Question the solution: a question

Question

                  against ^
                  against |               v--- this
is  +  busbus  +  against | . gnra  +  >,  , @

The solution to this rebus is a question. You do not have to answer it, just discover it. Good luck, and happy puzzling.

Hints

1. The top against is the final against.
1.2. An action is being displayed in the against.
1.3. It is not being stacked.
2. Google gnra with some other words to find its true meaning.
2.2. i.e. other words in the puzzle. (Assuming you have part of the puzzle already solved.)
2.3. gnra is a misspelling and shortening of an English word.
3. Some programming knowledge might help.
3.2. ..
4. The rebus is self-contained.
5. The band
6. The answer is yes, apparently.

I do not understand upvotes before the solution is found. How do people know this is a good puzzle? — Gendarme, Mar 30 '16 at 12:23
@Gendarme If it's hard to solve, then it's probably a good puzzle. — Conor O'Brien, Mar 30 '16 at 13:28
@Gendarme you can upvote it if it's an (seemingly) interesting puzzle. More people will read it and reward the poster for the effort. If it turns out to be a bad puzzle, it's easy to change your vote. — Raystafarian, Mar 30 '16 at 13:38
@Raystafarian - except that you can't change your vote unless the post gets edited... — Alconja, Mar 30 '16 at 14:23
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ can we get a hint since it hasn't been solved for a week? Looking over the comments and answers, the last part has stumped everyone. — stackErr, Apr 07 '16 at 19:11
@Gendarme A puzzle can be intriguing even if you don't know the answer yet. It can look interesting and make you want to tackle it. All reasons I would use to upvote before seeing a solution. — BmyGuest, Apr 17 '16 at 12:31
@ABcDexter No, it is not. But such a program wouldn't do much ;) — Conor O'Brien, Apr 19 '16 at 13:55
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Ok, and is that v--- this placed above there on purpose, right? The exact placement of characters/symbols in a rebus is important O:-) — ABcDexter, Apr 19 '16 at 13:59
Any hints? Or anything? I ended up awarding my bounty to the best answer, but it seems like no one has made any progress — question_asker, May 05 '16 at 11:57
Ping! This one is still not completely solved. Any other hint(s) to help wrap it up, @CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ? — Dan Russell, Jul 26 '16 at 16:52
@DanRussell The final hint is all you really should need... but okay. — Conor O'Brien, Jul 26 '16 at 16:53
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ But Wesley's answer below is still not quite right? — Dan Russell, Jul 26 '16 at 16:57
@DanRussell bother, I didn't know he updated. Regardless, he is only slightly wrong. — Conor O'Brien, Jul 26 '16 at 16:59
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Looks like Wesley updated again...did he nail it? — Dan Russell, Jul 26 '16 at 17:39

Wesley Situ · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-26T17:10:41.220

20

Here's an updated attempt with the new hints.

is

is

~~bus~~bus

this (@paste) rebus

against ^
against |
against |

Rise Against (the band)

.

. as a member/property access operator --> possessive --> 's

gnra

general no longer makes sense in the context of the band, so perhaps gnra is a misspelling of genre

>, , @

? from ASCII
> is 0x3E
? is 0x3F
@ is 0x40

From @DanRussell, interpret this as question

Following @Neon612's connection

Rise Against's genre would be hardcore

Answer

Is this rebus a hardcore question?

edited Jul 26 '16 at 17:10

answered Apr 20 '16 at 16:34

Wesley Situ

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. is an operator, but what else does it mean? And true, the question wouldn't make much sense unless gnra meant something else... ;) – Conor O'Brien Apr 20 '16 at 18:03
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It could also be accessing a property, so perhaps . translates to possessive, transforming "a question" to "a question's". But I'll have to see what gnra could mean to see if it works. :p – Wesley Situ Apr 20 '16 at 18:17
But what about operator precedence? – Conor O'Brien Apr 20 '16 at 18:18
Not sure what you mean by that since I thought . would take precedence over most other operators, unless concatenation by + takes precedence here... Then, if >, , @ translates to ? using ASCII, and if googling "gnra question" is supposed to lead to "Did you mean: general question", maybe the entire phrase would then be "stacked against a question's misspelled(?) general question" – Wesley Situ Apr 20 '16 at 19:13
you're getting close, but . isn't concatenation in all languages. – Conor O'Brien Apr 20 '16 at 19:41
Oh, sorry I meant . as accessing a property in my last comment. – Wesley Situ Apr 20 '16 at 19:48
I feel like this has to be the closest anyone's gotten so far. But obviously I don't know the answer so ¯\(ツ)/¯ – question_asker Apr 28 '16 at 11:55
1

i would interpret the italics in the second part to mean this so maybe prefix that word with "this"? – paste Apr 28 '16 at 16:32
I awarded you the bounty because the time period ran out and this is as solid an answer (and well-defended!) as I've seen, – question_asker May 02 '16 at 12:50
Close enough. I was going for hard question, but this works. – Conor O'Brien Jul 26 '16 at 17:51

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '16 at 01:51

14

Possibility for the last part:

The character that comes between > and @ in ASCII is ?. So that would simply be a question mark.

answered Apr 20 '16 at 01:51

ffao

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Hugh Meyers · Answer 3 · 2016-04-14T12:09:12.370

10

Anyone have any thoughts? It looks to me as if the second element is

Rebus (because it is bus crossed out and re-inserted)

The third could be

Up against or Going up against or Rising up against or Stacked up against
On the other hand that could be an arrow pointing to the title
gnra = Tetraloop = four-loop or for-loop --- or "general"

The last suggests

Nothing left over or possibly Left over space

edited Apr 14 '16 at 12:09

answered Apr 06 '16 at 20:29

Hugh Meyers

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You close on the second one, and you're right on the first one if I understand correctly. – Conor O'Brien Apr 06 '16 at 20:32
GNRA can refer to a tetraloop, which makes me wonder if the . means to concatenate whatever's found with the 3 against+up statements with it, somehow. – Khale_Kitha Apr 06 '16 at 20:39
@Khale_Kitha are you thinking about GRNA? or GNRA? – stackErr Apr 06 '16 at 20:44
2

GNRA – Khale_Kitha Apr 06 '16 at 20:45
2

The last part looks a lot like Befunge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge – stackErr Apr 07 '16 at 04:15
At first I thought "gnra" could mean something like "the odds in general", as in "the odd-numbered letters in the word", but that would have been "gnrl". There doesn't seem to be any feasible word of which "gnra" are the odd-numbered letters, though. – vvye Apr 07 '16 at 07:24
Some other potential interpretations of "gnra": Glasgow North Regeneration Agency, Grand National Racing Association, or the previously-mentioned Gateway National Recreation Area. – GentlePurpleRain Apr 22 '16 at 18:57

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 14 '16 at 15:34

This is a potentially incendiary answer, and I needed to mix things up a bit to get it, but...

Is Stack against mixing up the rebus repetition behind the Top Question list's lack of content?

Explanation:

'Mixing up' came from needing to rearrange the clues. 'is' is is, ~~bus~~bus is 'rebus' as guessed by Hugh Meyers, the againsts are 'Stack against', the arrow points to 'question' in the title, or the 'Top Question', GNRA is a Tetraloop, which becomes 4 loop and for loop as guessed by Khale_Kitha in the comments, which finally becomes 'repetition'. The final clue is a list missing one of the pieces, or 'list's lack of content'. 'Behind' is because 'rebus' was before (or behind) 'repetition' in the original clue order.

I think I'm stretching this too far, but you guys come up with really complex puzzles, so I actually don't know.

'is' is is... hehe. Had to read it a few times to convince myself it was legit. — feelinferrety, Apr 14 '16 at 16:48

Neon612 · Answer 5 · 2016-07-26T17:04:13.520

6

I'll take another crack at it:

is

is

busbus

rebus

against ^
against |
against |

Rise Against (the band)

.

. as a member/property access operator (@Wesley Situ)

gnra

shortening and misspelling of genre

Putting "against, ., gnra" together

It would come out "Rise Against".genre = hardcore

">, , @"

? (@WestleySitu)

Answer

Is this rebus hard? (For an answer to this question, a resounding YES!)

edited Jul 26 '16 at 17:04

answered Apr 18 '16 at 17:21

Neon612

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Nice thoughts! Not quite right, though. – Conor O'Brien Apr 18 '16 at 17:25
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I think the . before gnra is important too – Fabich Apr 20 '16 at 15:47

score 5 · Answer 6 · edited Apr 06 '16 at 23:19

5

The arrow could also be pointing to the word "question" (e.g., this question), and between the commas could just be "space". So far I'm getting

Is this rebus against Stack's question...

edited Apr 06 '16 at 23:19

ffao

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answered Apr 06 '16 at 21:25

charfellow

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This is an answer, so you should use spoilers to hide stuff – ffao Apr 06 '16 at 23:17
You're rather close on some parts. – Conor O'Brien Apr 06 '16 at 23:46
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Added another interpretation. Is that better? – stackErr Apr 07 '16 at 03:12
@stackErr no closer than you were ;) – Conor O'Brien Apr 07 '16 at 10:51

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 21 '16 at 18:38

How is the rebus stacking up against the general questions

My thought process

1. Against's are stacked up. So "stack up against". Credit to everyone who guessed it
2. Googling "gnra question" leads to google suggesting "general question". Credit to Wesley Situ
3. The "." (as I have seen in C++) is used to reference structure. Thank you Wesley Situ for pointing that out

score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:50

Second attempt:

The stack of againsts all the way to gnra is interpreted as a block:

stack of against = rising against (clue 5).
up-arrow = question.
gnra = general (clue 2.3).
dot: a.b = property b of a => question.general = general question
Altogether: rising against general questions

Tying this with elements from my previous attempt, we get:

Is rebus rising against general questions?

First attempt:

I think the rebus reads as:

Are rebuses up against themselves often?

Here are the elements:

Is

Is

~~bus~~bus

rebus

3-stack of 'against's, last one at the top

up against itself

Up arrow points to

n

Dot

structure's property: $a.b$ means property $b$ of structure $a$. So the dot reverses the elements around it and inserts "of" in between. We'll deal with gnra later, but "n." becomes "of n", or often.

gnra (using the community wiki started by Hugh Myers)

tetraloop $\to$ for-loop $\to$ multiple.

Middle of final triple (using the community wiki started by ffao)

?

Putting it together:

Is rebus up against itself multiple often?

Or, taking 'multiple' as an operator on the previous word,

Is rebus up against itselfs often?

Now making this more grammatically correct:

Are rebuses up against themselves often?

As a bonus, it satisfies the title's 'answer in question' recursive property.

I think it's the closest to the correct answer(if anyone has written it yet) :-) — ABcDexter, Apr 25 '16 at 16:42
Thanks @ABcDexter! Clue 5 has thrown a spanner in the works, since it just about states that the pile of againsts together with the up-arrow is something like "rise against". I also wonder about the lack of "+" symbols up to gnra. This may indicate a single word or symbol. — Lawrence, Apr 25 '16 at 16:46
Yes exactly, and I mentioned in my answer, that . is causing hallucinations.(exaggerating a bit). — ABcDexter, Apr 25 '16 at 16:58

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 20 '16 at 18:55

2

Going from charfellow's answer, if the solution is somehow related to Stack Exchange, then perhaps the last bit could be

up-vote this

answered Apr 20 '16 at 18:55

Dan Russell

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I certainly wouldn't mind that, haha. Not quite the answer I was looking for, however. – Conor O'Brien Apr 20 '16 at 19:00

score 2 · Answer 10 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:50

Maybe:

Is (this) rebus (a) true or false general question?

Explanation:

is = is

~~bus~~bus = rebus

| and ^ are bitwise operators in programming languages.
Where | is an "bitwise inclusive OR" and ^ a "bitwise XOR (eXclusive OR)" (both with the same operator precedence <- order of execution)

Using the hint: The top against is the final against.
We know the order of the operators: | | ^
In addition, a dot (the . is sometimes used as x in math.
Using a comment from OP: But what about operator precedence?
The full order is: | | ^ x

Against is a synonym of opposite, so I think the (bitwise) values are altering. Either:
0 | 1 | 0 ^ 1 x 0
OR
1 | 0 | 1 ^ 0 x 1

Since I don't knew whether to start with 0 or 1, I tried both:
0 | 1 | 0 ^ 1 x 0 = 0
1 | 0 | 1 ^ 0 x 1 = 1

Then, umm.. I decided to translate it to true or false. :)

gnra = general

>, , @ with the arrow pointing between it is the ? (question mark) in ASCII order. So this part is question?.
Thanks to @ffao for this part.

And the answer to the question is:

true, since it's a true or false question.

or false, because if you google "true or false general question" you'll receive hits for "true or false general knowledge questions".
And I don't think this rebus or question is general knowledge imho, although this is debatable.

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Apr 19 '16 at 23:59

The first part could be

Is rebus stacked against

The portion after the up arrow (if indeed that is an arrow) could be

gnra = tetra-loop = four-loop = for loop.
Then, the portion with the commas could be referring how a for loop is written such as in for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++). The middle portion is being pointed to, and is the condition for the loop. Of course, this fails to properly account for the '<' appearing as the first entry and the existence of '@' at all.
The arrow points to the question (as has been noted), so perhaps that is the best translation.

Putting this together gives

Is (this) rebus stacked against the question's conditions?

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 21 '16 at 10:11

So after working upon everyone's comments and answers, here is my answer:

Is rebus stacking against or for, to upvote this question ?

The really confusing part shifted from >, ,@ to . gnra, as taking . as member access meant there has to be a stackexchange member named gnra but with wasting-cum-investing time on search, there is none.

I just hope this (awkward) answer is somewhere close to the correct one, will be working more on to update it.

Ghapla · Answer 13 · 2016-04-21T12:52:47.323

This may be very close to the intended answer. If not, I hope someone else can do a better translation from the inputs. :/

Is this rebus stacked/ up against each question having greater upvotes than this question? OR
Is rebus on stack (stack overflow) against each question having greater upvotes than this question?

Explanation:

1. The busbus with a strike through = rebus
2. The stacked against is relatively straightforward 3. The arrow points to the "question" in the title 3. As mentioned in the community wiki post, gnra is tetra loop which can be translated to "four loop", which gives for loop. For loop when combined with the . symbol gives- .forEach, which is a method to traverse through an array in javascript
4. > is the symbol for greater than.
5. The last element translates to "upvotes @ this"

stackErr · Answer 14 · 2016-04-25T14:55:04.893

After reading the hints, I think it is:

Is this rebus rising against its general property?

Explanation:

"Is" is is. (As @Vicky poetically said it)
~~bus~~bus is rebus
According to the hint (band): the against's + arrow turns into rising against
. operator in programming languages allows your to access an objects properties. This added with the abbreviation of gnra for general becomes "its general property"
The missing element in the last part is the ? in ASCII (thanks to @ffao)
Adding it up all together you get: Is this rebus rising against its general property?

Good question but I don't have a good answer to it!

Rebuses general property is to use pictures to represent words but in this rebus (if you want to call it that) its using words/text to represent words.

Question the solution: a question

Hints

14 Answers14