[Spoiler] Here are three words: pine, crab, sauce. There’s a fourth word that combines with each of the others to create another common word. What is it?

YXBwbGU= (Use Base64 Decoding) [/Spoiler]

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Dilettante_ an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It's literally at the end of TFA

->https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-your-brain-creates-aha-mo...

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whatevertrevor 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've played enough NYT connections that this was immediate for me, at the expense of the promised "Aha!" moment. :D

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RheingoldRiver 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Interesting haha, I've played enough NYT connections that I would never have gotten it on my own because when I thought of the correct word with sauce, I thought "_ crab" ? no, can't be that...

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whatevertrevor 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Haha, I know what you mean! Though in fairness, Wyna Liu isn't beyond throwing in a "mostly works" category from time to time...

Wild tangent incoming...

One instance that recently bothered me with an NYT puzzle was the crossword clue (3 letters): "Chromebooks, but not MacBooks". The answer was "PCs" which doesn't make sense to me under any level of categorization for PC.

If we go narrow/historic, then it means x86 IBM PC derivatives which eliminates a lot of chromebooks.

If we use the "home computer" interpretation, then I think it's unreasonable to except Macbooks from the PC umbrella.

If we go literal, well then everything is a PC, including smartphones, tablets, smart devices. The only reasonable test seems to be "Can it play Doom?". :D

Using PC in a "every consumer computing device but Mac" probably made sense in the 80s/90s, now it seems to dilute the term to the point of confusion. I have personally never thought of a Chromebook as a PC, given that it ships with an OS incapable of many things people generally associate with PC activities.

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woolion 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It seems to me that it's exactly why I don't like word games. They use words like "combine", but it's generally mixing abstractions or taxonomies.

To guess it, I looked at 'crab' because it's a quite uncommon that has some deep relationship with a few words only. Then checked the most obvious one (which was the solution) against the other words, and determined that it didn't bear any significant relationship to the third word. So I checked the other (less obvious) potential solutions, and after a frustrating lack of match, I gave up. And then got annoyed that the first candidate was the right one. To be fair, I guess it's partly because I'm an ESL, as I think that solution/sauce can be used as a nominative locution enough to form a "special relationship".

To be a designer, you have to play with people's (as in general crowd, not individuals) general understanding of the subject. In particular, that means avoiding the curse of knowledge, and yes for normal people PC meant "not Apple consumer product". So ultimately, the search algorithm includes:

- categorize all relationships between words, ranked by strength

- compare with what is expected to be known in popular culture (adjust ranks)

- match against the designer's expectations of similar problems (look for clues to pick a best match)

It's a lot of words to say it's the opposite of a aha moment, the result of a pure computational problem, that is often quite frustrating. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

	▲	whatevertrevor 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I totally get that, I am ESL too, and I have a similar approach for English-based word games. And yeah that often results in mild disappointment or frustration instead of an "Aha!" moment. Actual puzzle video games fair better for me at that aspect, as they avoid the inevitable subjectivity of natural language.

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opan 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I went from thinking this was too hard to guess on the fly to suddenly getting it within a minute or two. Interesting.

If anyone wants an additional hint, the word you plug in here isn't put in the same spot for all three words.

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geuis 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Please, just provide the answer. Maybe it's obvious but to people like me all I can think of is recipes for butter sauces for crab legs involving pine nuts. Which actually sounds quite good.

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tmtvl 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's something often compared to oranges.

	▲	covercash 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This word combines with Tim to make a meme.

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calmworm 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is answered in the article.

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taneq 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They're deliberately avoiding spoilers, you can decode the answer by pasting YXBwbGU= into https://www.base64decode.org/