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Use this page for making general comments on the site and how it operates.
Sunday Times Teasers Discussion Group 
We have an ‘answers’ page and a solutions page on this site, with the former giving raw answers and the latter fully developed solutions. I update the answers page every week but the solutions page only gets updated occasionally when one of our users offers their solution for publication.
We originally hoped to publish the official teaser solutions , and a few were published, but we had to stop this because the publishers of the books of the Sunday Times teasers decided to do this themselves (having not previously done so recently).
I feel it would enhance the value of this site if we published the best solutions we have found for each of the teasers. There are quite a few regulars here who do each teaser and my suspicion is that our joint endeavours will often find solutions closely matching the official ones and will even regularly find better approaches.
I would hence like to encourage solvers to write up their solutions and offer them for publication here. They can be in any form and I will endeavour to convert them into a PDF form and put them on the site. Hopefully if others can see improvements or even better approaches, we can further improve them.
It’s fine to encourage solvers to submit their solutions (though I hope it doesn’t cause you too much work). Will the most recent solutions be protected by password, like the answers?
Hi John, A good question! So far I have left the solutions page unprotected but I could password protect it. Alternatively I could have two pages, one for recent teaser solutions, password protected, and an unprotected one for older teasers. Or I could simply delay solution publication for a number of weeks after teaser publication.
What is your view on this? Do you have a concern that openly available solutions could undermine the publication of the Sunday Times Teaser books?
Hi Brian,
Openly publishing answers and / or solutions during the week of publication undermines the integrity of the ST competition, which is why the answers are password-protected. The same should happen for any solutions published during that time. Once the deadline for answers submitted to the ST has passed (the Saturday after publication), then I see no need for a password for either answers or solutions. I therefore would support your idea of two pages, a password-protected one for the latest answer and solutions, and an unprotected one for older Teasers.
I don’t see that occasional random solutions being available significantly undermines the Teaser books. However, I would be more concerned if, for example, you wanted to publish a solution for every Teaser.
Hi
I get the point of not undermining the ST competition, but many, perhaps even most, like me, attempt the teasers for entertainment. Many of those, again like me I guess have never submitted an entry. There is another point though in that while it’s satisfying to solve the puzzle, which often, I can, sometimes I can’t, presumably because my maths knowledge is lacking (or sometimes maybe I’m just being dim !). When that happens, it’s not always enough to be able to look up the answer without also knowing how it’s derived. For me, last week was a case in point and unless I can always have access to a published solution, my maths won’t improve and I won’t learn.
I have now set up two solutions pages, one for recent teasers (password protected) and one for older teasers.
Recently the “Brainteaser 1816” dated 6.7.1997 appears when I am opening the site. Klicking “Current Teaser” removes it and the recent Teaser (3084) comes up.
Is this possibly an intusion solely into my Apple computer?
Hi Peter,
No, its an extra mid-week teaser from many years ago, that I published for those who are willing to do more than one teaser each week. I don’t intend to do this regularly but there might be a surprise every so often. I did not list it as the current teaser as this is reserved for the normal weekly teaser published each week.
Thanks, Brian
Hugh Bradley and Christopher Higgins are familiar to me from puzzles in the former New Scientist Enigma puzzles (?), as far as I recall.
I am wondering whether we should now have a clearer site policy on publishing full solutions since several comments over recent weeks suggest that our current approach causes uncertainty about what the policy really is.
Currently my intention is that we should definitely not publish either solutions or ‘heavy’ hints prior to mid afternoon on a Teaser’s stated Sunday publication date. I believe that John Owen is comfortable with this and it seems to work fairly well apart from occasional inadvertent early revelations.
There are several alternative policies that we could adopt. Since the competition for prizes lasts (I believe) a week, we could simply suggest that full solutions should not be published until the competition closes. My own feeling is that this would be too harsh since it would mean that publication would occur at a time when most of our subscribers would have moved on to the next teaser and would not be inclined to publish as late as this.
A further issue is that of how full solutions should be published. We have a publication mechanism but it is not widely used, perhaps because I am policing it too harshly. Rightly or wrongly I feel that if we are to publish solutions they should be understandable by all our subscribers, not just those with PhD’s in maths, and this means that they need to be written in a way that avoid any assumptions about post school maths knowledge on the part of readers! I also feel that in general it is better to avoid publishing solutions in comments since it is often difficult to understand them among a mass of other comments that are individually sound but sometimes collectively incoherent!
Also, at the moment I am maintaining two solution pages, one for recent teasers and another for older ones. I now realise that this is unworkable as it will involve an ongoing editing task of periodically moving published teaser solutions on the recent page to the older page. What I would now like to do instead is either put them all on a password protected single page or hold any solutions offered for publication until the competition ends and then publish them on a single open page without password protection.
I would welcome comments and suggestions on these issues.
As I understand it, both answers and solutions are available on other sites, blogs, forums, etc., some sooner than on here.
So any policy this site adopts would be solely for our own peace of mind. But we are not the only source for “early” answers/solutions.
I am not aware of other sites or forums that expose early answers – what sites have you found that do this?
Jim Randell’s S2T2 site and my own at PuzzlingInPython offer programmed solutions but they both avoid directly exposing the answers until the competition closes
When the teaser offers an easy programmed solution, I generally put the hidden answer on this site within an hour or so after the ST first publishes it. So I would certainly be intrigued to see any sites that beat this.
I’m very glad to see this subject raised again, and would like to add my penny’s worth.
I’ve always been of the view that the author’s solution should be published on the following Sunday, as I believe used to happen. To avoid compromising the competition, any other submitted solutions should also be held over until at least after the comp closes.
I’d also agree that published solutions should be simple enough to be understood by numerate non-mathematicians like me.
Given the above, I don’t see why a password protected page is needed.
I would be very interested to see the author’s solution, but also other people’s solutions as these can be quite different and interesting to compare.
I would be quite happy, time permitting, to go back and look at these after the week is up and solutions are published in the newspaper. Or password access before that is ok.
I’ve got a physics and therefore fairly mathematical background, I don’t mind the maths and sometimes I feel I can learn something further. If ‘low maths’ solutions are available too then that’s good.
Geoff D & Nicky have both suggested they would like to see the author’s solution. Bu it you look back at John Owen’s remarks dated October 22nd, he says ” I would be more concerned if, for example, you wanted to publish a solution for every Teaser.” I’m not sure if he’s talking about the author’s solution or any submitted by others. But we have a grey area here – presumably we’re trying to avoid undermining the integrity of the ST competition, but this could happen if just the answer is published (i.e no reference to the method). This of course is what happens at present, but I believe that Brian’s password protected answer is normally computer generated so is no help to users. See Geoff D’s comments from October 23rd, which probably apply to many of us.
Thanks to all for your feedback. I am now inclined to keep the answers page password protected and to have just one open solutions page on which any solutions that people offer for publication will be placed after the competition closes.
Will there be any chance of seeing the author’s solutions?
Although John Owen hasn’t totally ruled this out, I doubt we will be able to return to doing this while the publishers of books of teasers wish to do this themselves.
Recent books of teasers had been published without answers, but around the time we started publishing them here they changed their policy and John felt that publication here could not continue.
Sorry, I submitted this earlier but see now it didn’t post – but thought it maybe still worth submitting.
Just a few general observations for consideration.
1. Consider delaying answer until mid-week, at least. This would prolong interesting discussions, particularly when solvers can’t be absolutely sure their if their first attempts are correct – as was the case this week (with STT 3109).
2. Publish solutions from volunteers after the official answer is provided in ST. Perhaps Brian could circulate up to first three, say, solutions submitted to him and group members could then discuss which one is “best” for publication. Anyone who later believes they have developed an even better/smarter approach than this could submit it at any time afterwards for Brian’s consideration.
3. Personally, arrival of the next teaser doesn’t stop me fiddling with earlier ones. I often look for “silver bullet” approaches to some old niggly teasers – knowing the answer for sure, often switches on “hindsight” to think differently.
4. Finally, a query. I usually enter the ST competition but only with my first attempt (sometimes wrong) and never after “checking” the PW-protected answer. I am comfortable with this but maybe consensus is is different? I also note that, historically, my name has been pulled from the hat on six occasions – but never since I joined this group several years ago 😊.
Thank you to Brian for his efforts in keeping this all going.
I am not sure whether John Owen would be happy but I personally like the idea of putting an ‘agreed best solution’ up for each teaser. I have a way of doing what you suggest if others agree to join in since, after a week, I can add solutions that are offered to a special page that will allow them to be downloaded and discussed.. If there is a consensus on the best solution, or a way of combining them to produce a better solution, I (or one of us) could then write it up and, after getting any further comments, I could then publish it as ‘our best solution’.
On your query, as i almost always produce a coded solution, I don’t enter the competition because I feel that this would amount to unfair competition. I hence take a similar view to your own.
Could someone please offer a reason why publication of (presumably author/compiler) solutions to a competition crosswords (at an appropriate time) is different to teasers . . .
Compiler teaser solutions give a fairly comprehensive method of obtaining the solution, and the solution itself. Whilst for crosswords the solutions are simply stated alone, without giving the deductive steps required to obtain them.