hoakley May 17, 2021 General, Macs, Technology

Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 99

I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 99. Here are my solutions to them.

1: Open, untie and try it again with a Z.

Click for a solution

undo

Open (undo a parcel), untie (undo a knot) and try it again (what it lets you do) with a Z (Command-Z is its shortcut).

2: We don’t provide water or power but those important routine functions. What are we?

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Utilities

We don’t provide water or power (as the utilities do) but those important routine functions (as performed by software utilities). What are we?

3: Without leather or the first person, I’m second in line at the start. What am I?

Click for a solution

iBoot

Without leather (boot) or the first person (I), I’m second in line at the start (iBoot is the second stage of the macOS boot sequence). What am I?

I look forward to your putting alternative cases.

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1

K on May 17, 2021 at 5:50 pm

For #1, I say “Decompress”. Unix compression utilities have a tradition of using the letter “Z” (after Ziv?) for command-line flags and filename extensions. If you download a compressed file and try to “Open” it directly, you’ll probably have to decompress it first and “Try it again”. “Untie” I take as a reference to the Mac’s habit of showing some types of compressed files as brown cardboard boxes.

Maybe it’s just the dialect in my part of the world, but I’ve never said “undo a parcel”. I’d also never say “undo [a knot]” to mean “untie”. I work with ropes and “undo” is a potentially risky word here because it’s completely context-dependent. “Untie” is both specific (only applies to ropes, not bolts/chains/clamps) and idempotent (doesn’t suddenly mean the opposite if they happened to have untied already and you didn’t see it).

The opposite Edit menu item is “Redo”, and I wouldn’t say “redo a knot” to tie one, either. After all, you’d almost never be able to say “doing”, since after the very first time anyone ties a knot in your rope, you’re always just “redoing” it, right? 🙂

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  hoakley on May 17, 2021 at 9:14 pm
  
  Thank you.
  The great thing about riddles is that there isn’t necessarily a single answer. If you’re happy that your answer solves the riddle, that’s absolutely fine by me. They’re also only a little weekend fun, so I would never argue over them. I hope that you enjoyed them.
  Howard.
  
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1: Open, untie and try it again with a Z.

undo

2: We don’t provide water or power but those important routine functions. What are we?

Utilities

3: Without leather or the first person, I’m second in line at the start. What am I?

iBoot

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