It has been drilled into us that plagiarism is theft and therefore bad, but there is nothing more natural in the world than taking others work and building on it or sharing it. Ownership of thoughts and ideas is a modern invention, and harmless "plagiarism" has been going on since the dawn of time. Not every sentence, idea, story or indeed puzzle should need to have a wholly original formulation, and it's not hard to see how stringent citations might stifle creativity or distract from the ideas being presented.
In particular, I wonder to what degree this sort of plagiarism causes any real harm, repeating others clever ideas from years ago in a way that can only be discovered by data mining. Are the puzzles less fun knowing they have shared elements with ones from years ago?
In particular, I wonder to what degree this sort of plagiarism causes any real harm, repeating others clever ideas from years ago in a way that can only be discovered by data mining. Are the puzzles less fun knowing they have shared elements with ones from years ago?