The Sphinx's Lair

12:52 PM

This is what happens when you get a question in HNQ on one site and a highest-voted answer to a question still in HNQ on another.

Maria Deleva

nice. this would probably not happen to me any time soon :)

M Oehm

1:41 PM

@MariaDeleva: When I take the first letters of the answers in the ramblings puzzle and fill in the gaps, I see "skeptic". Or maybe I just wat to see that. :)

Maria Deleva

@MOehm That is a kind of a stretch :)

M Oehm

Pity. I'm not going anywhere with the swirls and the alligator.

Maria Deleva

Perhaps you can start from the end and then return later to them - when you have figured out the final part of the puzzle? After all, you have most of the words, it is quite possible to figure it out

:)

M Oehm

1:58 PM

That's what I tried. Maybe I should fuel my brain with some coffee and a piece of cake.

Rand al'Thor

@Gareth Another question which might be in need of delete votes: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42148/…

Maria Deleva

Did you pay attention to the tags as well? :) There is a hint there :)

Rand al'Thor

Since consensus seems to be in favour of burninating the joke/humour tag, I might create another meta post like this one for cleanup of those questions.

Maria Deleva

@Randal'Thor are all of them bad?

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor wow, apparently the answer the questioner wanted was "an unfortunate cookie". That may possibly be the worst joke I have read all week, quite aside from not actually being a puzzle. Delete delete delete.

Rand al'Thor

2:10 PM

@MariaDeleva Not all of them, but most of them. And the existence of the tag encourages these non-puzzle joke questions, while those that actually are puzzles can still work without the tag.

(To be clear, my answer on meta said to keep the tag, but the top-voted answer says to get rid of it, with +12/-0 votes, which is a pretty strong consensus.)

Maria Deleva

@Randal'Thor ok. Then, bad ones will be deleted and good ones would just have the tag removed? :) That makes sense.

Rand al'Thor

@MariaDeleva Yes, so I'm planning to make a meta post to find the bad ones and get them deleted manually before the mods ask for the tag to be auto-removed from everywhere.

@GarethMcCaughan Another one that might be delete-worthy (even though it's been upvoted), and two that should possibly be closed. (Not sure about this one; it's a classic 'puzzle', even if not very hard.)

Lukas Rotter

Has anyone made any progress here? My current understanding of the pictures is "Into chamberstick soil back lazy gimli", which is... presumably not soooo accurate :P Maybe I'll recognise the quote, since I'm planning to rewatch the movies anyway soon (yes I don't read the books, I understand that you want to lynch me now :) )

Rand al'Thor

2:35 PM

@LukasRotter The fifth one looks like it might be a deer or a centaur, and 'deer' is more likely to be part of a meaningful quote. (And yes, lynch mob!! ;-) )

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor I'd close-vote them if it weren't an instant modhammer.

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor Interesting. I honestly primarily see someone sitting in a chair :D

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Oh! Yes, you're probably right. Maybe in combination with the left-pointing arrow it's supposed to be "sat"? (Given what the left-pointing arrow was used for in the previous pretzel rebus.)

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor But in the last puzzle the arrow was included inside the "sub-image". This time the back-arrow has it's own sector. Since each section in the last puzzle represented a syllable of the answer, I suspect that this time each section stands for one word (6 words seems to be a reasonable length for an epic quote). I don't know, maybe the solution is a homophone again :P

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Then maybe it's something like "from" or "back"?

What the ... ?

Sid

3:05 PM

A question- What exactly is the appropriate time to post a puzzle here?? I mean Day and Time??

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Any time you want. We've got people from all over the world on this site; someone will always be awake.

If you mean which is the busiest time of the day/week, there are Data.SE queries for that.

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor VTC the pair o' docs (definitely joke rather than puzzle). "Incorrectly" and "coolest letter of alphabet" are I think puzzles, though "incorrectly" is ancient and "coolest letter of alphabet" is just terrible.

Lukas Rotter

@Sid If I'd had to guess I'd say wednesday/thursday at 2pm UTC. Considering most people view this site at work maybe even earlier might be appropriate. But accurate data can only be gathered by queries, as mentioned by rand al'thor.

Rand al'Thor

Here's a Data.SE query to show which days of the week are busiest in terms of votes, views, and answers.

The only catch is that I'm not sure where the week starts, but I'd guess the leftmost node is Sunday.

Sid

So, that means thursday...

Gareth McCaughan

3:11 PM

My reading of the last frame of the rebus was the same as someone else's -- a portrayal of the climactic scene from "The Lord of the Rings". Mithrandir rather slapped their answer down as not providing a quotation (as indeed it didn't), but I'm not sure whether that meant individual frame-decodings were all completely off track. I initially thought the fifth frame was a giraffe or something, but the person-in-chair makes sense except that I have no idea what's up with their head.

I assume there's lots of homophonery going on.

Beastly Gerbil

Hmmm, so far I am the user who has lost the most rep this week

Rand al'Thor

@Sid According to that Data.SE query, Tuesday is the best day. But really, don't worry about it: you can get a HNQ on any day of the week (although weekends are always slower than weekdays). I usually post a question nearly every day, not just once a week.

@BeastlyGerbil A bounty, I assume?

(Remember, "this week" = "today" since it's Sunday.)

Beastly Gerbil

No someone removed their question

And I had a +2 answer on it

Oh well its only 20 rep

Rand al'Thor

A mod must have removed it - you can't self-delete questions that have upvoted answers.

Gareth McCaughan

No, wait, the last frame of the rebus can't possibly be Gollum falling into Mount Doom because the thing that would have to be Gollum appears to have three arms and three legs. Or maybe it's a stegosaurus or something, with a fin on the back. I don't understand this puzzle.

Beastly Gerbil

3:16 PM

No why mods why? You made me lose a whole 20 rep! Nooooooo.... :P

It happened just now. I actually saw my rep decrease. A horrible feeling

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil A plagiarised puzzle maybe?

That's the most common reason for question deletion AFAIK.

Beastly Gerbil

No it had been closed, and had numerous downvotes.

You may remember it, it was the question I did the 'joke' to 'humour' about. Cookie without a fortune

Gareth McCaughan

Ah. So your rep-loss is partly my and Rand's fault. Sorry!

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Oh, that one. In that case, it's my fault :-D

1 hour ago, by Rand al'Thor

@Gareth Another question which might be in need of delete votes: http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42148/what-do-you-call-a-cookie-with‌out-a-fortune

Beastly Gerbil

How could you Rand? :P

Rand al'Thor

3:19 PM

Though Deusovi cast the final delete vote (after I flagged the question), so you could always blame him :-P

Beastly Gerbil

I have a better joke:

Want to hear a word I just made up?

Plagiarism

8

Sid

@GarethMcCaughan Did you solve the riddle tree? Caterpillar was my best answer.. I don't find the puzzle now...

Gareth McCaughan

Still puzzled by it. I have the uncomfortable suspicion that I'm not going to find the answer wholly satisfactory.

(e.g., if "we cannot see them, don't hear them come" merely because "we" are trees, which would appear to be the case, rather than because "they" are genuinely invisible/inaudible/sneaky, then that feels kinda inconsistent with having "us" apparently knowing what they're doing, being irked at it, etc. But I am exceptionally finicky about this sort of thing and if it turns out that someone else isn't I can't really complain.)

Sid

3:36 PM

@MariaDeleva Am I right on that alligator part?? I have posted a comment on the answer...

Maria Deleva

@Sid no. You are far. Actually, the whole clue was misinterpreted. The final word is of 5 letters.

It would have been nice if some notifications appeared for comments on answers of a question.

Sid

4:00 PM

The complete answer to to your puzzle might be the Boston Tea Party(Simply because I saw tea and the [history] tag)

Maria Deleva

@Sid And how would the other words make sense? Like peppercorns, cattle, salt, knives....

Sid

No idea, maybe it refers to some revolutions/movements in history...

Maria Deleva

The words are all of equal importance :)

Sid

So, the history tag comes at last... Only those 2 words remain...

Maria Deleva

4:15 PM

@Sid but not the way you think :)

Maria Deleva

4:28 PM

PS. Now you should be able to write the formula of triethanolamine :) :P

It was not on purpose, I swear. :)

Sid

I don't think, we have such stuff in school.. In any case, Someone would solve your puzzle by this time tomorrow....

Maria Deleva

No ethanol groups? :)

Lukas Rotter

Would a puzzle that e.g. asks two separate questions, where in real life the second one would not be solvable without knowing the solution to the first one, be considered bad? For example: There is a chest with a lock, first question: What is the password? Inside you find a note, second question: Decrypt the note. Since interactive puzzles are not well-received here I wonder if this concept would be any better.

Rosie F

@LukasRotter Would it work posted as two separate Qs?

Lukas Rotter

@RosieF No, I wanted it to be one story question that contains multiple puzzles.

Maria Deleva

4:40 PM

Well, you can always use the password for the cipher so that knowing it is essential for decryption

And the puzzle will be self-contained, so it should be OK.

Lukas Rotter

Good idea, maybe I'll just make it so that all the solutions of the "sub-puzzles" will form a key or something for the major puzzle, which is the actual question. Thanks for your feedback.

M Oehm

So both questions are open from the beginning and solver can have a go at both, but only one of them is really solvable? It should be okay as long as the solver sees immediately that their attacks on the unsolvable puzzle don't yield anything useful.

Sid

So, you mean that one question will contain many sub-puzzles which will lead to the final puzzle??

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter That sounds like just an ordinary multi-part puzzle? Cf this puzzle where I provided the ciphertext from the start but made it clear that solving the riddle is needed to get the key for deciphering it.

M Oehm

In other words: Don't make the solver waste too much time on trying to attack the yet unsolvable part under false assumptions or with missing information.

Lukas Rotter

5:03 PM

Well, I'm not really sure at this moment, since I haven't really started with the puzzle yet. But ok, if the part is unsolvable without knowing the solution of the previous one, I will add a note which clarifies that. And thanks for the example @Randal'Thor ! Maybe something like the (beautiful) image I'm about to post? You'll need sub-puzzle 1&2 to solve sub-sub-puzzle 1, and all of them to solve the major puzzle

Actually, the two sub-puzzles in the image should be switched with sub-sub-puzzle 1, that would make more sense.

And maybe you'll only need the solution from sub-sub-puzzle 1 for the major puzzle (I think the image is actually even more confusing, sorry :D)

user189275

5:40 PM

@MariaDeleva: I suppose you have to add more examples in What is a Lonely Word to narrow down options.

Maria Deleva

@ArkaKarmakar it would be extremely difficult to add more examples.

user189275

@MariaDeleva: Okay, I feel sorry for it, but there are a lot, lot of answers curve fitting your examples.

Maria Deleva

@ArkaKarmakar what exactly? Your latest comment is on the right path, but there is a bit more to it. Why "lonely/not lonely"?

M Oehm

@LukasRotter: Are you overthinking this? At the beginning you have limited information. Each sub-puzzle reveals more information and opens up the possibility to solve othzer puzzles. You only have to take care not to lock the puzzlers out. (For which you can use a graph like the one you've drawn. Or, of course, you could ask someone to test your puzzle.)

user189275

@MariaDeleva: You know, there can be lot of intrepretations. Right now I can tell Lonely because it doesn't pairs up with other. Am I missing any more part ?

Maria Deleva

5:45 PM

@ArkaKarmakar after it is solved I would explain why it is difficult, but right now I don't want to spoil it. How exactly do not lonely words "pair up"? :)

Or lonely ones don't?

user189275

@MariaDeleva: Yeah, obviously don't give hints. I was just asking how far left to the answer.

Maria Deleva

Not much. You are basically there. :) Just need justification.

user189275

@MariaDeleva BTW, Civil could be civilian, Whole could be wholesome, big could be bigger (: - ) ), so I think I am missing something.

Maria Deleva

Or misinterpreting it

user189275

There might some instance of group hidden in non lonely words, Friendly, Handsome , but my vocabulary is epsilon, so I can't progress in that direction

Rosie F

5:51 PM

Rats. Thought I was on to something there, but sHIny and clOwN are Lonely Words, so my idea was wrong.

user189275

But intution regarding TM puzzles makes me think that that path comes to dead end.

M Oehm

@ArkaKarmakar: Why not post your idea as answer and see what transpires?

user189275

@MOehm: I know. -5 or more. :-)

user189275

(My answer votes)

Maria Deleva

Well, there is a ridiculous answer with +10.

user189275

5:54 PM

@MariaDeleva: There's something mysterious with PSE voting and viewing system. Some beautiful puzzles, mostly of Alconja and BMyguest, get low votes and views compared to insta-thought puzzles.

Deusovi

@ArkaKarmakar Yeah, agreed. Those two are my favorite puzzle crafters on the site, but they regularly lose out to crappy riddles.

Maria Deleva

@ArkaKarmakar believe me, this one took me days of staring at words and researching

I even commented on chat when I was at the stage where I could find only 1(one) word fitting my pattern. :) So coming up with 10 is actually an achievement of sorts.

user189275

@Deusovi : GentlePurpleRain's puzzles (mostly riddles) are well thought and well planned too, but they are usually very easy to solve.

Deusovi

@ArkaKarmakar True!

M Oehm

@ArkaKarmakar: Oh, you optimist! When you can back up your idea with examples and the reasoning isn't too vague you should not get any downvotes. These Word[tm] puzzles usually are solved in an aha moment.

user189275

5:58 PM

@Deusovi It's kinda ridiculous that the beaufiul "Hearken now and listen close" was solved around one hour, and the ones involving Caps and Italics (the metariddle), even less than a hour ! But the riddles are beautiful, obviously.

Deusovi

@ArkaKarmakar Hey, puzzlers work fast. Doesn't make the riddle itself any worse - quality and difficulty are completely uncorrelated.

user189275

@Deusovi: Yeah, the riddles are amazing, but somehow a bit easy. But obviously of high calibre.

user189275

The "You are prepared .... " (Alconja Door) tops both, and it's a great piece of art.

user189275

The word machine but somehow got fewer votes+views than it deserves.

Deusovi

Agreed - I thought the word machine was brilliant too.

user189275

6:02 PM

@Deusovi: Was your username different before ? (What's the meaning of "Also, in case you're curious - my username is an anagram of "devious" ? " now ? )

Deusovi

No, it wasn't different. It means that my username is an anagram of "devious".

I don't understand what you're asking.

user189275

Oh I am probably missing something. I thought username was same as what others can see.

Deusovi

...It is, though?

"DEUSOVI" is an anagram of "DEVIOUS".

user189275

Yes. Red herring ?

Deusovi

...What? No. "DEUSOVI" is my username. It is an anagram of "DEVIOUS". That is what I said in my profile.

Maria Deleva

6:05 PM

? how is that a red herring - it straightforward says that it is an anagram.

Beastly Gerbil

@ArkaKarmakarm you are confusing me

Puzzling Meta

1

Q: Examples in What is a Word™? questions

I'm sure we all know of the latest puzzle craze; the What is a Word/Phrase™ series started by JLee with a special brand of Phrase™ or Word™ which has been revived from the embers mainly thanks to the efforts of Engineer Toast. I genuinely love these puzzles, and have even participated myself. H...

discussion

Beastly Gerbil

^Changed 'Examples' to 'Guidelines'^

Maria Deleva

well, if I add more examples in my puzzle (even if I do happen to find some words that are not too much of a stretch), it would only become more confusing.

M Oehm

I don't think that it is easy to come up with a set of guidelines for these puzzles that works for all of them. They are too different.

Beastly Gerbil

6:12 PM

0

A: Guidelines in What is a Word™? questions

My Suggested Guidelines There should be at least $10$ examples The 'rule' shouldn't be in any way vulgar The 'rule' shouldn't be solvable by just looking at the words

My take on the guidelines

Maria Deleva

6:30 PM

I added one more pair of words - not sure it would be of much help

Mithrandir

7:28 PM

>.< So close to finishing diamond 2...

Maria Deleva

@Mithrandir waiting for it :)

Mithrandir

@MariaDeleva Problem is, Sci keeps pushing off the part that he said he would help me with...

Maria Deleva

I will wait as long as it takes :)

Lukas Rotter

I'm really impressed by the amount of effort Matsmath put into his latest (deleted) puzzle, and all that for just a joke that lasted ~5 minutes :P

Deusovi

I wouldn't call it a puzzle.

Mithrandir

7:34 PM

Someone solved The pretzel rebus 2.

Maria Deleva

I am currently looking at it - would have never figured it out :)

Mithrandir

:P

Well, posting that brought the number of puzzles that I'm supposed to post down from 3 to two.

The other two: 'A mysterious email' and 'Clue Thirteen - A roomful of puzzles'

(warning: titles may be subject to change.)

Lukas Rotter

Wow, I was so far off :P I thought the last picture was Gimli enjoying a nice meal... And, for some reason, I didn't even recognize that pic #2 was supposed to be a hole, I thought it was a weird chamberstick... These pretzel puzzles always make me feel stupid because of how obvious the solution seems :P

Maria Deleva

:) ok more interesting puzzles coming

about the hole - I thought it was antlers

Mithrandir

@LukasRotter That's the second pretzel puzzle so far - how can they 'always' make you feel stupid? :P

Lukas Rotter

7:42 PM

Let me rephrase: "Every time the correct solution was posted to a pretzel puzzle so far, it has made me feel stupid for around 42 seconds because of how obvious the solution seems." :P

Mithrandir

I would make more but I ate all of the pretzels.

Gareth McCaughan

I had all sorts of ideas about pic #2, but none of them was "a hole". (One of them was that it might be a chasm, ditch, etc., though.)

Mithrandir

@GarethMcCaughan That's close...

Gareth McCaughan

Yeah, but not close to being close enough.

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi Are you sure it's not a puzzle? Ping ping @Matsmath - was this intended to be a serious puzzle or just a joke/parody with no real solution?

Mithrandir

7:57 PM

Now I'm trying to figure out how I could combine pretzels with a Clue with a diamond-like puzzle...

M Oehm

I think it was just someone venting their frustration about getting downvoted on a not-so-serious answer to the Lonely-Word puzzle while at the same time Dan Russell got 10 upvotes for his strict application of Occam's razor.

@Mithrandir: I think you are overestimating the value of pretzel sticks as a means of artistic expression.

Mithrandir

@MOehm I like pretzels. They make good snacks.

And rebuses.

Matsmath

8:12 PM

Hello, fellow puzzlers.

Thank you for pinging.

I am afraid, it is somewhat too late, because I have just brought this issue up in meta.

Let's continue the discussion about that there.

Ahh, I meand that...

Beastly Gerbil

Page not found

Mithrandir

@BeastlyGerbil It was deleted

Lukas Rotter

It's really strange that you apparently found a rule that fits almost the same words as lonely words... without posting the correct answer to the original question.

Mithrandir

1

Q: What makes a post a joke?

My carefully designed puzzle What is a Xilly word? with a tons of clues, historical as well as contemporary references, (and of course, red herrings) was removed at the moderator's discretion (what I am no way challenging at all: they are here to make these kind of decisions). The comment was: ...

discussion support

Lukas Rotter

Or maybe that was just a red herring/hint

Puzzling Meta

8:20 PM

1

Q: What makes a post a joke?

My carefully designed puzzle What is a Xilly word? with a tons of clues, historical as well as contemporary references, (and of course, red herrings) was removed at the moderator's discretion (what I am no way challenging at all: they are here to make these kind of decisions). The comment was: ...

discussion support

Rand al'Thor

One more close-vote needed on this question ...

Beastly Gerbil

8:35 PM

@Matsmath, added my opinion: I think it should be reopened

Gareth McCaughan

I am waiting to see whether the "Xilly Word" puzzle is actually a puzzle with a satisfactory answer in its own right, or whether it's just mean-spirited mockery of the other puzzle. If the latter, it should be downvoted into oblivion, closed, deleted, and then deleted again. If the former, well, fair enough, I guess, but I warmly endorse a community norm of jumping hard on things that look like mean-spirited mockery and suggest that [...continues

... maybe Matsmath could have made it clearer that the "Xilly Word" puzzle is not just mean-spirited mockery. Assuming it isn't.

Beastly Gerbil

I think we can assume it isn't

Rand al'Thor

8:51 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Agreed, a little disclaimer at the top might have been nice. But maybe Matsmath didn't realise how it was going to come across.

Gareth McCaughan

It comes across that way so strongly to me that even a fervent declaration from Matsmath that that isn't intended would leave me in a little doubt.

Rand al'Thor

10:23 PM