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I have an idea for a question, but it's rather non-standard, so I thought I'd check here whether it's suitably on-topic to post.

Title. "Find-the-error puzzles in LaTeX!"

Answer. For a bit of fun, and maybe some pedagogical benefit too, each answer to this question contains a short LaTeX document that gives a compilation error. The challenge is to try and spot the error without compiling - just by reading the code. And of course, no giving solutions in the comments!

Sample answer. Difficulty rating 3/5.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\newcommand\startpoint{1,1}
\newcommand\endpoint{3,3}
\begin{document}
  \begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw[red] (\startpoint) -- (\endpoint);
  \end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
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1 Answer 1

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It's a nice idea, it's fun, we can learn from it. However, I think this question is not suitable for TeX.SE.

From the FAQ:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

This question would be wecome in an open forum such as on LaTeX-Community.org. I promise I would join such a topic there ;-) I understand, that you would like to talk about with users from here. Well, one possibility: start the action in that forum, mention it in the TeX.SE chat or right here in this meta topic, or link in a related real question on the main site.

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    Another possibility is to start a new series in our blog. :)
    – Paulo Cereda
    May 25, 2013 at 12:00
  • @PauloCereda That could be fun :). Could you tell me a little about how might that work?
    – John Wickerson
    May 26, 2013 at 16:35
  • @JohnWickerson Follow chat link in Posting an article to the blog. But i have to agree with charles stewart comment:) at The prominent link to tex.blogoverflow.com has been buried. Also Nicola Talbot today suggested same issue in chat
    – texenthusiast
    May 26, 2013 at 23:09
  • @JohnWickerson: I'm not sure how it might work. :) A possible approach would be a nice blog post with some introductory text, the code, some explanations on why the code doesn't work and the solution. I think the post should be self-contained, that is, everything should be in place (code and answer). The series could be something along the lines of Spot the error. :) We could get feedback from all other bloggers as well, so we could come up with a nice format.
    – Paulo Cereda
    May 27, 2013 at 13:22

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