Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with puzzle

Won't you help me solve a thirty-year-old puzzle?

FAMOUS MONSTER — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:39:23 -0800

Hello darlings. I'd like your help, specifically in the form of looking at a painting and telling me if you recognize any parts of it from the city you live in, especially if that city is Boston. There's a fair amount of background in terms of what to look for, so please do bear with me. It's all relevant, I promise. I hope you'll pardon me if I am a little obtuse about this - this is a very niche hunt, and if too many details are released to the internet at large, I'm sort of afraid that someone else will figure this out before me and then go get the thing I'm looking for. Normally I'm not so selfish, but I've been trying to solve this for about a decade now and I would be a bit put out, you know? Also, I first found out about this hunt when I was just a wee MONSTER, reading a preview of it in one of FAMOUS FATHER's issues of National Lampoon. I found the actual book about a decade ago (it's long out of print) and only in the last few years found out that other people remember it and are still working to solve it.

About thirty years ago, a man put out a book which contained clues that would, when solved, lead intrepid explorers to twelve locations in North America where little sculpted boxes were buried. Inside each box was a key, and each key could be redeemed for a precious stone, worth about a grand apiece. Two of them were found (one in the eighties, one in the last decade), and exchanged for stones. In 2005, the man who buried them (and the only person who knows the solution to all the puzzles) died in a car crash, and there will be no more jewelry, but whatever, there's still boxes and keys and I'd like to find one or at least figure out where it once was, and this is where you come in.

So it's like this. Ten of them are still out there. Clues to the location of each one (in terms of city and state) are hidden in images in the book. Most of the people working on this have a pretty solid idea about nine of the images; there are recognizable outlines of states or landmarks or what have you. There's one that we're not sure about, and for reasons to do with other content in the book, some people suspect that it might lead to Boston. This would be excellent news for me, since I live there.

First, the two solved images, so you can see what to look for. The notes in these images may refer to verses or months - just ignore that for now. The landmarks are the part we care about. I'm sorry, I know this is a lot, but it's crucial to the question I'm asking.

One was found in Chicago. Here is the image found in the book. Here is an annotated version of that image, showing which parts are Chicago landmarks.

The other was found in Cleveland. Here is the original image, and here is the annotated version, as above.

So as you can see, some elements in each image were painted from photo reference and are realistic depictions of statues or sculptures or buildings or whatever, in their respective cities. Some are not (unless the Chicago Warty Castle-Headed Goblin is just a really well-kept local secret, I guess), and for the purposes of this question, we don't care about those.

Keeping all of the above in mind, we arrive at the actual question I'm asking.

Kindly regard this image.

Do you see anything in the above image which looks (with a degree of accuracy similar to that found in the previous two) like anything - buildings, sculptures, the recognizable outline of a public park, whatever - in or near the city of Boston? Failing that, do you recognize anything(s) from a different city? You may have to turn the image upside down, or sideways, or maybe you're looking for an outline, like the Terminal Tower in the Cleveland image.

Caveats:

1. The book was published in 1982, so anything which was built after that would be an astonishing feat of prescience on the artist's part but wouldn't be useful here. The date also means that no Photoshop trickery would be required to solve this, et cetera (though turning it upside down, for example, is fine). It's entirely possible that the painting may depict something that has disappeared in the last thirty years, and that's okay. The box may or may not still be there and I know the odds aren't great, but I'd be happy just knowing I'd figured out where it was. Or, if you recognize things from a completely different city, I'd be happy knowing I can stop looking in Boston.

2. To keep this question between the buoys as much as possible, I'm really only looking for definite matches - something where you look at an element in the image, and you know what it is and ideally can link to a picture of the landmark that you believe corresponds to it. Again, it won't just be something that looks sort of like the landmark - it will be an extremely close match. Speculation (say, on what the numbers mean, or that you noticed the triangle inside the square is evocative of the Citgo sign but isn't a photo-referenced painting of it, etc) is fine but you should probably just MeMail me with it.

Okay? Okay. Thanks so much for reading, and thanks in advance for whatever help you can give. You're the best. I could just kiss you.

seeking non-violent PS3 games with female protagonists

Elsa — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:17:57 -0800

I'm looking for games available for the PlayStation 3 with (fully clothed, not overtly sexualized) female protagonists, or protagonists of unspecified gender. Ideally, the games would also be non-violent or minimally violent, and they would rely largely on puzzle-solving rather than time-sensitive and reflex-dependent jump-and-shoot strategies. The Portal series is the perfect example of what I'm looking for:
1) the player character is female but her gender is unrelated to her performance;
2) the game allows the player time to sort out puzzles and strategies;
3) the "shooting" is non-violent*.
What are some other well-crafted games that meet this criteria?

Second-best: can you recommend games (available for the PS3) that meet two of these three criteria?

*In this narrow case, "non-violent" means no sustained shooting at, striking, or otherwise hurting characters, including human villains, zombies/vampires, or animals. For example, the Batman games, where the player is required to strike adversaries, would not meet these criteria. A brief game-ending bout is fine. Sustained destruction of objects or property is not actively desirable, but is acceptable.

Creative puzzle gift box contents?

blnkfrnk — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:25:24 -0800

I have a puzzle box...a little box with a puzzle you must solve in order to open it. The opening inside is a cylinder about 2.5" in diameter by 3" in length, so, big enough for a standard plastic gift card if you bend it a little. I want to give a gift that is more interesting than a gift card, so I need your ideas! I'll entertain any budget, age/interest level, and genre. Ideally, I would like a website or something where the recipient could solve another puzzle or have their prize revealed in a fun way. Even a gift card with and interactive/experiential use would be good.

ID these Rubix's cubes (and other puzzles)?

serelliya — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:20:38 -0800

Is there any place on the internet where I can buy Rubix's cube variants and similar, non-cube puzzles? In particular, I'm looking for the silver architectural-looking cube at bottom center, the grabby-hands cube in the top-right corner, and the flat twisty picture-puzzle (two different pictures are possible and the plastic pieces are wired together in a certain way) on the right side of this photo.

Riddle me this.

egeanin — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:53:03 -0800

Are there the makings of a riddle in Isaiah 22:22? And can you help me come up with a tangible answer to it, just for kicks? Not interested in the religious or historical context of the verse-- I just enjoy riddles. The part of the verse that's interesting to me is this line, paraphrased: "what he shall open, none shall close; what he shall close, none shall open."

I totally get that this is not actually a riddle, but it got my mind to thinking and I started to wonder whether there might be an object that satisfies these parameters: something that once opened is impossible to shut, AND once shut is impossible to open.

I'm more interested in tangible objects than intangible ones, because answers like "one's mind" seem obvious and easy. Just for fun--what else could fit?

Another iPhone Game Recommendation Request

still_wears_a_hat — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:01:17 -0800

I'm looking for some light, fairly simple iPhone puzzle-type games, for a 4th-generation iPod Touch running iOS 5.1. What I like are: games that get harder very gradually, have a lot of levels, and simple (not too busy) graphics. My past favorites tend to be very whimsical: Red Remover, Blocks with Letters On, Cover Orange, Jelly Blocks. And Dooors, though haven't found any other of the doors/floors/exits games anywhere near as appealing.

What I don't like are: RPGs, adventure games, games with plots, scrolling over multiple screens, playing against time, anything that I can't finish at least the easy levels in a few minutes, and anything where the screen is too cluttered or the objects just too small.

What I really don't like are: games that flash and blink, or any games where I can't turn off any sounds that aren't part of the puzzle. I think I would like something like Bejeweled or Piyo Blocks if they just wouldn't blink and flash so much.

I'm fine paying for a game, though it's always nice to be able to try them first. I've looked at everything in this question and this one, and have a few of them on my iPod to try, but would like to stock up for an upcoming trip.

Thanks!

What's the name of this online puzzle series?

jorlyfish — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:32:18 -0800

Help me find a devilishly difficult online puzzle that I had worked on ~4 years ago. Difficultly: I remember a few of the levels and not much about the name. It's not the "Impossible Quiz" flash game. It was a series of increasingly difficult puzzles/riddles where I think you would enter the answer into a box and it would redirect you to a new URL for the next level, though it is possible you would enter the URL yourself.

I specifically remember there being one that was a number that was a PLU code - it may have been a number and you had to enter in "white asparagus" or whatever it was, or it may have been a picture of asparagus and you had to enter that PLU code. I also remember a dark blue image in which you needed to find a hidden pixel to click or number in (now that I think about it, all of the answers may have been numbers, but maybe not either... [I know, I know..]) that was a deep ocean or maybe a night sky scene. I also seem to remember there were up into the hundreds (maybe like 250?) of these puzzles, each one leading you to the next. Ciphers also seem like a likely choice of puzzle.

It's not an alternate reality game -- all of the answers would be able to be found online or from your own knowledge (as far as I got anyway), like looking up the PLU code. No traveling to Paris to scan a QR code or looking in the woods geocaching-style.

I don't remember the name of it, but I want to say it either was related to the creator's name (for some reason this sticks out in my mind more) or perhaps another superlative sort of name LIKE the Impossible Quiz - the whole point of it was that it was sort of ridiculous in difficulty in a sometimes arbitrary/artificial way (see: "pixel hunt").

Anyway, I'd like to try it out again, does anyone have any idea what the hell I'm going on about?

Help finding a unique kind of puzzle

2bucksplus — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:46:47 -0800

Growing up my parents had a puzzle of an apartment building where every piece was basically the same shape. Four puzzle pieces made up the window to a room, in total there were probably 8 floors of 10 windows each. The challenge was putting the windows in the right order. So for example in one window someone would be throwing out a bucket of water, downstairs the person would remark that it's raining. In another a receptionist would say something like "you want #304, one floor up". One more detail: to check your work you could flip it over and it said CONGRATULATIONS in 20 different fonts (grey text on white background) that would line up if completed corrected. The art style was your basic comic strip kind of art. It was fun because the first half was looking for the right piece to assemble the rooms, the second half was reasoning out where the pieces should go in context.

Are there other puzzles like this?

Spread some seasonal mirth

dontjumplarry — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:17:35 -0800

My sister and I have an annual Christmas tradition of making an elaborate treasure hunt, puzzle or game for our family. Need some help brainstorming this year's edition. The idea is we make a puzzle for our parents and they need to complete it successfully to receive their gift. Past ideas have been:

• A treasure hunt where a series of clues hidden around the house finally leads to a gift
• A personalized cryptic crossword which reveals location of gift once completed
• Miniature versions of game shows (Price is Right, Family Feud, Sale of the Century) during which they win $ to "buy" their gift
• Personalised logic grid puzzle
• Personalised jigsaw puzzle (keep planning to do this but never remember in time)

We are stuck this year, any ideas?

Hidden Object, where are you?

Trexsock — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 04:45:45 -0800

Best Hidden Object/Point and Click games out there? I'm looking for games which offer not only high quality content (picture-wise specifically, since my screen's resolution is extremely high and most games wound up looking blurry even in windowed mode) but more lengthy than only a couple few puzzles.

I've recently played through:

- Drawn: The Painted Tower
- Drawn 2: Dark Flight
- Drawn 3: Trail of Shadows
- Phantasmat
- Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden
- Shadow Wolf Mysteries: Cursed Wedding
- Unfinished Tales: Illicit Love

I don't mind Hidden Object scenes, but I tend to prefer games which focus on the whole point and click/puzzles more than those.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Find a puzzle book?

sendai sleep master — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 21:09:29 -0800

I recall really enjoying the book Maze by Christopher Manson when I was young. Are there any books that offer something similar in that they are slightly narrative but built with a critical thinking and/or puzzle goal in mind?

Puzzling rebus: giving lovers?

mediated self — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:24:03 -0800

RebusFilter: on the left, the word "giving" printed four times in a column. On the right, the word "lover" printed four times in a column. What is the solution? My SO literally cannot sleep due to this rebus going unsolved. All we can think of is "forgiving lovers" but that doesn't feel right. Please hope!

Help me understand a little logic problem.

TheHollowSeasThatRoar — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 04:39:47 -0800

Help me understand this. Math/logic puzzle follows... Here are the puzzle and answer, as given by Futility Closet:

A worm crawls along an elastic band that’s 1 meter long. It starts at one end and covers 1 centimeter per minute. Unfortunately, at the end of each minute the band is instantly and uniformly stretched by an additional meter. Heroically, the worm keeps its grip and continues crawling. Will it ever reach the far end?

Surprisingly, yes. At the end of the first minute the worm has crawled 1/100 of the way to the far end. At the end of the second minute, it’s crawled (1/100 + 1/200) of the way. So it will reach the far end in t minutes when 1/100 (1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + … + 1/t) equals or exceeds 1. The expression in parentheses is the harmonic series, which can be made as large as one desires, but it’ll take a while: In this example the worm will reach its goal in t = 1.509269 × 1043 minutes, or about 286,961,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 centuries.

This makes zero sense to me. Won't the worm always be 1/100 of the way along? First minute: 1 cm of 1 metre. Second minute: 2 cm of 2 metres. Third minute: 3cm of 3 metres. And so on forever.

Am I mistaken somehow?

NYT puzzle. Help.

obscurator — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:18:54 -0800

PuzzleFilter - Must. complete. this week's NYT variety puzzle [PDF]. Help. (Selected answers after the jump) Not sure if this is legitimate AskMe terrain, but the linked puzzle has nearly destroyed my workplace productivity, and I'm pleading to the hive for relief from its steely grip. It requires inserting a two-letter pair twice into another word to make a new word. The example given is:
MOTE. Add "ON" and you get M | ON | OT | ON | E.
MONOTONE.

A few that I've solved:
1. LORE ---> L | IC | OR | IC | E - LICORICE
9. ALTI ---> ME | ALTI | ME - MEALTIME
23. DERATE ---> DER | IV | AT | IV | E - DERIVATIVE

Sadly, I cannot solve the following and am thus, according to the puzzle's creator, not a genius:
7. PEON
8. LICE
11. LINK
19. VALES

So, any idea how I can get two-letter pairs wedged in my already-existing words above and why?

I'm looking for ideas for: puzzles, riddles, problems and scavenger hunt type stuff to incorporate into a gift.

jesirose — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:53:10 -0800

I'm looking for ideas for: puzzles, riddles, problems and scavenger hunt type stuff to incorporate into a gift. For my husband and I's anniversary, I am going to get him a few presents, and make a game out of him getting them.

For example, I wrote a script for his smartphone that requires him to go to a specific location, and every so often he can check how close he is, but it won't say it what direction the location is. So there is some problem solving involved in getting there.

Other parts include a crossword puzzle to solve, and a riddle that gives the word to open a cryptex (made of PVC pipe). Another part is where he has to meet up with a mutual friend of ours and beat him at a game to get a clue for another thing.

He is interested in mechanics/rebuilding trucks, engineering and sports. The big present is an iPad, which I am going to preload with some apps for the other puzzles.

I am looking for ideas to add to it. I've been googling for riddles and brain teasers, but I'm looking for a few things more physical or social I guess. As well as just puzzles.

Mystery Puzzles for Grownups

joyeuxamelie — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 20:01:53 -0800

I'm looking for mystery puzzles for adults. When I was in elementary school, I came across this Five-Minute Mysteries book and really enjoyed solving each case in it. Each case came in the form of a story and it was up to the reader to find the flaws in the suspects' alibis, pick out clues, etc to solve each case.

I was wondering if there are any similar, more challenging, books/websites for adults. It doesn't need to be 5-minute puzzles only (I don't mind if they are very long mysteries/puzzles), I was just using that as an example, but I do enjoy the story format.

I've already seen these sites:

http://www.mysterynet.com/ - This one is ok, but a little too easy and the mystery only gets updated once a month.

http://www.5minutemystery.com/

Thank you!

Best workflow for building crossword grids?

OverlappingElvis — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 11:55:40 -0800

I'm about 95% done with my first NYT-style themed crossword puzzle, currently laid out by hand on graph paper, and I want to start looking at making a digital version of it. What are some good tools or workflow for creating well laid out crossword grids on the computer? I have Creative Suite through my job, but don't know if doing it by hand is the best way to go or if there's some better system. Most of the software I've found (I'm on a Mac) seems to for automatic puzzle generation, which I don't need or want. I just need a good system for adding black squares, letters, and numbers to a 15x15 grid. I'd also rather not pay a lot of money for software that includes features I don't really need, if possible.

Identify a computer game in a white environment revealed by shooting a paintball gun

metaBugs — Thu, 31 May 2012 09:47:31 -0800

What first-person perspective puzzle game was set in a completely white environment that you revealed by shooting blobs of paint? More than a year ago, I saw a demo video for an FPS-style puzzle game. The player is dropped into an environment in which the floor and various obstacles (steps, blocks, platforms, holes, bridges, etc) are pure white and uniformly lit. The white-on-white effect makes them effectively invisible. The player has a paintball gun, which fires splashes of black paint. By splashing the scene with paint you reveal the distances and angles of the surfaces that are hit, and so get an idea of the obstacles ahead of you. The goal of the game is to get through each level with the minimum possible number of shots from your paintball gun.

I thought this was a great idea for a puzzle/platform game, but it wasn't available at the time of the video being released; I think that the engine was ready but the level design still had a while to go.

Does anyone recognise the game from this description? What was it called, and was it ever released? Alternatively, do you know of other games with a similar mechanic?

Looking for exploration/immersive puzzle games

flatluigi — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:08:06 -0800

I've been a long-time fan of the Myst series, but up until recently with Fez I didn't realize how much I missed atmospheric games based heavily on exploration and worldbuilding-type puzzles. Can anyone recommend more? "Worldbuilding" puzzles might be a little unclear; by that I mean things less like "this room has a puzzle, solve it" and more "piecing together language and number systems by natural instances of it throughout the game."

I'm fairly fine with whatever system and genre you recommend (I've even played a fair bit of IF) and I'm fine with games that don't hit it all exactly - I'd just love some suggestions along the lines of Fez and the Myst series.

Can you help me find this puzzle/interactive fiction website?

shovel_mage — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:23:19 -0800

I'm looking for a website I found years ago that combined prose and pictures to create a series of puzzles, but I do not remember what it was called. The notable thing about it was that it had 12 puzzles, and they are dispensed to you weekly, with a story and master puzzle arcing across all twelve, leaving you with a 3 month interactive experience. Does this ring any bells? Unfortunately, it's been long enough that I have forgotten almost all of the specifics. I do remember it was very stringent on the weekly schedule, there was no working ahead, and if you didn't log in weekly or near weekly it would restart you at the beginning. I also remember very clearly that the first puzzle had to do with an ouroboros. The name, I think, had a bizarre animal name in it, like platypus or narwhal, though I may be off on that.

Does anyone know the name of this website I'm remembering, and, if it still exists, a URL? Know of anything else similar?

Searching for the critical thinking textbook I had in grade school

hydrophonic — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 14:00:19 -0800

Please help me find the critical thinking textbook my grade-school class used in the early eighties. Here's another long-lost book question. In grade school, in Chicago between 1980 and 1984, we had a section in logic and philosophy. The text we used was called "Thinking Critically" or "Critical Thinking". It was grade-school or high-school level, and dealt mostly with logic. There were exercises and problems to solve. In the same class we did a lot of logic grid puzzles, which may or may not have come from the book. The last chapter of the book dealt with the techniques used in advertisements (repetition, the bandwagon, etc.) The cover might have been brown, and the title was large, bold, and on a diagonal across the cover in white text, all capital letters, sans serif. It was the size of a typical workbook (9" x 11" or so), softcover, and about 100 pages.

Of course, all my memories are suspect, but I'd really like to find the book again. Inspired by this post, natch.

What are you, little green thing?

Scientist — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:06:41 -0800

Plant identification filter! What is this plant that's growing in my garden? Do I want it? I found this guy growing in my community garden plot. Anybody know what it is and if it's something I should keep? It's about five inches tall, seven wide, and is growing near the base of the papaya tree that we inherited from the plot's previous gardener. It's been here for a few weeks now. Hope someone can tell me what it is!

The mysterious uncredited song

FatherDagon — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:16:10 -0800

What is the song playing in the gameplay trailer for Cradle?

Help me reverse-engineer some bitstrings

larkery — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:56:24 -0800

Hackers of MeFi, assemble! I have an undocumented serial protocol I want to reverse engineer - help me turn some mysterious bit strings into meaningful data. I recently bought a V-Fit 10kpt treadmill for use in a treadmill desk arrangement, which is working out well. Like most treadmills it has a fairly rubbish interface on a control unit; the control unit talks to the treadmill itself over a single-wire serial protocol, which I've reverse-engineered enough to replace the control unit with my own microprocessor + desktop application.

So far so good, but my solution involves capturing the serial traffic at a given speed as a bit sequence and then playing that bit sequence back to set that speed on the treadmill. I'm like the man in the chinese room experiment.

This is where you, the good people of ask metafilter, come in; can you help me turn these meaningless bits into comprehensible data?

At a given speed the device plays out a 120 bit sequence at 1200 baud, repeated every 7.2 milliseconds; here is an example bit sequence (this is a recording of the logic levels on the wire with no further processing). Each of these 120 bit sequences is a speed command.



bin: 00001011 00110000 10000011 00000010 00110000 01010111 00000000 01110100 00111111 00000000 01110001 01000111 01011011 00110110 00010011

hex: 0x0b 0x30 0x83 0x02 0x30 0x57 0x00 0x74 0x3f 0x00 0x71 0x47 0x5b 0x36 0x13

I've broken this into bytes as its length is divisible by 8, and I can't see any obvious pattern of start and stop bits like you'd get in normal RS232.

It turns out that every command starts with 0x0b 0x30 0x83 0x02 0x30, and ends with 0x13, so I'll leave those off from now on; from there we have one special command, played when the device is stopped:



stop (bin): 00000111 00000000 01110000 00000111 00000000 01110001 01000111 00011110 01110110 

stop (hex): 0x7 0x0 0x70 0x7 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x1e 0x76

and then at least 96 speed commands, going from 0.5kph to 10kph in 0.1kph increments. Every speed command is prefixed with 0x57, presumably identifying it as a speed, followed by 3 variable bytes, followed by 0x00 0x71 0x47, followed by two variable bytes whose final nibble is always 6. Here are some examples (leading 0x57 omitted):



0.5kph 00000000 01110100 00111111 00000000 01110001 01000111 01011011 00110110

        0x0 0x74 0x3f 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x5b 0x36

0.6kph 01000000 00110011 10000011 00000000 01110001 01000111 01101100 10110110

        0x40 0x33 0x83 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x6c 0xb6

0.7kph 01000000 00110110 11100011 00000000 01110001 01000111 00001001 10110110

        0x40 0x36 0xe3 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x9 0xb6

0.8kph 01000000 00110000 10110011 00000000 01110001 01000111 01010111 11110110

        0x40 0x30 0xb3 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x57 0xf6

0.9kph 01000000 00110101 01001111 00000000 01110001 01000111 00100010 01110110

        0x40 0x35 0x4f 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x22 0x76

1.0kph 01000000 00110010 00011011 00000000 01110001 01000111 01111001 00110110

        0x40 0x32 0x1b 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x79 0x36

1.1kph 01000000 00110111 10111011 00000000 01110001 01000111 00011111 00110110

        0x40 0x37 0xbb 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x1f 0x36

1.2kph 00100000 00110001 11000011 00000000 01110001 01000111 00101010 11110110

        0x20 0x31 0xc3 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x2a 0xf6

...



9.9kph 01000100 01110110 10110011 00000000 01110001 01000111 00001000 00110110

        0x44 0x76 0xb3 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x8 0x36

10kph 01000100 01110000 11001011 00000000 01110001 01000111 01010110 01110110

        0x44 0x70 0xcb 0x0 0x71 0x47 0x56 0x76

My guesses so far on speed command format are:

First 3 bytes could be a 24-bit floating point; they are not lexically ordered against speed which fits this possibility

Final two bytes could be a checksum of some sort; the device has lots of ambient EMF because of the motor, and it would be bad if a few bit errors could stop the belt or run it at 10kph suddenly

Middle bytes are just a separator, maybe again to provide some bit error / timing error stability

One other point of interest: the devices speaking this protocol are AVR ATMega8 microprocessors, so any common data they use could be involved (I don't get why the engineers here didn't just use the built-in standard 8N1 serial?!?!). The micros' flash memories have their lock bits set, so I can't just download their programs and reverse-engineer directly (first thing I tried).

Over to you, metafilter; thanks!

Online games for two players

latkes — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:55:59 -0800

What's online or email-based games can I play with a 10 year old who I don't see in person? I'm imagining something with turn-taking, so that we don't necessarily have to be online at the same time (because it's rare that we would be). He's a fairly conventionally gendered boy, likes most kinds of games. Would also love some potential for non-game interaction built in: ie a message window where I can leave him a note after taking my turn. Farmville-type click-based games not OK, everything else I'm up for trying. Thanks!