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dcfyj
dcfyj
5:00 PM
I don't know the pigpen cipher offhand, so no on my part. :P Although I see two ways of reading that particular tidbit
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
@dcfyj you can use the wikipedia page but swap it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher
 
Sid
Sid
Big feet?
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
BigFoot?
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
Big Foot yes
 
Sid
Sid
I took the plural...
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
5:03 PM
See, I would've been mean there and made it be legible as you're walking in rather than out :P
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
@Rubio +1 well done, do you mind if I accept @Deusovi's when he edits instead? He did most of the hard work
 
Rubio
Rubio
So... is that the end of the line?
I don't mind; after the first bit it was a group effort, but he got through the circles first.
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
Yep. You got the statue and the code
 
Sid
Sid
@Rubio +1 from me as well, mostly because of the 30240 permutations you had to go through...
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
Well I am glad it took a day to solve (although it would have been half a day if I hadn't made an error)
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
5:06 PM
What I believe to be the hard part is solved on mine, @Sconibulus is practically at the end
 
Sid
Sid
@BeastlyGerbil you could have extended the puzzle one or two step more.... I was enjoying myself.. :P
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
@Sid I was running out of time. I did consider adding another step, maybe another circle but with a different cipher, but figured it would take too long to make.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
And yet that's where I got stuck after having a pretty good idea through the first bit
 
Rubio
Rubio
Yeah I was sure there'd be something we had to do with the missing tiles in the circles. I was surprised there wasn't. But in any event, that was a fun one!
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
@Sconibulus Don't over think it, I may add the last tag that I purposefully omitted if it doesn't get solved within a day or two
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
5:12 PM
@Rubio the missing tiles where supposed to be hidden in the doors bit. If you look at the first statue and the text at the begining it says, 'you rotate the circles into position' and stuff like that.
 
Rubio
Rubio
Yeah I noticed. Hehe
There was also a typo in one of the texts, btw. I think "you" instead of "your". I notice crap like that, not that you can really do anything about it now hehe
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
I used a crap text adder which only allowed a certain amount of characters. I probably got to 'you' and forgot to add 'r' at the start of the next bit
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Heh. @BeastlyGerbil and I both have something in common: We make mistakes in our imgur mazes. :P
Speaking of which, @BeastlyGerbil, any luck on my puzzle?
 
Sid
Sid
5:38 PM
Arrgh.... That GPR puzzle has not even let me eat properly tonight. It has to be something simple,so as to miss me...
 
lois6b
lois6b
@IAmInPLS i saw this post, and remaind me of you, who is this character? 9gag.com/gag/anyQWr5
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
 
GentlePurpleRain
GentlePurpleRain
@Sid If it helps, none of your posted solutions are even close to correct... :P
 
lois6b
lois6b
ohhh thanks
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
aww, damn, I had one overlapping one I think
 
Sid
Sid
5:46 PM
@GentlePurpleRain Yeah, figured...
I don't even understand how to get to the words that you have prepared.... There isn't much especially without the cryptic clues tag..
@Mithrandir Was the "star" correct? I can't find the question now..
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Sid I think so. They haven't said anything or accepted it...
 
user230888
6:24 PM
@LukasRotter Somehow, very little, with fragmented pieces of encapsulated "knowledge". But why you're asking ?
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
@tpk Wait... What OS are you using?
 
user230888
@LukasRotter Win 8.1 in Laptop, and Win 7 in PC.
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
ew, 8
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
Nevermind then, I was confusing you with someone else.
sry :(
 
user230888
@LukasRotter Okay, but what was the matter ?
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
6:35 PM
@tpk Well, let's just say that if you really didn't lie I don't think you're MBB anymore.
 
user230888
@LukasRotter Why (not) ?
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
I honestly have no knowledge about ICC profiles, but the picture in MBB's about me section contains metadata: The copyright of the ICC profile is "1999 Adobe Systems Incorporated" and the primary platform of it is "Apple Computer Inc.". Sure, I'm aware that you don't necessarily have to be on a mac and use photoshop to achieve this, but I'd say the chances are rather high :P
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Morning everyone!
Or whatever time of day it is for you.
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
'lo
Looks like a fair amount of the puzzles have been solved already :P
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Yeah, Puzzling users are fast!
(It probably helped that I was so excited, I started solving BeastyGerbil's puzzle myself :P )
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
6:48 PM
Mine is surprisingly withstanding scrutiny
I thought for sure once the cipher was broken that people would get the solution very quickly
 
Matt
Matt
I spent too much of the morning looking at the unfinished waltz
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
haha
 
Matt
Matt
I tried to "square things away" many different ways
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
7:07 PM
My puzzle from yesterday is still not solved, though...
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
The community metapuzzle has been posted!
0
Q: Community Metapuzzle - The Broken Time Machine

Deusovi(This is the community metapuzzle, discussed in this meta thread. It requires answers from nine other puzzles linked below.) You find a mysterious device sitting on the ground. It's labelled in a language you don't recognize and doesn't seem to be like anything you've ever seen before. Picking i...

wordplay metapuzzles
 
Matt
Matt
7:18 PM
so many puzzles
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Matt That is the point of the site, no? :P
 
Matt
Matt
is it? I hadn't noticed
one of the theories I had about the waltz and "square it away" is that the staves represent binary
and the highlighted lines and spaces are 1s
but without using ledger lines, we're left with 9 bits
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Woah o_o
 
Matt
Matt
interestingly, the highlighting the 4 center-most measures (from the 3rd and 4th lines) have the only duplicate values
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Almost all of the Metpuzzle puzzles were on the HNQ
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
7:23 PM
@Mithrandir Really? nifty!
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Cool!
I bet we're annoying the other sites :P
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
That's a plus.
:P
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
I wonder if people still accidentally click on a Puzzling question thinking it is a workplace one... If so, we should make our titles ambiguous to attract more traffic :P
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
"Want to murder coworker who sings too loud; please advise"
2
 
Matt
Matt
oh wait, I lied. bar 1 matches bar 19
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
7:26 PM
"Boss plotting to kidnap family - stop him and lose my job?"
2
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Deusovi I challenge you to make a puzzle and title it that.
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
There are so many possibilities if we want to imitate Workplace.
@Mithrandir I'm tempted...
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
I'll even look at it and try to solve it :P
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Huh, it seems like after I posted my metapuzzle, everything on the site stopped. :P
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
7:46 PM
I have a guess as to the final answer, but there are probably 53 reasons why I'm wrong
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
only 53?
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
As to my final answer? Ooh, I'm curious.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
oh, wait, I think I missed the underscores
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
What did you think the answer was?
I'm not going to confirm or deny, of course. Just curious.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
something relating to iodization, didn't have an exact word
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
7:49 PM
I have a feeling the answer will relate to the site.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
because it would have been incredibly useful in the framing story, and it matched what I thought the simplest solution was given what information we currently have
(If you could make water potable in ancient times, you've solved some major problems)
 
GentlePurpleRain
GentlePurpleRain
@LukasRotter You should have seen how many views I got on You've Probably Seen Me Naked after it hit the HNQ. Got accused of being clickbait. :)
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
@Sconibulus Easy enough, boil it :P
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
@GentlePurpleRain 28 people upvoted "-1 for clickbait" but you only got 3 actual downvotes. :P
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
boiling is a lot of energy :)
My current guess is still (IO|OI).(I|O).(I|O).*
wait, no, I mismathed, two dots in the second zone
eh, whatever
it's probably wrong
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
8:11 PM
@Deusovi since you posted your broken time machine, time seems to have stopped on puzzling. Maybe it was more faulty than you thought :P
3
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Yeah, everything seems to have slowed down - even here!
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
People must be busy trying to solve the meta and its components
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
I think I'm out of brain for the day
incidentally, I think the metapuzzle went up around the time the chess game started
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Chess game?
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
Its the world chess finals
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
8:21 PM
Oh, cool!
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
Oh, Deusovi, would you mind checking my CCCC work? I think I cryptic'd ok, but I'm not certain
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Oh, what's the clue?
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
@Rubio already got it, but it was: A western study area featuring waterfowl increases rapidly (8)
20 hours ago, by Rubio
CCCC: bored sounding music-maker with notable speaker's introduction (8) — correction
that's the currently live one
I mostly wanted to check my rule understanding in case I need to make another one in the future
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Cool, what's the intended solution?
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
Balloons
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
8:25 PM
waterfowl being loons?
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
"LOON" inside "SLAB" reversed?
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
@BeastlyGerbil yeah
 
Beastly Gerbil
Beastly Gerbil
seems fine
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
I don't quite get the SLAB part. Study area?
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
Where's the definition?
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
8:27 PM
Increases rapidly
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
Loons added to Lab reversed
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
Ah, ballooning as in the verb not the object
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Ah, alright. Seems good to me. Clever use of plural ambiguity!
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
I wasn't certain Lab reversing like that was legal
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Yeah, it's legal.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
8:29 PM
it could in theory be seen as a double use of western
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
How so?
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
well, lab isn't exactly a word on its own, right? It's a shortening of laboratory
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Eh, I'd say it's fine to use "lab" by itself.
I'd use "with" instead of "featuring", but "featuring" works perfectly fine.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
cool, thanks
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
wow indeed, I want to reject but I don't even know where to begin with it...
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
8:37 PM
Wait, reject? Really?
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
I thought edits completely changing the post are not allowed.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
It doesn't completely change it, it makes some of the underlying assumptions explicit
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
@Deusovi It makes for a lovely answer, but it seems a little excessive
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
Although it makes probably more than necessary explicit, and could possibly read as condescending, so I'm leaning towards clicking skip
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
Turns Gareth's answer into the editors
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
8:39 PM
Well, it did actually change the R-decoding bit
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
He pretty much wrote his own answer and wrote his own sentences rather than making edits to Gareth's ... I don't think it's a valid edit, but ok.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
O_o Clearly conflicts with authors intent...
I like Clue Fourteen...
 
Rubio
Rubio
I'd just leave it for Gareth to decide on
he's more than capable of accepting it if he likes it ;)
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Hm. I probably shouldn't've approved it then.
@GarethMcCaughan, feel free to rollback.
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
@Deusovi what the hell?
(sorry, I came here to say that and I see there's already been some discussion)
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
8:45 PM
Sorry. D: I'm not sure what I was thinking
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
yeah, that was well out of order and I hereby request that you not approve such edits again :-).
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
Like I said, it makes for a lovely answer but it completely turns the answer into the editor's rather than Gareths
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
I will be happy to edit my answer to make it clearer but when someone completely rewrites an answer and gives a justification including snide remarks like "this is puzzling.SE not chess.SE" that's not really on.
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
I didn't see that as snide, but I'm pretty bad at detecting those kinds of things. Once again, I'm really sorry - I should've left it to you.
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
Wow, I didn't catch this line "But here I could not find the underlying pattern by myself. However, M Oehm, who is so much smarter than I am, observes in comments that:"
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
8:47 PM
The "is so much smarter" comment was mine
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Wasn't that in the original? I didn't notice it being added.
 
Rubio
Rubio
@dcfyj That's where I stopped reading
And yeah, that was added.
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
but the "But here I could not find the underlying pattern by myself" was Ralph's
(I repeat, the "so much smarter" bit was in fact mine)
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
ah ok, I noticed it was Italicized too
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
yeah, the italics were also mine
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
8:50 PM
I don't see that chess.se comment
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
is the way rollback works that clicking "rollback" on revision 7 rolls back TO revision 7, as opposed to rolling back THE CHANGES MADE IN revision 7? I assume so since the latest revision doesn't have a "rollback" button on it, but I am reluctant to find out by doing something dangerous :-)
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
It's in the edit history.
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
the comment is not in the answer but in the edit-history comment
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
@GarethMcCaughan Yeah, that's how it works.
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
er, as Deusovi just said
@Deusovi thanks
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
8:51 PM
I know that, I meant I don't see it in the edit history (I meant comment as in a statement, not comment as in a piece of text below an answer/question)
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
incidentally, Ralph's edit comment also claimed to have fixed many "errors and ambiguities". I didn't notice any fixing of errors in his edit; if anyone here noticed mistakes in what I wrote, now would be a good time to tell me.
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
Oh, never mind, just found it
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
The edit comment is: "Fixed many semantic errors and ambiguities, e.g. "S for White, s for Black" or even "S for W, s for B" which can be quite cryptic for non-chess players, included prerequisite information (again, this is puzzling.SE, not chess.SE), improved sentence flow, added a note about the form of the cipher"
 
dcfyj
dcfyj
I didn't see it was in the edit description
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
ah. that's what Deusovi and I were trying to say, but obviously not clearly enough :-)
 
Rubio
Rubio
8:53 PM
Pretty much none of the dreck he added was actually needed, and most of it made it feel like he was making Gareth into a grade-school lecturer by proxy
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
@Rubio thank you for articulating much of what I found so horrible about his edit
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Yeah, sorry - I can't interpret tone at all. I thought it was innocently trying to help. D:
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
I was about to ask whether anyone here thinks the explanation about what algebraic notation is is needed -- I can certainly do it but it would never have occurred to me that it was necessary.
I'll take Rubio's remark as a vote against :-)
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
It did seem like the editor was trying to help, but it also seemed like the editor wasn't entirely humble
It could maybe use a sentence, definitely not a paragraph
 
Rubio
Rubio
I think anyone curious enough about a chess-based puzzle to read the solution, knows the notation. That's not particularly arcane knowledge. I wouldn't bother, personally, or at most a brief sentence with a relevant link.
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
9:01 PM
Which brings us back to my suggestion: Make a link out of every word you type in an answer. Just in case someone doesn't know what "rook" means in context of a chess puzzle, since it could also be the bird.
 
Rubio
Rubio
Sounds good. ;)
Actually it would be horribly trivial to find the first unique instance of every word in a post, check if that word is in en.wikipedia.com, and replace it with a link if it is.
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
@Rubio Could you clarify what you mean by "good"? "morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious" or "satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree"? :P
 
Rubio
Rubio
Lol.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
It's clearly "Righteous" as nobody could consider it "Satisfactory"
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
@Sconibulus Depends on your definition of "Satisfactory" :P
 
GentlePurpleRain
GentlePurpleRain
9:21 PM
@Rubio Except for words with more than one definition, like rook, mentioned above.
Not to mention parsing different tenses, plurals, etc., to find the base word to link to.
 
Rubio
Rubio
I'd have no problem with it sending you to the disambiguation page. Hehee
 
Gareth McCaughan
Gareth McCaughan
ok, I've done my own hopefully-clarifying edit on the chess cipher answer. It makes somewhat less attempt at completeness than Ralph's :-).
 
Rubio
Rubio
We're talking about a completely horrible idea to begin with. I'm not worried about it not being exactly correct. :)
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Someone with a diamond might want to edit Alconja's pinned message up there. It should say post, not pose.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
I think pose is fine there?
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
9:28 PM
It threw me.
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
Depends on your definition of pose :)
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
It would be clearer, IMO, to say post...
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Yeah, "pose" works. As in "pose a question", not as in "pose for the camera". I think it's fine.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
raises hands I'm outvoted.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Mithrandir I've accepted such challenges before ...
27
Q: There are at least three Kevins on Puzzling. I plan to trap them in my labyrinth

rand al'thorNote: please do not edit the title! It originates in a challenge in Stack Overflow chat. I have rounded up all ten (currently) of the Puzzling SE users named Kevin and trapped them in my labyrinth. The only way out is across a narrow bridge which can bear the weight of at most two Kevins at a ti...

strategy story
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
9:34 PM
I wonder what happened to all the @Kevins
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Deusovi, continuing the metapuzzle conversation from the other room (no point in keeping this private): it looks like the main challenges are to work out what you mean by those operations on the right and to work out how to use the 21 and 36.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
There was a Diamond Kevin?
 
Lukas Rotter
Lukas Rotter
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Still a diamond on SFF.
We don't trap each other in labyrinths over there :-P
lightbulb I've just had an idea for the metapuzzle, but will need to see more of the individual answers before I can tell whether or not it could work.
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
@Randal'Thor Those are two of the pieces, yes. There are two more pieces to it. One of them is what to do with the answers.
@Randal'Thor What? What kind of self-respecting website doesn't have its users trap each other in labyrinths?
@Randal'Thor Ooh, interesting! I'm excited.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
9:41 PM
@Deusovi I suspect that will tie in to the operations. After all, there are two sets of five arrow-shaped boxes each taking a pair of inputs, and two sets of five binary operations. If all that is a coincidence, I'll eat my Winter Bash hat rack.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
...oh my brain just saw those as AND gates
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Sconibulus Check the comments.
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
Look at- yeah, that.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
yep, I'm dumb
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@GentlePurpleRain's puzzle looks interesting too.
The ninth answer must be something to do with "fancier".
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
9:52 PM
I thought that, but I also thought of something like 'coop'
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Hmm ... how do you get an alcoholic's take on a popular cocktail if cocktails by definition contain alcohol?
 
Rubio
Rubio
"usual" ?
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Blimey, there are a lot of them.
Interesting: there are nine constituent puzzles in the metapuzzle, and also nine clues in GPR's one. Has @GentlePurpleRain gone full meta on us?
 
GentlePurpleRain
GentlePurpleRain
@Randal'Thor I think you're slightly misinterpreted what the term "alcoholic" is usually used for. Many of us are so used to Alcoholics Anonymous that we assume an alcoholic is an addict who no longer drinks.
@Randal'Thor I wish! But alas, no.
 
Deusovi
Deusovi
@Randal'Thor Aw, that would've been hilarious if I'd just given everyone the same answer.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
10:09 PM
@GentlePurpleRain Another list of nine that came to mind was the planets of the solar system (yes, counting Pluto). But that doesn't seem to fit either.
Then there's the Fellowship of the Ring, but that can't be it.
 
GentlePurpleRain
GentlePurpleRain
@Randal'Thor You're not giving enough weight to the wordplay tag.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
"Lighting of the candle at both ends" - CE?
 
GentlePurpleRain
GentlePurpleRain
CE? Don't understand.
Darn it! Going AFK for a while, I'm sure the meta will be solved by the time I'm back... :(
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@GentlePurpleRain Never mind then.
 
Sconibulus
Sconibulus
One of the meta puzzles isn't posted yet, right?
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
10:18 PM
Yes, @humn's is still to appear.
Four solved, four posted but unsolved, one still unposted.
 
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