Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.
Are you here to participate in a specific proposal? Click on the proposal tag (with the dark outline) to see only posts about that proposal and not all of the others that are in progress. Tags are at the bottom of each post.
Duplicate puzzle solutions
In most Codidact communities, I will read the existing answers to a question before posting an answer of my own, to avoid repeating an existing answer. So far I have taken the same approach with the Puzzles proposed community. I first try to solve the puzzle myself, then before posting an answer with the solution I have found, I check the existing answers to see if mine is different. I then only post if I have something new to add.
An alternative approach would be to post an answer without looking at any of the hidden spoilers in the existing answers. This would give multiple answers with the same solution in many cases, but might also give different interesting explanations of the same solution.
Which approach is taken by most people will probably depend on the example set by answers to existing puzzles. Without a discussion I suspect that the approach taken for other communities will be reflected here. Which approach would you prefer to be set as the example? Is there anything we could be doing to encourage one approach or the other?
2 answers
Let users decide
We don't need a policy for this. Personally, I wouldn't post a deliberate duplicate. Sometimes it will happen due similar answers being written at the same time. That's OK. I don't consider the same answer with a different explanation or solution method to be a duplicate.
If someone posts a duplicate substantially later than a previous answer, it may get downvoted. The existing system can handle this.
0 comment threads
The following users marked this post as Works for me:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| will.octagon.gibson | (no comment) | May 14, 2026 at 15:35 |
| trichoplax | (no comment) | Sep 12, 2026 at 00:03 |
I'd like to see answers that use different methods even if they get to the same answer; by reading a puzzle and its answers I'm not just learning the answer to that puzzle but also learning about ways to approach other puzzles. The explanations are valuable. I also agree that answers posted around the same time might be similar and for Puzzling that's ok. I don't think Puzzling is building a library of canonical knowledge where concision is key.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads