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 2017-11-28 

Christmas (2017) is coming!

Showing all comments about the post Christmas (2017) is coming!. To return to the blog post, click here.

Comments

Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
@neal (@zbvif): Thanks, I've added a clarification to 22
Matthew
                 Reply
Me again

Just for info (clarification?): I read question on 22nd as
22 is two times an odd number. Today's number is the mean of all the answers, on days (including today), that are two times an odd number."

Note my added commas. I was averaging the answers, not the dates. Certainly ambiguous as far as I am concerned.
Only fixed it by 'cheating'. Trying best guessses of averages until I got the correct one.
neal (@zbvif)
                 Reply
Wow. Just discovered I meisread 15th Dec puzzle.

I can tell you that the number of combinations of n As and Bs which contain at at least one uninterrupted sequence of 3 As is 2^n - F3(n+3) where F3 is the fibonaccia variant adding 3 numbers (1,1,2,4,7,13,24 etc.).
Only took me about 8 hours (with some small help form OEIS for the 2 As problem)
Neal (@zbvif)
                 Reply
@Alex: Assume the pancake is 2D
Matthew
      ×1           Reply
With todays puzzle does the pancake have any thickness i.e can we slice the pancake into 2 circular pancakes each with half the thickness or are we to assume its 2D
Alex
                 Reply
@EliK: Yes, the puzzles should all give three digit answers. You must be misinterpreting today's puzzle...
Matthew
                 Reply
Will all puzzle answers be 3 digit numbers? Today (15) I'm getting a much larger number but could be interpreting the puzzle wrong?
EliK
                 Reply
@Charles: No - there is currently no way to check your answers. But on Christmas Eve, once you've attempted all 24 puzzles, a thing will appear telling you how many are right/wrong, so you can know they're all right before attempting the logic puzzle...
Matthew
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Just to check I'm not missing something - there's no way to check whether my answers are right or wrong?
Charles
                 Reply
@Neal: Yes, the book starts with page 1 on the left hand side (ie the inside cover), and ends with page 754 on the right (ie the inside back cover).
Matthew
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Matthew. Today's (13) puzzle. Books normally have 1st two page spread being pages 2 and 3. The last in this book would be 752,753. This means there would not be a middle two page spread, there would be two...?
Did you assume 1st 2 page spread is pages 1 and 2?
Neal
                 Reply
@Louis: I think they get harder towards the end, plus the final puzzle is probably harder.
Matthew
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Are the daily puzzles going to gradually get harder? They seem easier this year... Or is the final puzzle going to be more difficult?
Louis
                 Reply
@Neal: No, there may be zeroes in the three digit numbers (but you can discard these when solving the final logic puzzle as there are no zeros in the answer to that).
Matthew
                 Reply
Should I worry one of my 3 digit answers contains a zero?
Neal
                 Reply
@Michael: The digits can be the same.
Matthew
                 Reply
Should we assume that the three digits can be the same, or must be different, unless stated otherwise?
Michael
                 Reply
@PatTheHyruler: Nope, anyone is allowed to enter.
Matthew
                 Reply
Is the contest UK-only?
PatTheHyruler
                 Reply
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