Questions tagged [explanation]
The answer to a problem may be known but it is not understood. These questions explicitly request additional details on how a problem is solved or why the current solution is appropriate.
128 questions
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Explain deduction from LinkedIn's Queen #564
LinkedIn's Queen #564 (HARD difficulty)
I am watching the commentary of today's Queen puzzle (a 1* Star Battle puzzle), given that I complete it in about 2 minutes. But one thing I don't quite ...
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Explain part of solution to "The Big Cube and Squares Puzzle"
For part C of the this problem: The Big Cube and Squares Puzzle, the solution states:
However, 6 is not achieveable, because we can show by contradiction that there must be at least one 'move' that ...
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Explain answers to Scientific American crossword clues "Éclair filling" and "Sneaky Coward"
Scientific American started publishing science-themed crosswords a few months ago, with a few words and a theme inspired by stories in the same issue. I really like them, but this month's grid ...
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Yin-Yang puzzle [closed]
Rules of Yin-Yang:
Fill each empty cell with either a black circle or a white circle.
All white circles should be orthogonally connected, so do all black circles.
There may not be any 2x2 cell region ...
- 151
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Sequence of triangular matrices with dots in them
A friend sent me this picture from a kid's math competition (this is a chinese competition for kindergarten kids so the answer is unlikely to involve fibonacci triangles or anything beyond elementary ...
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"Guess which letters these are", but why?
This is the puzzle page from the September 1909 issue of "The Ladies' Home Journal". You have to guess what letter of the alphabet is represented by each of the nine pictures.
The answers ...
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An old book with an ancient numeral puzzle: How many coconuts?
I came across the following puzzle in "Puzzles, Patterns, and Pastimes from the World of Mathematics" by Charles F. Linn (https://archive.org/details/puzzlespatternsp00linn/ page 50):
For ...
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Why are these 5s and 1/9 forced in by this Killer Sudoku cage under Full Kropki rules?
I was busy creating a sudoku on the Interactive Sudoku Solver when I found that if I were to use the Full Kropki rules without any dots (i.e. no orthogonally adjacent squares may be consecutive or ...
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Single cryptic clue: Saw Zurich banker? (5)
This is annoying. I got so close to finishing my latest puzzle but with one clue left, a clue I couldn't understand even once I gave up and checked the solution.
This is from the Sunday Times Quick ...
user73951
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Fish Fillets NG level 73: How to get best solution?
I am an enthusiast solver of Fish Fillets NG game. Here, in this short manual the game all rules are described. They can be summarized as follows:
You control the two fish seen in the bottom left of ...
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Cryptic clue: 29 - 17 = 12
The answer to a clue in a cryptic crossword (Sunday Times Cryptic No 5147 by David McLean, 26-Jan-2025) is EIGHT but I cannot work it out. The original clue was
29 - 17 = 12
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Shade some squares in the grid
This problem is from USAMTS 2024 round 3. The solution is provided on the website, but it doesn't show how to obtain that solution, which is what I am really interested in.
In a Markdown Table (with ...
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Explain how π – 1 + 50 + ⅔ × 1000 is PLONK
The clue comes from a Guardian Newspaper cluing competition from 2020.
It’s carelessly set down: π – 1 + 50 + ⅔ × 1000 (5)
The answer is PLONK.
It’s carelessly set down = PLONK
π – 1 = P [Pi - i = ...
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Why is "review" the answer to the crossword clue "entertainment"?
I just moved from normal to hard in an online crossword game today, and one clue was simply 'entertainment'.
The answer turned out to be 'review' and I have no idea how that links using the standard ...
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Explain This Star Battle Clue
I'm playing a 2-star 9x9 grid game. The app provides incremental clues when requested.
In this scenario, the clue states "the green region cannot be finished."
I'm just not seeing it, nor ...
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