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PUZZLER FAQS

PUZZLER FAQS

3-20-08 These haven’t been updated for the latest Tanga interface (3.0?) so some questions may not be necessary anymore… I’ll update it later. Feel free to add new questions in the comments
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Here are a collection of Frequently Asked Questions by noobie(and some oldie) Puzzlers.
If you have any more, please post.
And feel free to refer this to anyone who asks… :-)


What’s with the oddball usage of the word “Salt”?

In November 2006, someone inadvertently got confused between typing the answer in the Tanga answer box and typing something in the Tanga Blog message box. Don’t ask how that is possible (especially as the interface is integrated now). Anyway, he typed the word “salt” in the blog but supposedly was trying to answer the puzzle. It turns out “salt” was the answer.
Everyone was quite alarmed to see the answer so plainly displayed here.
Within four days it was common practice at Tanga to call any strong clues “salt”.

http://tanga.com/puzzles/88-11-5-2006
http://tanga.com/forum/blogs/99-Puzzle_11_05_06…
http://tanga.com/forum/blogs/102-Puzzle_11_6_06…
http://tanga.com/forum/blogs/110-Puzzle_11_7_06…
http://tanga.com/forum/blogs/112-Puzzle_11_8_06…
http://tanga.com/forum/blogs/111-Puzzle_11_9_06…
and the rest is history…

I keep seeing other strange references to “butter”, “loafer”, “popcorn” and “Fountain Mountain Hairy Guy” aka “FMHG”. Wha’ts up with that?

Many of these references are to particularly memorable and notorious puzzles.
“Butter” was a puzzle with a simple picture and a lot of possible answers and no way to really solve other than to start trying different words that the word butter may lead you to. There was lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth on that puzzle. The “loafer” puzzle during the January 2007 puzzlethon was similar.

The butter puzzle can be found here.

FMHG came from clue #6 in this hypercross

Other references have included OPERA, SNOWGLOBES and CLEOPATRA. So don’t go haring off on tangents if you see references to these. ;-). The list will probably grow as time goes on.

And what the heck are “Tanga Numbers” anyway?
or What do they mean by the verb “tanga-ing”?

In general the term “tanga numbers” refer to numbers that are applied to a “key” (sometimes the alphabet, sometimes a word – or words – in a puzzle) to help the solver to pick out the appropriate letters to form a word or words…

When doing a puzzle you sometimes end up with a set of numbers. Because the answer is a word, you need to find the way to convert those numbers in to letters. The phrase “tanga number” was coined to indicate that such a translation needs to be done.

A Tanga number is usually a number that will be applied to a key to translate it into a letter.

So if the key is the ALPHABET, then: 1=A, 2=B, 3=C….26=Z. So if you had the tanga numbers “20”, “1”, “14”, “7” and “1” you would get “TANGA” (20=T,1=A and so on).

The alphabet is the simplest key.

Sometimes the key could be a word. So, for example, if you were given “3rd March” you might apply the number 3 to the word March and get “R”.

Often in a puzzle there are many potential candidates for the key and the trick to solving is figuring out what the key is, and there can be more than one key in a puzzle… (that trips me up all the time)

For example you might be given these numbers 2/4 4/4 8/3 3/5 10/3
Now what? You’d have to recognize them as dates February 4th, April 4th, August 3rd, March 5th and October 3rd and then translate them into “RIGHT
- but until you recognize them as dates – you might have tried to “tanga” any of those numbers to the alphabet – or something else in the puzzle – depending upon how those numbers were presented. So it can be tricky – and the trickier ones are usually cataloged as “HARD

Hey, I have a puzzle I want to submit.How do I go about doing that? And do you have any experienced tips you can share?

There is another blog in this forum with several tips. Click on Puzzle Making Guidelines to get to it.Also in January 2007, a forum was established for the puzzle makers.To access it, click here: Puzzle Makers Discussion .

How do people get the number of the response they are referring to to appear in the puzzle comments?

Enclose the comment number in square brackets, so comment 7 would look like this:7
The tanga engine automatically makes that into a link back (or forward) to the comment being referenced.

When I have created a discussion thread, and then go in and edit it, the text is really funky and runs off the right side of the page after editing. How do I fix that?
When you go back and edit the original text, the Tanga system automatically puts spaces at the beginning of the new lines – thus messing up the text when it is re-posted. To fix that – go in and remove the extra spaces at the beginning of the lines (yes – it’s a pain, I don’t know why Tanga doesn’t fix it)


BGG seems to be used less nowadays, but here is some information anyway…
I keep seeing posts like “Meet me at BGG” or “Check out the salt at BGG” in the puzzle blogs? What is this “BGG”?

BGG is tanga shorthand for BoardGameGeek.com, a website with a bunch of cool stuff and reviews, but most importantly (from a Tanga-puzzler-centric point of view) they have a running blog where the people can post questions and hints with spoilers hidden so as not to incur the wrath and/or scorn of the Tangan community by hinting too broadly on the Tanga blog.

The Master Tanga Puzzler Thread is http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/131250 (and then click the link to the last page, because that is where you will find the most recent posts)

And what do people mean by “check GM” or “GM me”?

"GMâ"is short for GeekMail. If you are a registered member at BGG you can use the GeekMail system to correspond with other BGG members. This is often used by the Tangans to help each other with more explicit puzzle help.

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