Official Off-Topic Thread

[Rosse]

99% there

Hmm, tricky. You mean they have to seperate themself into two disconnected groups? Well, except from the last man, everybody knows his own hut color. It's determined by looking left and right and if you are surrounded by one color, then you have the same color. If you have just one neighbor, then your color is the same as your neighbor. The second last which joined the row is special: He's between a red and a blue, but does not know what he is. If the very last one is standing between him and the red, he's blue. If he's standing between him and the blue, he's red.
That the very last man can find out what color he has, one have to leave the row and apply the aforementioned technique (stand between red/blue). Now the last man knows what color he has (technique from second last). Now one goes to one side of the field. Since everybody knows its own hut color, either they goes to the one side or to the other... should work that way 

[ptoing]

Rosse wins a muffin.

[Frychiko]

Wow.. my head is going to explode, I can't even comprehend that answer.. is there a diagram/picture anywhere?

[ptoing]

It's really simple actually.

Once you have 2 guys there standing next to each other they are one of these 3 possibilities.

●●

●●

●●

After this the next guy just either stands next to them (in case the first 2 are the same colour)

Or he goes into the middle between them (in the case they are different.)

This will always have the blues and reds seperated at one point, the only person not knowing their colours being those at the exact middle.
As soon as you have a blue or red guy both right and left next to you you know your colour.

And that is used in the very end to do the final seperation, as Rosse said.

[Rosse]

Thanks for the muffin ptoing.

I did a small explanation diagram, very fast so please forgive my sloppy handwriting:

[JJ Naas]

That was a nice puzzle.

I remember having enjoyed Betrayal at Krondor's classic puzzles that had a one-word solution you had to type in in order to open treasure chests.

Like these, from BaK:

1. A barrel of rainwater weighs twenty pounds. What must you add to make it weigh fifteen?

2. Buckets, barrels, baskets, cans; What must you fill with empty hands?

3. The one who made it, didn't want it. The one who bought it, didn't need it. The one who used it, never saw it.




Answers, written in l33t and backwards:
1:531oh 2:53vo1g 3: n10fFoc 

When I played the game I still didn't have access to Internet, so it was much more fun to try to figure them out without the temptation to print out a walkthrough from the web.

[Atnas]

You know, I always wondered why no RPG I've played has put locks on chests.  You have all these treasure chests lying around, and anybody can walk right up and take what's inside.

Isn't the point of burying/hiding treasure to store it for later?

[JJ Naas]

You know, I always wondered why no RPG I've played has put locks on chests.  You have all these treasure chests lying around, and anybody can walk right up and take what's inside.

Isn't the point of burying/hiding treasure to store it for later?

The people leaving chests lying around must be the same people who keep on making sure all the torches in dungeons are constantly burning and who oil the engines of thousand year old secret passage mechanisms so that they'll open smoothly when you insert the rubies in the eye sockets of a statue. The barrel makers in turn usually do a very bad job with the barrels that can be hacked into pieces instantly. I've not actually tried to turn a metal rimmed wooden barrel into splinters with a sword, but I'd imagine it takes some doing. Barrels, of course, are a natural place to store coins, daggers and chunks of meat.

[ptoing]

Also all kinds of animals carry coins with them, such as bats, spiders, rats and whatnot. Who cares as long as the game works? (Not a huge fan or RPGs myself tho)

[ter-o]

What makes me wonder more is that this Super Blade of Awesomeness +2 that the Giant Ogre Boss(tm) uses against me vanishes after I give the final blow to it. Not that I play such games, but it's funny that you find from the corpse some dead rat meat and maybe a wooden club but not that huge weapon the boss used or even his armor and whatnot