Anyone tried entering letters in the boxes? I didn't. I think that would have been an unexpected twist. So, after all, I think I fall in the trap of confirmation bias that the sequence must consist of numbers only.
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A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
61–70 of 311 posts
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#62I got this wrong, but oddly enough my first attempt was a No. I tried, "6, 1, 8"
After that, I went with doubling and it worked 3 times with various sizes of number, so I went with that.
Double bonus points if you can guess what I was testing with the first sequence (which the given numbers do satisfy).
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#63That page prints the nyt logo in the javacript console (will probably look messed up here): 0000000 000 0000000 111111111 11111111100 000 111111111 00000 111111111111111111 00000 000000 000 1111111111111111111111111100000 000 000 1111 1111111111111111100 000 000 11 0 1111111100 000 000 1 00 1 000 000 00 00 1 000 000 000 00000 1 000 00000 0000 00000000 1 00000 11111 000 00 000000 000 11111 00000 0000 000000 00000 0000…
Every nytimes.com page displays that in the JS console.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#64Veritasium video on the same thing
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#65I'm curious to see more about the distribution of questions and answers people had, and how the HN population may differ from the NYT's. There will certainly be self selection bias here, but if you're willing to share how you did with others, please enter it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17e5BIL0lH8OHsGj89Zdtdl8GeCV... The result summary is visible here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17e5BIL0lH8OHsGj89Zdtdl…
I wanted to answer "Probably" to the last question about having seen a similar question before.
I don't specifically recall seeing one, but it is likely that I have.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#66Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#67I got this wrong, but oddly enough my first attempt was a No. I tried, "6, 1, 8" After that, I went with doubling and it worked 3 times with various sizes of number, so I went with that. Double bonus points if you can guess what I was testing with the first sequence (which the given numbers do satisfy).
Were you guessing random area codes of midwestern states? :)
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#68Anyone tried entering letters in the boxes? I didn't. I think that would have been an unexpected twist. So, after all, I think I fall in the trap of confirmation bias that the sequence must consist of numbers only.
I entered A, B, C. The form didn't let me submit the sequence, so they are doing some verification that the entries are numbers. Rational numbers work, though: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#69I'm curious to see more about the distribution of questions and answers people had, and how the HN population may differ from the NYT's. There will certainly be self selection bias here, but if you're willing to share how you did with others, please enter it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17e5BIL0lH8OHsGj89Zdtdl8GeCV... The result summary is visible here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17e5BIL0lH8OHsGj89Zdtdl…
This is a good idea. I submitted the survey but here are my tests: http://imgur.com/hYKudyl
FWIW, I've seen this kind of game before and I was expecting it to be something simple.
Re: A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
#70I think that the "quick" adjective in the title is purposeful misleading. You are supposed to learn quickly the most general rule, but that is not so easy because there are many possible rules that could fit such a pattern. It seems that you should be rewarded for solving the puzzle quickly and then you fall in the trap.
I propose to change the title to "A puzzle to test your Generalization Abilities", and state clearly that you should try to find the most general rule that satisfies all patterns you can think of. In that case, I would expect the conclusion and results of the experiment to be completely different. So to summarize: the so "quick" adjective in the title has a very strong anchor effect.
Edit: changed for grammar and to express more clearly what I think.