The Sphinx's Lair

Q: What could we do about [cryptography]?

12:11 AM

Q: 🐍 In the Loop 🐍

Follow the ouroboros down valleys and over mountains. Is it even going anywhere? Interactive Penpa+ version

bobble

12:47 AM

status-completed

The cryptography tag has a clear tag wiki excerpt: A puzzle concerning techniques for secure communication in the presence of (hostile) third parties. Do NOT use this for simple "crack the code" problems; use [cipher] instead. (I'm the one who added that last sentence, but the edit history show...

discussion tags

AncientSwordRage

Hint updated with mod magic

1:29 AM

What's "straight" mean

the straight definition I assume

1:56 AM

So two defs, 1 straight and 1 cryptic(/unusual)? Hmm...

@bobble also, nice

1 hour later…

3:19 AM

@Ankoganit Re: the hint, I've also been wondering why the space between let and down

3 hours later…

Q: Can you tile a 25 x 25 square with a mixture of 2 x 2 squares and 3 x 3 squares?

5:54 AM

Can you tile a $25 \times 25$ square (no overlaps, no gaps) with a mixture of $2 \times 2$ squares and $3 \times 3$ squares? This puzzle is by David A. Klarner.

mathematics geometry tiling

2 hours later…

7:32 AM

Nov 11, 2021 at 10:36, by Rand al'Thor

Petrichor?

^ dictionary.com's word of the day!

speaking of favourite words, i've always been a fan of "hmm"

it's very versatile, can mean totally different things depending on intonation, and exists in every language i know in pretty much the same form even though that form breaks the rules of how words can be formed in all of them

like look me in the eye and tell me "hmm?", "hmm!" and "hmm..." are not three different words

Mithical

@Jafe They are not different words. They are the same word, that adopts different meanings based on the inflection. Take the word "what" as an example. It can replace the first two examples that you've brought here, with "What?" as a question and "What!" as an exclamation having two different meanings. (In theory, "Wha(t)...." could also replace the third usage of "hmm" mentioned above.)

8:20 AM

finds a YouTube video of Jafe so he can look him in the eye "Hmm?", "hmm!", and "hmm…" are not three different words.

no no you gotta book the flight to australia and do it in person

1 hour later…

9:33 AM

@oAlt “Untenanted” would be a left field interpretation of a let down. I reckon we’re looking at ???LESS with the unknown three being a homophone of a gallery.

let down

@msh210 … or perhaps when a feather on a shuttlecock causes a point to be replayed? TIL rule 14.2.2 of badminton: “[It shall be a ‘let’, if] during play, the shuttle disintegrates and the base completely separates from the rest of the shuttle;“

yours is a nice find, but I doubt that either of our suggestions is relevant to the C4

3 hours later…

12:25 PM

"It's a let down" could be a down-hairdo, maybe. Some seven-letter ones are BLOWOUT and RATTAIL, and arguably CHIGNON and RINGLET. "Without" matches the WOUT or WO part of BLOWOUT, but I don't see any other wordplay for any of them.

Maybe "a let down" could be a down in American football which is let, somehow? (I don't know enough about American football to know if there is such a thing, but a Web search seems to imply that there is not.)

12:40 PM

i doubt it requires very deep research since ASR mentioned he expected it to be solved after just over 9 hours... then again, i have absolutely nothin'

@msh210 the only thing I can think of that sort of fits would be the fifth down game, where an officiating mistake gave colorado an extra down that they shouldn't have had

and then even looking past the fact that asr would be aware of that bit of american sports trivia and the fact that it doesn't really fit, I can't think of any way that would resolve to a 7-letter solution

@juicifer right

interesting bit of history, though

Stiv

I've been thinking more along the lines of DESCENT or PLUMMET (which nicely contains MET at the end), but can't tie anything together in totality.

well I can hear without a plum, so I think you've got it

12:56 PM

Does the Sin King hear without an art gallery?

1:12 PM

If "without" means just "outside of" and not "immediately outside of", then "I hear without art gallery" can mean any outdoor sculpture of an ear, most of which are indeed letdowns to this philistine.

Again, none of these ideas seems likely at all.

hm, SINKING = it's a let down (arguably), and sounds like "sin King" = without (in Spanish) an art gallery. The problems with this solution, too, are manifold.

1:29 PM

a down payment on a lease could be an ADVANCE, and this guy doesn't appear to own an art gallery

@juicifer A down payment on a lease can also be EARNEST, maybe, and this guy doesn't seem to own an art gallery, either.

1:45 PM

@Stiv If there's an art gallery out there named Sen then something without art gallery could be de-Senned... never mind

maybe something immediately outside of the Louvre (but on dry land) can be said to be de-Seined

(that may actually be the most likely suggestion so far, if I may say so, and it's exceedingly unlikely)

1:59 PM

🍿

Same

personally I wouldn't consider popcorn to be a letdown but to each their own ig

I'm interested to see what the answer's gonna be and what the intended art gallery is

Cuz it's said to have been mentioned early on

GentlePurpleRain

3:12 PM

Maybe the definition is "it's 'A', let down", as in, we're somehow "letting down" A to make it something else? #graspingatstraws

Or, similarly, "it's a let, down" -- a "let" could be a lease, or a redo in tennis/badminton, or a hindrance/obstruction, and "down" refers to its state somehow...?

Last part reduced if in a let-down (6)

2 hours later…

Q: Number relations in a number table

5:06 PM

Please find x. Choices are 9, 10,11, 12, 13. $$ \begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|} \hline 22& 22 & 23 & 24 \\ \hline 22 & 32& 41& 52\\ \hline 23 & 41 & 50 & 61\\ \hline x & 17 & 26& 37 \\ \hline \end{array} $$ I have tried so many operations on these numbers with many various arrangements.

formation-of-numbers

Q: A Difficult Colombian Sudoku?

5:29 PM

This Colombian Sudoku is by Xavier Castillo. Usual Sudoku rules apply. Additionally, digits on each of the two diagonal must all be different. The dots outside the board above indicate how many cells in the corresponding column or row of that board contain precisely the same digit as is to be fou...

sudoku

2 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

7:42 PM

@oAlt urgh I mean them exactly the same instead of two separate things...

C4: final hint — The 'let down' in question is a 'physical' kind of let-down.

Q: Finding the Minimum-Step Path from (x,y) to (0, 0) with a Cumulative Sum of P

Imagine a 2D plane, where each point represents a position. Your mission is to trace a path from the origin (0,0) to an end point (x,y) following a set of specific rules. Each step in the path can be one of four types: Up: Move one unit upwards. Down: Move one unit downwards. Left: Move one unit ...

mathematics grid-deduction algorithm logic-grid

8:45 PM

@AncientSwordRage To pay out rope? Rappel? Abseil? Debark? Unload?

AncientSwordRage

@DanielS none of those, not even close

… on an unrelated note, I once had a falling out with a friend who wanted to borrow a Pixar DVD, swallow some beer, go for a jog with me and then have me buy pudding for them. You can probably guess what I said.

@DanielS probably something along the lines of "yeah those all sound like a lot of fun, let's go!"

9:35 PM

@juicifer Nah, I said “Never gonna give you ‘Up’; never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and dessert you”

10:25 PM

hahah

1 hour later…