The Sphinx's Lair

2:12 AM

I forgot that people actually asked questions about puzzles on puzzling se

Sconibulus

what do you mean?

Hullo

I think Saiid is referring to the 'How to pop one out' question

@Rubio those codecracker puzzles tend to be fairly easy. I have them in my local newspaper as well, they're usually designed to have a 'starting word' that can be found without toooo much work.

@TheGreatEscaper Yes, that is indeed what I was referring to :P

3:37 AM

Hey @Deusovi!

And hey to @Alconja as well!

Drat, it's kind of hard to tell when people are actually around or not...

3:57 AM

Agreed

@TheGreatEscaper Hi. :) (and yeah, sorry, I'm often here, but not here... Usually have a chat tab open in the background on my work pc, or in this case on my phone)

No problem, I'm often the same

I assumed that the greyed out icon means tabbed out

Will

@Mithrandir What things ???

4:12 AM

And that the non-greyed out icon means present in chat

@TheGreatEscaper the level of greyness just indicates how long it has been since they have said something or entered the room

lol

Will

4:43 AM

@Mithrandir Oh, those things... right. Duh.

Rubio

5:27 AM

yeah the avatar icons go grey when you haven't said anything in like half an hour or something

hmm

does anyone else know how Deusovi got '_T _R' out of 'Horse moves right, left, faster'?

Nope

as a side note, I have a feeling that "I" in 'I do it' might be the roman numeral 1

Another side note is that I suspect the final answer has something to do with puzzling

Since the first word is 'Sphinx', and there aren't too many ways the sentence could go from there...

Probably, considering the Spinx part

lol

5:34 AM

ninja'd

yup

the _T_R must come from 'right, left, faster'

I was thinking the last word might be TOUR, but I can't prove it yet

The 'by' I'm fairly sure is just a joining word

Hmm

Sounds like

Ah, maybe right of lefT and left of Right

5:35 AM

'Sounds like' is probably a homonym indicator

or rhyming

Ahhhhhh, it's the right letter of left, and the right letter of faster

So it's actually: right, 'left, faster'

lefT, fasteR

AAH

that makes sense

Maybe one of the 'you's in clue 4 is referring to the letter U

I was thinking that's what the last one might be referring to

does 'to' rhyme with 'you'?

5:40 AM

Yes, at least in Australia

hmm

or actually, it could be FOOD, 'you are it' = you are what you eat

OO rhymes with 'you'?

it does

where does the F and D come from?

then I just need to work out the F

I(1) of 'Do it'

Ah okay

yeah

5:45 AM

it seems a bit odd to have the D at the front though... there's no indicator that we're building the word out of order

true

hmm

also that leaves us with only 'should do it' to get an F, if we worked that way

I found something

probably insignificant

there is a song called 'I do it'

the first two words are ' I feel'

I(1) of 'Feel'?

or is that too much trivia

It occurs to me that the answer is probably RAND (def: "I"), referring to how he would often post links to new puzzles before Sphinx did

hmm

Sphinx trots after Rand

"sounds like you should do it" possibly clues a homophone of "errand", and maybe "are" clues the letter R, but then there would be a lot of unused words

5:49 AM

but where do we get the letters?

ah

eheheh

I can work with this

The sentence makes sense

somewhat, at least

yeah

thought: sounds like = rhymes with, er stands for ending rhyme?, leaves us with rand?

maybe i'm just crazy

maybe end = 'n'd?

another possibility might be 'POST'?

or CHAT?

6:05 AM

Yeah

I'm not sure how we would get there though

Post seems likely

'I do it' is a definition

'sounds like' = rhyme = ending rhyme = end of 'you should do iT'?

maybe that's a stretch

Hmm

I don't really think we've solved any part of this last clue properly yet

well

'you are it' could be People, but I'm not sure how we would extract the 'p'

6:08 AM

We're currently trying to link the clue with our predicted answer

*answers

But the links are very very tenuous

I agree

I'm trying to see if you are it, interpreted as U R it, would help

so let's try going by just what we see, then

yeah

But none of our predicted answers have the letter U

I feel like trying to match it up with our predictions is a bit harmful

yeah

Everything I see:
I(1) do it, you are(U R) it, so it sounds like(rhyming, homophone?) you should do it(errand, command?)?

going to head to bed though

I'll deal with this tomorrow

6:12 AM

Night!

Sid

6:57 AM

Nope, but good try. (And once again, I'm not enough of an egomaniac to write puzzles around my own name! :-P ) I'll add a hint. — rand al'thor Nov 27 at 13:23

Nah, Rand doesn't write puzzles around himself although I wouldn't bet on it.

Rubio

7:12 AM

we were thinking VOWS might play in there

("I do" being a vow, and the whole sphinx/vow thing)

but couldn't reach it from the clues

Deusovi

9:05 AM

@Saiid Horse moves: definition

then right of "lefT, fasteR"

@Sconibulus My mistake - there is no # there, I was reading it incorrectly.

@Deusovi Hello. Often nobody is here at this time.

Deusovi

Hey! Yeah, it's 4am my time.

I should probably be asleep.

It's 11 AM here :P

So I am asleep.

I was here until midnight last night.

9:45 AM

Hello @IAmInPLS

10:34 AM

@Volatility Seems like ALLEVIATE - (def: Lighten) ALL (every) EV - E (day before going around) IAT (....something something, in tats too regularly....??)

10:51 AM

IAT appears in 'in tats too' regularly

take every third letter

In tAts Too

There you go ;-)

(btw, to the expert cruciverbalists, would the clue still be valid if I had a comma after "day"? I wasn't sure so I didn't put it in, but I want to know how far I can stretch the "ignore punctuation" principle)

Ahh, haven't seen a "regularly" clue before. And as for the comma, as far as I understand that would've been fine.

Deusovi actually used it in the first clue for his FisH crossword; that might have contributed to this one

CCCC: Stonework from a heliocentric sounding virgin (7)

Well, it's probably MASONRY, now just need to work out the wordplay :-P

Oh, hah, "virgin" = MARY, "heliocentric sounding" = around the SON

CCCC: Stoicist's response: "Trade off an energy drink to the audience!" (1'3,2,3)

The enumeration should give it away :-P