://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/regions ), so there would be tens of people wanting to make something for US/Russia/Poland , while other countries would have noone to design quiz for them. Also most of users on SG are from Europe and Americas, few Asians, but I bet Africa for example would be mostly empty considering how many countries there are technologically underdeveloped, no internet access etc.
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True but making a puzzle for each country in the world would be too much.
better to split up the world into regions. view image...
Then each region needs only one and US, Russia can have multiple participants to make a specific puzzle about each region.
And Africa would require only a few and even in case there are no creators. It wouldn't be too hard to find someone who wouldn't mind making an event for those regions.
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You'll be happy to know 120 puzzles and not a single jigsaw!
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I liked the group puzzle concept, we get many different styles of puzzles ^^ But seems like the community loves your puzzles more (:
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what's the difference between a puzzle and a quiz?
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Check out my PA-cases, those are puzzles. Quizzies are trivia, things you either know or google answers for information.
For a good read, Mikalye's puzzle guide has more information on the subject.
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Quiz checks your knowledge of some subject (or your google skills), while Puzzle is, well a puzzle - some kind of logical (or not) riddle, instead of checking your knowledge it requires creative thinking, finding solution, logical thinking, intelligence etc ;) Let me use jeff's last event as example. These are quizes: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/Nl1ARImW http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/rWBFAGiv , these are puzzles: http://revilheart.byethost8.com/puzzlecube/index.html http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/W9izh/postal-2
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oh, I fucking hate those puzzles
thanks for explaining
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sorry to hear that, I hate quizes on the other hand ;p
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I have no problem with real puzzles, as long as it's relatively accessible. Spinning a cube around like that is just annoying, for me.
Quizzes, I find are fun if they're not too hard or vague. Something that can easily be looked up with google is fine. Something requiring specialized knowledge of some obscure subject, not so much.
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Well, I didn't solve the cube so cannot judge, Love the second one thou (would be weird if I didn't as I made it myself ;p)
I don't like quizes because with google available they are basically not tests of knowledge, inteligence etc, but rather a test of "how much time can you sink into trying different answers/ googling / bruteforcing. Also the fact that answer format is a problem - you may have good answer but Quiz creator didn't think about it and it won't accept it - so even if you know something you're still forced to bruteforce it and waste time.
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well, yeah, but, you can learn from them
oh, and the formatting thing and the 30 second wait do suck
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The big problem with group-created puzzles is the varying difficulty and refusal to change or help when things are way harder than the event intended it to be. You'd need to handpick people that are willing to provide help all the way through when people ask for it to a degree that satisfies the intended challenge.
That said, I'm quiz-exhausted after this event ^^ And with the surge of jigsaws I would really like if there were some real puzzles around here to spark up more interest in that kind of challenge again.
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I agree with Nordhbane on the refusal to change or help when it's way harder than intented. That was the only thing that drove me crazy in certain puzzles of the march event.
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hey, mine was one of the easiest puzzles I've ever made!
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I'm certainly not talking about yours, yours was actually one of my favorite :)
Plus most of the creators were nice and happy to help when needed.
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Where there people who refused to help? I had more the impression people did not ask if they needed help. They just choosed to give up and nver come back again.
I think the bigger problem is that it is hard to get a clear picture of the amount and difficulty of the puzzles since you have 30 independent creators. This leads of course to a higher difficulty than originally planned.
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Hm, I thought I talked with most of the creators and I got an answer almost everytime I had some questions. Sometimes it took a while due to being occupied or other stuff but something flatly refusing me did not happen. Atleast I can't remember it. But yea, it might be a problem. Especially for specific answers to some of the ITH's.
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hope you don't mean mine? I tried to help people in comment section, while not giving away big set of hints in Description itself to keep it clean a lot of hints and explanations were given in comments. Some people simply didn't bother reading them - thus I was getting same questions over and over again even if these were already explained. So in my mind - if someone is too lazy to look through hints already given and requests the same hint as others before him - it's not the case of being unwilling to help, it's the case of solver being unwilling to do anything himself and waiting to be served solution on a silver platter ;p
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Oh no. I was told that it was unfair to other solvers to provide any bigger hints. And this was a puzzle with 1400 guesses for 4 questions and less than 30 solvers.
I really liked yours, and hints weren't needed as long as not understanding the language didn't cause problems.
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I have the feeling we got stuck on the same one...
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I always asked for help/hint, all creators answered.
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This is why I don't create puzzles, I only solve them :P
It's really hard to gauge the difficulty of your own puzzle, and even harder to give hints that aren't too obvious or not helpful at all. And too troublesome for a lazy person like me :3
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just make hard puzzles and don't mind people crying over how hard it is :D: Take a pleasure from poor souls struggling ;p
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I loved march event so i voted for something similar, but anything of your list would be great really :)
And if you need help making the puzzles and are short on people, i'd be glad to help :)
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If it's related to science again, I want to participate :3
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In the distant future - game genres puzzles. Yes. For the long run - Alphabet puzzle - puzzles about something starting with A, B, C - you get the picture. Yes.
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what you described would be rather Quiz not a Puzzle ;) Quiz with answers starting from A, B, C etc. yes.
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My meaning was creating puzzle around things starting with letter A - like Arms, anaconda, anagrams, architecture. Every single letter would be event on its own. Yes.
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We should be able to vote at least 3 options each of us. :O I like too many of these...
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Our goal here is to learn together how to make unsucky puzzles... Thus our collaboration in this thread. But it's impossible to please everyone with any puzzle as you see such varying preferences expressed here.
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Get me some skilled and motivated programmers and I have a fantastic idea for you. Until then no idea since I don't want to spoil anyone ^^
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I definitely agree with Nordhbane's comments above. What started off as a bit of fun for me turned into a frustrating Google grind in the March event, which led me to drop out even though I had completed about half the puzzles in the first week (and this is coming from someone who had the patience to tackle and complete Dingbat's Afghanistan Flag jigsaw!).
To get an idea of the types of "puzzles" I enjoyed the most from the March event (noting I didn't try them all):
- Cellular Biology - Evolutionary Biology (m3rc) - this was just fun, but still required some thinking.
- Logic Reasoning (zelghadis) - no Google, not too difficult, just needed to spend some time thinking about it.
- Functional Biology - Medicine (Dianatrix) - Yes it required Google, but was not too difficult and kept me interested.
I don't mind the odd quiz (as long as it's not a grind), but I generally prefer the more light-hearted puzzles(that doesn't mean they have to be easy). m3rc's puzzle probably sums up best what I enjoy. Another example is the image below (stolen from slayer6409's puzzle). In both cases, you know the puzzle isn't that hard (and it isn't), it's just you feel that your brain has abandoned you for a period of time.
Theme-wise I'm open to anything - I think codasim's countries idea would work well.
Either way I'm impressed and appreciate your continued efforts in the puzzle realms Jeff - Thanks so much!
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And as non-native speaker I have opposite view on m3rc evolutionary puzzle. Even when I precisely knew first step of the answers, I was able to get only 1st question right. In others I had no idea what words I need to put in, and bruteforcing my way through, sitting with dictionary and "I will maybe find out right answer when I will look at words long enought" is not funny option.
Same with zelgh puzzle - I didn't even know in 100% what the questions were about (even with clues in comments), so I ended up everytime with half-broken answer or wanting to put 2 letters at the same place (bc I didn't see any other alternative to their positions).
I liked geometry puzzle (light version), as it only required basic geometry abilities and calculator. And at the same time I've got no idea about what this cube is about.
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Fair comment and something I keep forgetting . . . even though this isn't the first time you've pointed it out to me!
This probably just highlights the challenge in finding puzzles that will suit such a diverse range of people.
What were your thoughts about the fruit puzzle image?
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I tried to do something that is right thing to do (from my point of view) when you look at it for the first time, so I changed fruits into x, y, z and tried to solve equation, finding out that it has no sense at all and resign.
I don't see anything more to it. I saw that it's image from some puzzle-realted site, but didn't want to cheat by going on it and look for answer.
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See to me, that is the beauty of that puzzle (it originally had me stumped for a while as well). It is as simple as X, Y, and Z if you look closely enough.
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I did it the same way too. But the beauty of it is that when I saw that the normal answer is wrong, it immediately got me thinking and tried to think out of the box solutions. It was very easy to find after that. After all, you could easily see that the fruit while seeming like a half-fruit was in fact a different one. So why not count it as 0 since you know no information about it? It was really not so hard to guess.
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fruit puzzle is too easy - 8 y/o can solve it in their head ;p
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You talking about the fruit bruised puzzle in March event? It was challenging and fun and educational...
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In March Event? For gods sake I can't remember this fruit puzzle. Did i do this? Can someone lead me towards it?
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Functional Biology- Ecology(Food Microbial) TheLuckyShamrock
Later puzzles had pictures of bruised and spoiled fruit...
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I'm talking about fruit puzzle in image posted by VillaNZ above :>
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Good that explains why I can't remember it in the Science Event. But not why I didn't see the image until now O.o But I agree a child should be able to solve these.
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Exactly - it's not difficult. But did you get the correct answer first time? If you did (without the clues above), then I'm impressed. I'd suggest most people would not.
You can check question 3 in the puzzle.
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Okay, you are right I only got it on the second try. I didn't look close enough. But I did not need clues if it means anything.
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I got it from the first time (without clues), but I don't think it's a big achievement in my case. It was just one question for me that I accidentally decided to solve right now. It can be very different when you're solving a lot of stuff in a row, especially when previous questions don't have such tricks.
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The last one was too hard for me, didnt finish even 10% of puzzles
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The puzzles will be easier... All sources are given.
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I always support educational puzzles (or quizzes - however they are called). Still, one other kind of puzzles (or quizzes) I would love to solve, would be movie puzzles (or quizzes). I love movies, so it would be too easy for me. :B You can either make it by yourself or request help. Still, the puzzles (or quizzes) I tend to solve are either educational or about movies. ;P
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Some tips from me too:
Avoid puzzles that lead mostly to frustration due to topic and how useless google/wiki can be, especially when logic can't help much either. Yes I'm talking about the "Science sucks" one mainly, though a few other questions in some puzzles could also be possible candidates, including some super hard to calculate ones that required advanced physics or math knowledge. (this mainly goes to a question in late particle physics puzzle that was more or less insane)
Some passcodes were great as ideas and with some help/hints on format were really enjoyable, however I found a few of the passcodes to be brutally difficult to find without help, borderline impossible in fact and perhaps harder than all puzzles by themselves lol. You'll always get some solvers because some solvers are indeed crazy, but you won't get the majority of people this way.
A few some times may suffer from grammar and wording. That's kinda important too. So it would be wise to never neglect it.
For the record I loved m3rc's puzzle and nordhbane's one. And nellyneko's due to the informative style it had. And while I love nordhbane's other puzzles too, I'm pretty sure that if you get ideas from there (which you probably should because it's pure puzzles without any googling/quiz etc), you should at least reduce the difficulty somehow to get more solvers. It's quite hard to find the balance...
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I personally prefer to have varied difficulty than reduced one (as long as none of the puzzles is batshit crazy hard ofc - having 2-3 solvers in a month for example). This way puzzle solvers who are better get rewarded - they can solve whole event, while you're still allowing normal users to get some rewards as well. Lowering difficulty just so "everyone can solve it" defeats whole spirit of competition and acomplishment. It's like with sports events for little kids - "You're all winners, no matter which place you got into finish line!"
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It depends. I generally agree, but my line of thought was reducing the difficulty only where appropriate of course. And not necessarily in all puzzles. But certainly if there's no sound logic/reason behind the solution, or if some things require advanced knowledge of something that you can't even google.
And yeah real puzzles are always the best. And the hardest to design of course.
Nordh is actually already close to achieving perfection lately on this, for example his latest case had huge variety in the 5 puzzles despite the fact that they all had something to do with binaries to solve them. xD Some of us spent time during the whole month to solve them all, which I do think is a bit overboard though. But it's quite close to being balanced hard puzzles. Just need to find a way to get more people in them... I loved them, but does not change the fact that they barely got enough entries.
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After the first ith from then on real puzzling ... The initial ith is to get some content to puzzle with!
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i think that the format with 30 creators are great because you need solve differents types of puzzles (each creator creates his puzzle) and its more funny than 1 creator for all puzzles because i would feel as one puzzle and not as event.
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No puzzle is the best puzzle.
Hail lazy leechers !
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Bump! Decision posted... read main thread opening....
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will be slow... will take several weeks to make it.... so dont expect the pyramid for awhile....
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I will have to skip creating a puzzle this time, my job has changed a bit and I've been really busy lately. I haven't even gotten to try solving most of the March puzzles yet. :( However I'll keep an eye on it! Thanks
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Exciting so far. I'm down for anything Nordh or/and Jeff prepares. Mikalye would also be a good addition to designers, if he has time of course.
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While I can't speak for Mikalye, I know he was a bit stressed last I spoke to him unfortunately. Which is why he has been a bit absent lately. I hope it clears up. :)
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It has been a quite challenging couple of weeks. Really hard. Also, my very limited puzzle writing time has gone into ensuring that the local Easter Egg hunt (16 nested puzzles) worked well. That being said, I have 16 written puzzles that can easily be adjusted for SG giveaways, so I am in. If you want me as a writer, I am happy to write. I fly out on a business trip tomorrow morning and will be in Madrid for a week, so will again have limited time, but I will try to participate as much as I can within my limited time. My life should return to normal the weekend of 9-10 April.
For the record, I was pleased with how my March event submission worked out (Physics in the Real World). It wasn't a puzzle, it was a quiz, but it wasn't pure google-fu either. And for those who didn't really want to play, I ensured that it was multiple choice and brute-forceable. The one addition that I really thought improved it was Nordhbane's suggestion of an explanation ITH page.
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Update 5/8/2016
Putting in final ga links, should be done today and go live!
Update 5/7/2016
Will finish the ga creation today and link into event... Possibly actually going live today! Thanks so much for the ga contributions coming in!
Update 5/6/2016
Just remembered max GAs I can make today is 300, so the event won't go live till tomorrow ...
UPDATE 5/5/2016
I have finished designing everything and now all I have left to do is create my GAs and link them into the event at the right places. I will be making all my GAs on Friday 5/6/2016 (tomorrow) and will be contacting all that are interested in donating GAs.
If you like go ahead and create your PRIVATE GAs (Level 1) Friday 5/6/2016 and make them last 30 days out-- as late as able to be created... and email the links of your GAs to my email address at:
jeffasl@yahoo.com
If you are donating a TRAIN then send me the first link of the first GA of the train and let me know it is a train and I will add your train to the event in the right place!
I need 6 trains and plenty of single GAs.
Excited to go LIVE Friday or Saturday!
Just wanted to give a status report on how the puzzle event designing is going along.
GOALS:
It will be:
THEME: The Food Pyramid
For a total of 121 puzzles!!
You can help out with GAs for the event!! Let me know if you are interested. So far we have 4 people that have expressed interest in GA contributions!
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