Puzzle Description:

Your very own blackout kit.

#1: Kristen Vognild (kristen) on Jan 18, 2012

I get the sentiment, but this puzzle was WAY too big. You could've gotten the message across on a 40x40 just by using a smaller font.

It's a blackout, it's supposed to be big. I thought about making it bigger.

I thought about just making it all black, too, but I couldn't bring myself to do that.

Took one look and said its a WOT puzzle and not bothering.

i agree with kristen. if i didn't already know what that was, your puzzle would leave a bad taste in my mouth making me less likely to support. how about some links to information, so your puzzle isn't just a protest against the patience of puzzle solvers?

https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/One-Page-SOPA_0.pdf
http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
http://dyn.com/sopa-breaking-dns-parasite-stop-online-piracy/
https://www.eff.org/free-speech-weak-link

David, I'm glad you took the time to post those links. This was more my humble attempt to participate in the spirit of the day than anything else; but that was an oversight on my part and I appreciate you correcting it. I must say, though, I'm more amused than chastened at the thought that someone might include how they felt about a puzzle in arriving at their position on this issue.

Mindlessly filling in black squares in a non-puzzle puzzle is not a way to engender support for a cause. Imagine that as your first exposure to the issue..."What is this SOPA thing and how is tedious frustration related to it?"

You can be amused, but it is naive to think that first impressions don't have at least some impact...but you may notice that I spoke only for myself. From a big-picture standpoint, I'm particularly adverse to the "hard sell" and attempts to manipulate by emotion rather than fact. I'm not saying your puzzle was being manipulative in that way, but it was, at the very least, leaning away from informed discourse and toward mob mentality.

Very large puzzles make some browsers slow or freeze! The complete puzzle may not fit every computer screen and requires scrolling back and forth. This limits the number of people who play them.
If you want to get your message across to as many players as possible, then create smalller puzzles.

I am going to use a bottle of white out on this puzzle.

Way too big, and too large of solid areas. Computer won't work with it.

Am currently solving on my iPad, where I have to solve each pixel individually - this is rather time-consuming on a puzzle of this size.

Should I understand what SOPA stands for if I am not based in the USA?

Nope, we had no idea, either. Comment #5 has some links to SOPA.

This just popped up as a Random for me, so I thought I'd update in case anyone comes across this in the future. SOPA had massive backlash and did not pass Congress. Most of my links above are just as dead now too. Anybody curious can get most pertinent information here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
...still not a good puzzle lol

Goto next topic

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