The Sphinx's Lair - 2016-12-08 (page 1 of 4)

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12:45 AM

@Emrakul It's going to be hard to get used to you not having a dark blue profile ...

@incesterror21 Hey, welcome to the Sphinx's Lair! :-) I noticed you lurking here even before you had enough rep to chat. Nice riddle of yours, btw.

user61230

1:09 AM

@Randal'Thor I've had the same profile pic everywhere for well over two years, believe you me, you're not the only one who needs to get used to it

user61230

But I like it better, honestly.

So it's not just a temporary festive thing like Emracool then?

3 hours later…

4:15 AM

@Rubio- Not sure if it fits too broad. 99% of the answers do not fit. :( I have left a comment everywhere

@All - What is the right time to post a self answer if I am getting a huge number of incorrect answers?

4:34 AM

I'd provide a hint well before a self-answer.

Self-answer basically is abandoning the puzzle and conceding that nobody will ever get it. I doubt we're there yet, especially since it really hasn't been that long.

Hmm. Yeah. But its attracting a lot of unwanted answers. Its good that now its protected. Will help a bit

About the hints. There aren't any more to give really. All the clues are already there

4:59 AM

Welllll....

Your puzzles are, how shall I put this.... Some of them are pretty simple and are quickly solved. But others tend to be very inaccessible, requiring us to basically be in your head because the leaps of logic that are "obvious" to you, as the puzzle setter, are left unhinted (or at least very under-hinted) because you think they're so obvious or such giveaways that making those hints trivializes the whole puzzle.

Taking this current riddle at face value, when it says "One of us reside in each line here", I think we all understand that to mean that whatever us is, there is a single occurrence of them per line of the riddle. I don't know if that's actually true, though, because the only thing common to every line that I can see and which occurs exactly once is a pair of identical words (or the "> " formatting at the start of each line, though that's unlikely to be relevant). You've rejected both.

Other than that, pretty much every other hint therein is helpful to verify a guess, but not all that useful in coming up with meaningful guesses to try.

It also doesn't help that some of the more intricate puzzles you've set before have been riddles that have, unfortunately, had some serious errors in them that made solving them a particularly challenging exercise, as it's not clear then if we're just on the wrong track entirely, or if we're stumbling up against a malformed puzzle.

Yeah, I've noticed that too, unfortunately.

5:15 AM

There's definitely been a couple of these that were only solved by interacting with you because they didn't give enough guidance to provide a solver with an approach to move forward; had no internal validation to indicate you were heading the right way, unless you were lucky enough to take all the right steps and end up with a solution; and had errors that meant some right steps seemed to be wrong, leading the solver astray. interactively solving a puzzle with its creator shouldn't be required.

So now I don't know if one or more of these concerns is the case with this riddle. It starts to feel that way when nobody has gotten even a start on it, when on its surface the riddle doesn't seem like it should be that hard. Especially when it tells us (if we take it at face value) that the answer is in the riddle and has a length of 6.

I agree that I have made it a little harder(or vague) puzzles in the past. And all I am doing is trying to improve their quality.

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/46208/a-smart-girl this one went fine. Got solved quickly

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/46076/pathetic-neighbor and this one

Yes, I agree those were much better - they were forward-solvable, you had to find a pattern and the structure/content of the puzzle hinted at it. Once you found that, the answer was an obvious next step.

I don't know, I really didn't like the haiku one.

"Distinct characters" is way too different from "total syllables" to me, and the fact that "my rhyme" clued "no rhyme" didn't make much sense.

Well yeah - I said much better, not perfect. :) Both still had issues

Where it could have gone vague if no one took it right.

5:29 AM

I'm not sure if the imprecision and/or red herring elements are intentional, or clumsy design, or even language barrier related, but at least once you get close enough you can actually solve them.

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/46276/… this is the latest

I am sure I have added everything required

But still unsolved :(

Not sure where I am lacking in understanding a solvers mind

Yeah I can't even comment on that one, it was too convoluted on its face for me to want to dig into it.

"Stop playing with it and bring it down" says take the TOY down

Honestly I think you struggle in that you know the answer so you can provide a puzzle, with clues and hinting, all of which perfectly fit the answer -- but again, being able to verify an answer is way different than being able to arrive at that answer using what's in the puzzle.

Wasnt this easy with wordplay tag?

5:31 AM

That part made sense to me.

It's the notes I'm not sure about.

@Deusovi- I can say they will make sense once revealed. Atleast I hope so

I'm honestly not sure what to make of the last line of note 2.

Or really, the whole thing.

Hmm. When I used multiple tags I guess I am not supposed to clue where to use which tag right?

@Techidiot See, that's not how a puzzle works. :) You can't make it so "Hey, once you get the answer, it will all make sense" - the puzzle has to provide what is needed to GET the answer, not to make sense of it.

@Techidiot You don't have to. Tags aren't supposed to be part of the puzzle - they should just be used for categorization.

5:35 AM

Right @Deusovi

Solution of Rubik gives "The Key is Type"

Now we have a cipher tag

Which means the next 8 letters will be gibberish. (Encrypted) But there is a way to get them

Ugghhhhhh.

I don't like having to extract random letters from a block of text, then perform ciphers on them.

Hmm. I guess most of the people dont. But thats what is required

Sorry about that :(

The issue is that we can't read minds - I'm not sure what those notes are supposed to mean, and without something to grab onto, there's nothing there for us.

Ciphers take away confirmation. If you see something spelling out a phrase, you know you're on the right track. But with ciphers, anything can be a valid clue.

It's worse that that, even - in many ciphers, you won't even get a sensible decrypt with the right key unless you have the complete cipher text in the right order

So you have to solve both notes' riddles with no confirmation that you've done so, until by serendipity you get it right and decrypting gives you a sensible output.

And who knows if the letters will come out in order. who knows if they're words that the notes translate to, or just a jumble of letters. no hint as to any of that is provided by the puzzle. you're left to flail around in hopes that you get the full cipher text, in the right order, with the right key and the right cipher method.

I don't want it to seem like we're ganging up on you or anything. We don't mean to! And hey, everyone's learning still! It's just that we're not really sure where to go from here.

5:45 AM

Yeah - not saying "Man, your puzzles suck" - they don't, they're intricate and interesting

But if you want people to be able to solve them without you having to give them what is in your head, then the puzzle needs to do that for you. There needs to be guidance so we're not looking at a 4 line stanza and scratching our heads thinking, "What do I do now?" and having no clue at all how to proceed.

Thanks @Rubio @Deusovi I will take a note of it. Although if my plain text is Techidiot and cipher text is dhshjskot with key hello, does dhsh decoded with hello gives tech?

If you encrypted it with key "hello", then yes.

Well, usually. Depends on the cipher.

In Vignere, it does. In Bifid/Trifid, not necessarily.

Thats what I did. I broke the cipher text into two parts and divided it into two notes in a right sequence

And, and quite importantly, you can't meaningfully expect someone to make 3 logical leaps to solve three pieces of a puzzle at once to be able to move forward to get confirmation that all three were correctl unless all three are either very obvious or very trivial.

Also I am not using an out of scope cipher. Its Vignere obviously

5:49 AM

(that's not "obvious"; it's just the first thing someone will try. there IS a difference.)

:) Yeah.

Wait...

Did you encrypt the two halves separately?

Oh, never mind. The key is length 4.

Yeah.

hehe yeah

So in this particular case it doesn't matter

If the key was "hello", then encrypting ABCD and EFGH and joining them would not be the same thing as encrypting ABCDEFGH.

5:50 AM

@Deusovi Speaking of explaining how to get the letters, its explained in the notes

Yes, and the notes don't make any sense. That's why we're trying to figure out the notes.

May be I didnt made it heavily clear to keep it harder

Well. It's clued in the notes, but not explained. :)

I can't make heads nor tails of those notes

Neither can I.

Can you paste the note 1 here?

Lets see. I am on phone and will be a lot of work. Can you help?

5:52 AM

I mean, Deusovi is a chump at solving these puzzles, obviously, but I mean, not even I can solve them, so... like .... ;)

Sure, just a second.

:P

>X-mas is around and so are you.
>Arrange using a group of 30 and you will see
>Chances are you might get lost but
>No we the first of each will be your way.

lol. keep trying

Markdown is annoying D:

I'm only using one >. No idea why it's doing that.

Now see what the lines 2,3 and 4 say. @Rubio you can stay. This will be interesting I think :)

Well, for one, line 4 seems to have at least one typo, which doesn't help

5:54 AM

Arrange using a group of 30.

Well, I tried to arrange them in lines of 30 letters.

Yeah. @Deusovi

There aren't enough to make 4 full lines though:

Xmasisarou ndandsoare youArrange
usingagrou pof30andyo uwillseeCh
ancesareyo umightgetl ostbutNowe
thefirstof eachwillbe yourway

Can you check the string size of all the characters and letters?

...ugghhh, formatting

It should be your first step to know :)

5:55 AM

Ohh, adding punctuation makes it work.

Steganography tag is used here with word play(not sure if it fits completely)

Yep, that's definitely steganography.

user image

EINS

Now read lines 3 and 4 in the original note

part 2 is probably TEIN

so we need to get MCXR from it somehow

Wait.. one thing I need to say

5:58 AM

Hm?

Can you not post an answer Liveux is trying harder here. I dont want to spoil his work here

@Deusovi so does it make sense now? A little :(

Yeah, I think that part was good! Still a couple problems though - for one, it seemed kinda arbitrary whether to allow punctuation or spaces.

That guy is closer to get it solved I think. Not sure how long he will try

Well thats what was not explained and kept hidden to compliment stegano tag

Lots of puzzles here are solved with a team effort. We could always edit my answer into his if he wants.

Sure. So you got the first one right

Lets get note two

6:01 AM

I don't see why it was necessary to keep it hidden though. You could fit some hint into there about what stays and what goes.

Still though, overall a good idea.

>Tree Mazeltov
Free Abduction Saliva Yes
Dead Infra Was Bash
Alfredo Abominated Dad
*Boinota Quermios Tranted Smearo Lefat(Translation of this line - Don't use me everywhere)

Thanks @Deusovi I ll take it as an advice and a compliment :)

Well its again steganography

I notice there's no X in there, meaning we're not extracting letters directly this time.

I have mentiioned that note 2 is hard

I'll give the first note a pass, only because you have to keep everything to get groups of 30. But it is an unmotivated thing to do, since usually you drop punctuation and spaces, and it's a very indirect clue to tell you to do ootherwise

Yeah. I tried it without punctuation and spaces, getting nowhere.

6:03 AM

Just as a practical bit of advice, steps that are completely unmotivated and arbitrary are not good puzzle craft.

Hmm. Yes @Rubio I didnt think that someone will leave the punctuations

It's by far the norm to get rid of punctuation and spacing in ciphers, unless it's clear they're part of the text.

Well, it's not really a cipher...

But your point still stands.

So @Deusovi look carefully at words of note 2. Simple steganography is this He Elevates Like Lion which is?

HELL right?

TM FASY DIWB AAD BQTSL doesn't mean much to me though...

6:06 AM

Now try reverse stegano. Check last bits

EV ENAS DASH ODD ASDOT

Ah, I see. Morse.

:(

Lets use this on the note

I'm doing that now. (No need to tell me everything!)

-- -.-. -..- .-. (ignoring the last one)

MCXR, as expected.

Yup.

So, should I post an answer to finish this one off?

6:08 AM

Was it stegano?

I guess? It's not really "reverse steganography". It's just another method of hiding information in text.

That being said, I expected more of it to be important since it seemed to be nonsense.

Yeah. I invented reverse stegano just now :D Yes its simple stegano

Hey @Emrakul!

user61230

Hey @Deusovi!

So @Techidiot - knowing what you did, it's easy to pull the important clue out of note 2

But just looking at four lines of random words, it's not at all obvious to do that thing.

6:11 AM

Yeah, I expected something more complicated since it was nonsense.

Again, unmotivated and arbitrary steps required to solve a bit are frustrating, especially when there are literally unbounded possibilities there.

Hmm. Didnt knew that it was too hard to guess with stegano tag used. Sorry again if I made it bad :(

People may well try: word lengths. Word meanings. First letters. Vowels vs consonants. Homophones.

and on and on.

@Deusovi You can go ahead and post the solution

And no steganography?

I spent a bunch of time trying to read around the spaces to see if that's how you did the stegano.

6:13 AM

Well. Sorry if I made it too vague. Just a learner yet.

Thanks for your time and advices @Rubio @Deusovi hope it was not a waste :)

Sure! I'm excited to see more from you. We're all learning here - I've posted puzzles with problems too!

Not a waste. Helping people with a motivation to create interesting puzzles to create BETTER ones is awesome for all of us :)

Yeah! I definitely enjoy having you here. c:

user61230

Hey, I've only posted one constructed puzzle, and it's littered with problems. You're in good company. :P

Pleasure is all mine! :)

6:15 AM

My first non-trivial puzzle was broken, and I got people cranky at me for it :)

I think Deusovi was one of them even hehe

Probably!

I get cranky at a lot of people for bad puzzles. :P

Damn shame too. It was a good puzzle, I think, and fun to create, but I botched the execution.

Well so that was it.

Wait, which one are you referring to?

user61230

what this community isn't toward misconstructed puzzles: youtube.com/watch?v=456GpND7HFc

6:17 AM

my trick or treating one

I have a new answer for my riddle which unfortunately is incorrect yet again.

@Techidiot Yeah I saw hehe

Lol. What am I supposed to do? 12 answers already. Phew... Not sure how vowels fit in. Waiting for explainations

Time to go. @Deusovi Will accept it a little later. Until that I hope you collect some good number of votes :) Thanks again @Rubio and @Deusovi

See ya! c:

Take care

6:27 AM

Speaking of botched execution, for the puzzle I'm making now, I only just thought to check the possible anagrams of some fodder which was supposed to give a hint, and got back over 100,000 results. Should have known -.- .

D:

Yikes :)

It was 14 letters though, so not short. Oh well. Time to refill my crossword grid.

Any one made progress on the latest cryptic? The (6,6) makes it hard to find definitions for...

Nope. :/

6:35 AM

I was thinking Following directions ==> taking orders, but can't get any of the rest to fit at all :)

I can give a hint, if people want.

Yeah, might be helpful. It's a bit convoluted.

CCCC: Hint 0: @GarethMcCaughan has already identified most of the second word, amongst the possible decipherings he's pondered.
Hint 1: "Following" and "directions" are separate things, so nothing to do with taking orders / obeying etc.

"Directions" could be N/E/W/S?

Does that imply he hasn't already identified most of the first word as well, or is there no implication there?

6:50 AM

Ooh, could be ANSWER if we could get "middle of middle" to be AR.

No implication there.

Also, "directions" is very intentionally plural.

Middle Earth???

That would account for the capitalization.

Haha, I think that's a bit of a stretch ;-)

I don't know. A[NSWE]R seems plausible to me.

Unless "middle of Middle" actually clues Earth? In which case the second word would start with a T.

6:54 AM

Oooh.

ANSWER T[penniless fraction]I[strange shortened secretary]

@Rubio, is this a common / well-known / otherwise-more-meaningful-than-its-constituents phrase?

I'd say so :)

Alright.

Yes. The two words go together for specific meaning.

Answer Please. Would make it (6,6) but I dont have any explainations :D

Except for SE

Ooh.

Maybe?

6:59 AM

But there's no I

"I" could mean something else.

...Like the Roman numeral 1 (for A, either as an article or A1Z26)?

PLE(-bian): penniless?

"penniless fraction"? Although "penniless" for "plebian" seems a bit much.

Yeah.

Now might be a good time to remind you of Hint 0 :)

yesterday, by Gareth McCaughan

so, Rubio's cryptic clue. Obvious thoughts: perhaps "directions in the middle of Middle" = DEND or DEWD or something of the sort (DD = middle of "middle"; compass directions). Perhaps the "penniless fraction" is THIR (= THIRD without D) or PER (= PERCENT without CENT). Perhaps "his strange" is ISH or SHI. Perhaps there's a way to put these bits together that makes sense, but I haven't found one.

PER seems likely.

ANSWER PERSON?

ANSWER PERIOD?

Question Period

Question Period (French: période des questions), known officially as Oral Questions (French: questions orales) occurs each sitting day in the House of Commons of Canada. According to the House of Commons Compendium, “The primary purpose of Question Period is to seek information from the Government and to call it to account for its actions.” At the Legislative Assembly of Ontario questions raised are referred as Oral Questions. == History == The first oral question occurred during the 1st Canadian Parliament, before rules had been established providing for formal questions. According to the record...

Secretary's problem - answering questions!

Calling in (-e)A[NSWE]R(-th) + PER(-cent)+I+OD(-d), @Rubio.

7:08 AM

"problem", not "task". That's not it, but you're a big part of the way there.

Aw.

If it helps, I think middle of Middle could just as well have been center of Center. (and arguably should be)

N[EWES]T period???

hm...

I think PERIOD is right.

It's out!

Ooh!

Figured out the "meaningless letters".

7:12 AM

That was quick...

I'm some small devil or sprite,
who merged with danger.
But things were not alright.
When it did not turn off.
They said something about learning,
or at least something similar to that,
I'm trapped but also the key.

Did you get that from the note? Or did you just work that out?

Not the note, the "meaningless letters".

Mis-typed.

I barely finished reading it and you already have that bit.

It works out pretty quickly at least

@Deusovi, oh ok. You were supposed to work that out after deciphering the letter

7:15 AM

:D

The pattern is easy to see, the gibberish looks too much like english not to be

Well, I suppose it won't make that much difference

@Techidiot is on to something...

@Deusovi has the first part of the riddle right and another part, rest less so.

Yeah, wasn't sure about some of them.

I know IMP is part of it though.

Or maybe not. Who knows.

That bits right.

The 'danger' part is tricky, but once you get it the rest will follow. (Note the line after the danger part is also connected)

BACK TEN - that's a rot16 cipher.

7:19 AM

Good but doesn't actually mean that.

And maybe "IMP+[danger]" makes a new word?

Ooh.

The riddle gives a single word.

Back ten letters from the last letters perhaps?

@Deusovi read the find your wife and see what they did there... its similar...

I'll have to go AFK for a few minutes in a sec, but will be back to check.

Every tenth letter going backwards seems to be the hint to the "meaningless letters"

7:24 AM

Oh, really?

That starts AML... .

Haven't finished yet, but "Last letters of the words can move forward to be the first of the next word but reverse..."

Yeah thats correct

Oh, over the entire message? Wow, nice!

Would have been nice to have that text as text :)

Right be back soon

7:28 AM

well. going to bed but at this rate it'll be solved long before I get up - have fun y'all :)

I'm off to bed pretty soon too

lol I'm just going to school!

The algebra is going to take a long time to work out btw

15 mins ago, by Volatility

Every tenth letter going backwards seems to be the hint to the "meaningless letters"

I won't even dare to go for algebra part :D

whoops, meant "word" instead of "letter"

7:40 AM

Have left off my math brain years back :p

The algebra itself is relatively simple, what it relates to is hard.

Maybe the number of occurrences of each letter in the passage?

BG, is it clued later on?

You have to simplify the algebra to start with, then it will be more obvious to what it is

@Randal'Thor I'm not sure if I understand. But it's true, I was here and wasn't able to chat. Now I can.

@Deusovi why is your name blue?

Hm, there don't seem to be any multiplied variables or "raw" numbers.

@incesterror21 I'm a mod!

I think the lines refer to combinations of letters.

7:50 AM

Oh excuse me. How do I address a mod properly?

user61230

My Liege works.

"Your Highness" would be nice too.

Groveling is also encouraged.

:P

I will try to remember that!

7:51 AM

@BeastlyGerbil- When a letter is removed from current word, should that letter remain while reversing the string or no?

@Deusovi yes there are no 'raw' numbers. Maybe because they are less important... (thought they are really)

Let me know if you don't understand my question :D

Hmmm let me think

You have to reverse them as they are, then move the letter

(In case it wasn't clear, just talk to us as you would any other user. We're just members of the community who happen to be able to clean up things and deal with other issues. c: )

user image

7:53 AM

PNEEE; ZZZSWW; SPACE

Oooh.

Keep the numbers, but good

1P1N1E;3Z1S2W; SPACE; 4Z1W; 6x1S2W...

(Should that x in 5 be lowercase?)

Yeah. Got that.

So it should be like for the first one '1P + 1N + 3E'

After that you might get it.

Ooooooh, just got an idea for algebra.

7:55 AM

Oooh?

Praying Deusovi has figured out what you want him to

Do the numbers 7; 43; [space]; 44; 57... mean anything to any of you?

No

:P

Welp.

I'm really surprised no ones got it yet.

Try solving a few more like I showed

I also see BLANK in 25 and GAP in 12.

7:58 AM

Yep, those will be needed later

And VOID in 18.

They all indicate a space. That's just so a later stage actually makes sense

Yeah, figured that.

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