MGWCC #821 — "Read That Back To Me"

[Cinny]

Beamed at #70.

[Jeremy Smith]

Beamed, but needed to be told I was correct.

[Meg]

Transported and certainly learned something!

[SJMcK]

Beamed at #125

[KayW]

Beamed. At last, we have a week 2!

[DCBilly]

Beamed up! Nice one

[ChrisKochmanski]

Beamed!

Amusing!

[rjy]

Got it, awaiting beamage but confident. Clever puzzle by Matt

[HunterX]

Awaiting the transporter beam. Kept thinking, "He must have, once again, made it a lot harder than he thinks." Until I realized he didn't.

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

Beamed! Yes def week 2-ish. Thank God February only has 29 days this month!

[woozy]

Easy just means too much information. Maybe there's a message here in all this spaghetti but its going to take a lot more patience to see and than I seem to have right now.

And there is a *lot* of spaghetti....

[HoldThatThought]

Metas are funny things, aren't they?

When you first start solving, the biggest challenge is that you have no tools in the tool box - both an empty set and, yet, an infinite set, of possible solving mechanisms.

But then... the more experience you gain, the fuller the toolbox. No matter how simple the metanism, you immediately reach for the hydraulic torque wrench, or, worse, the grid obliterating chainsaw. I desperately apply differential equations, when a flat head screwdriver, or a $2 calculator are the only tools needed to solve.

On a related note, am I the only one with a scary collection of unidentifiable tools that were purchased, by absolute need, 20 years ago, but you no longer have any idea what they do, or why you wasted the money on them, especially given that it was very likely, when you bought them, that you would be staring blankly at them, twenty years down the road?

No, I don't, either. I was just asking.

[ship4u]

On the board. Is it time for a Smithwick's yet?

[MikeyG]

I desperately apply differential equations.

Separable, or ordinary with an integrating factor?

[lbray53]

Wihtout [redacted], unsolvable. With it, a Week 1 or 1.5. I had to go to the OED to confirm.

Exactly.

Submitted one minute after update but confident.

EDIT: Beamed!

[woozy]

Wihtout [redacted], unsolvable. With it, a Week 1 or 1.5. I had to go to the OED to confirm.

I appreciate the nudge. I was getting nowhere without it. That really seems a bit too much of a spoiler. (That said I haven't had a time to figure it out although I see that *really* explains something.

[HoldThatThought]

I desperately apply differential equations.

Separable, or ordinary with an integrating factor?

Depends on my mood, the time of day, and the most common letter in the title of the puzzle. For this one, for example, with 3 Ts and 3As, I attempted to model the solution with a stochastic partial differential equation.

Is that how you would have tackled it?

[woozy]

Okay. If it's what I submitted it's either a 1 or a 4 depending on one's ability to think outside the box... way outside the box.

I can't and would never have gotten it had it not been for an inadvertent comment. So I'm calling it a 4.

[MikeyG]

I desperately apply differential equations.

Separable, or ordinary with an integrating factor?

Depends on my mood, the time of day, and the most common letter in the title of the puzzle. For this one, for example, with 3 Ts and 3As, I attempted to model the solution with a stochastic partial differential equation.

Is that how you would have tackled it?

I must concede that I only know how to do separable ones, so you have one up on me! (The time when differential equations was offered, I started hewing more toward actuarial courses, so I actually evaded this one!)

Okay. If it's what I submitted it's either a 1 or a 4 depending on one's ability to think outside the box... way outside the box.

I can't and would never have gotten it had it not been for an inadvertent comment. So I'm calling it a 4.

So much is like that at times! This week's WSJ is a great example, I think, of one that can go either way in terms of difficulty.

[woozy]

Okay. If it's what I submitted it's either a 1 or a 4 depending on one's ability to think outside the box... way outside the box.

I can't and would never have gotten it had it not been for an inadvertent comment. So I'm calling it a 4.

So much is like that at times! This week's WSJ is a great example, I think, of one that can go either way in terms of difficulty.

I really had a hard time with the WSJ. I'd like to say I had a harder time then I should have had but ... I wasn't going to get it. In that one though, it's not a matter of thinking outside the box; it's a matter of thinking inside the correct boxes.... And they just weren't the boxes I really swim in (I love the smell of mixed metaphors in the morning).