Are parts of challenges allowed to be posted on their own?

Question

Suppose there is a challenge that is rather hard, and has few answers. Is it OK to post a new challenge that is actually a part of the bigger and harder challenge? Of course, attributing the original author for inspiration is without question.

The new challenge may be considered a duplicate (as the answers can be trivially adapted just but cutting off big chunks of code). However, it can attract more users in a wider set of languages.

(I have in mind Is this Flow Free puzzle trivial? to be specific, but let's talk in general.)

Answer 1

It depends

Getting challenge ideas (be it a sub-task or a variant) from an existing challenge is perfectly fine. IMO you don't need any kind of explicit permission, as long as you specify in your challenge where you got your inspiration from.

The only things that actually matter are:

• Is the new challenge interesting enough on its own?
• Is it significantly different enough from existing challenge(s)?

I don't think a big chunk of an existing challenge is a dupe, if it leaves out another big chunk of it. But it depends on the tasks at hand, and people may think differently. The only way to figure out is to post a draft in the sandbox first, as always.