The Sphinx's Lair

6:20 AM

> Many Minesweeper games, including the one that ships with Windows, do not allow the first square you click to be a mine.

And all I am thinking is obviously I had a buggy game - I have clicked several times on a mine first - I guess I was even more unlucky than I originally thought.

Beastly Gerbil

6:38 AM

Well my contradicting word has turned out to be a contradictory puzzle....

Maria Deleva

@BeastlyGerbil I have no idea why it was downvoted that much. But then again I don't really understand how downvotes work here

I have prepared a 13-letter word :)

Still wondering whether to post it or to change some clues

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva 13-letter word?

Maria Deleva

Similar to the 9-letter and 10-letter words I already posted and to a lot of other puzzles of this type here :)

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva Oh okay

Sounds fun :)

Maria Deleva

6:54 AM

I think I am ready :) I will post it

Ankoganit

I want to make a wrap-up post on one of my puzzles but can't stop procrastinating :(

Maria Deleva

Ah, it doesn't allow me to submit it :)

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva Why?

Maria Deleva

I have no idea - yesterday I submitted a shorter puzzle.

Ankoganit

Weird...make sure you're not missing anything like the title or tags or anything

Maria Deleva

7:02 AM

I have the title, tags...

But it says "the question body"

I even checked all the punctuation

And added a sentence in the beginning

Ankoganit

2

Q: What four-letter word can have ER or EST added to the end to completely change its meaning?

$\vphantom{why are you reading this?}$

@MariaDeleva If SE can allow this, why not yours?

Trying adding html comments or phantom texts like that one

Maria Deleva

OK, I will try adding the same line :)

It worked

strange

Ankoganit

Huh

Maria Deleva

And now I removed the phantom text in an edit :)

phantom edit :)

Ankoganit

Hahaha nobody will ever know

(unless they read this chat transcript)

Maria Deleva

7:07 AM

Only someone who reads here :)

I think I should thank @Deusovi once again

And you, of course :)

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva no problem

:)

Maria Deleva

7:25 AM

Ah, I got 3 downvotes. I really don't understand downvotes here

Beastly Gerbil

8:14 AM

What ever happened to post a comment to why you down voted people?

Sid

@MariaDeleva Don't accept the answer too soon. I have noticed that if the answer is not accepted for some time, the upvotes are more(Probably because some people have the false hope of something else being the answer)..

Maria Deleva

@Sid I got the 3 downvotes before accepting the answer.

I even thought it might be because there is a correct answer and I haven't accepted it (but I can't do so before the 20 minutes have passed anyway, still - there might be people that don't know that).

@BeastlyGerbil I guess nobody wants to explain.

Maria Deleva

8:35 AM

I think I will make a wrap-up post on the Doors puzzle :)

Maria Deleva

9:29 AM

This took just a little under an hour to write :)

IAmInPLS

9:47 AM

@MariaDeleva Hello!

I think the downvotes are here because you posted several of these puzzles in a row. Though I do'nt understand why they downvoted, since the puzzle was fun to solve...

Anyway, I finally have the idea for the continuation of my story

The shrink and the patient

So, now, all I need is motivation. And it's the hardest part I guess :-)

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva You inspired me! I'll probably write a wrap-up on the Puzzling Bug one...

Or maybe not...

Damn, I can never make up my mind.

Lukas Rotter

Btw @IAmInPLS, I just coincidentally stumbled upon the video where your profile picture is from. I was laughing so hard when I saw that priceless facial expression :P

Ankoganit

Huh, making rep on math.SE is so easy. I just answered two (trivial) questions - one yesterday and one today- and now I have 426.

426 in 2 days!

Well actually 325 since I already had 101 (site association bonus)

Then again, today is nowhere near the end

So I may get more!

Maria Deleva

10:03 AM

@IAmInPLS well, it certainly demotivated me of thinking of new ones.

@Ankoganit do write one!

Ankoganit

BTW @MariaDeleva why did you include a link to question in the wrap-up? Looks redundant to me.

user189275

@LukasRotter Which video ?

Lukas Rotter

@ArkaKarmakar He appears here. Around 30 seconds after it happens :P

IAmInPLS

@LukasRotter Ahah glad you found it! This video is funny and cringy at the same time, I like it

Anyway, motivation has cool anagrams : vitamin too and vita motion

Maria Deleva

10:35 AM

@Ankoganit, because it was in the template. I don't know.

Ankoganit

11:08 AM

Finally typed it up:

0

A: Help! I am infected with the puzzling bug!

Wrap-up: The Making Of Help! I am infected with the puzzling bug! This is not a solution to the puzzle, but provides notes from its poser. This type of answer has been approved by the community. Caution: This post may contain spoilers. Inspiration The tag cryptic-clues have always been one...

@MariaDeleva It was over an hour for me :D

Maria Deleva

@Ankoganit :) Did I mislead you thinking it would take less time? :D

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva Haha no...I am a slow typer anyways... :)

Maria Deleva

By the way - on the last line (not being pedantic) you probably meant my instead of by.

Ankoganit

@MariaDeleva Ah, right, thanks!

Maria Deleva

No problem :) I guess the by from my puzzle went into yours :)

Ankoganit

11:18 AM

:P

Beastly Gerbil

11:53 AM

The only reason I'm posting at the moment is because I have a fractured rib and can't do sport :P

Which is actually a shame because I love sport

Maria Deleva

@BeastlyGerbil oh, that sounds painful

Beastly Gerbil

Yep, hurts to breathe

Maria Deleva

hopefully, it will heal fast... what happened?

Beastly Gerbil

Sport :P

Sid

@BeastlyGerbil Have a quick recovery..

Gareth McCaughan

12:26 PM

Ouch. Get better soon.

TheBitByte

12:40 PM

@LukasRotter You were so close to the outset of the edge. The edge of outset.

GentlePurpleRain

2:41 PM

15

Q: REJBÄS - an unfinished flat-pack puzzle

I'm going to come right out and say it: I'm kinda bored of making puzzles, but I still want those sweet, sweet imaginary internet points, so I'm phoning it in this time with a flat-pack rebus I bought at a puzzle warehouse. The only thing is, I can't really be bothered putting it together... Ra...

visual rebus

Alconja never ceases to amaze. Less than 60 views and already 15 upvotes. Whenever I think a puzzle can't be topped, he comes out with another!

Alconja? Bored of puzzling? Am I dreaming? — Beastly Gerbil 3 mins ago

@BeastlyGerbil When I first read that, I thought it was serious too. It took me two or three paragraphs before I breathed a sigh of relief. Alconja's not done yet!

Rand al'Thor

@GentlePurpleRain These days he can get upvotes based on his reputation alone :-P

I'm a simple man: I see Alconja, I upvote. — IAmInPLS 1 hour ago

GentlePurpleRain

Yes, an while I understand the sentiment, that actually goes against SE policy. You're supposed to vote for the post, not the person.

Rand al'Thor

Also, I think I found the site's best answer ever:

3

GentlePurpleRain

Although, I guess you could argue that by knowing who posted it, you know that it's a good post...

Sconibulus

I think I got that in a review queue

GentlePurpleRain

2:53 PM

@Randal'Thor That is a pretty good answer. It's universally applicable...

Rand al'Thor

@GentlePurpleRain Agreed. Sometimes it seems a bit cliquey when popular people get all the upvotes. But on Puzzling specifically, there's often no way to judge a puzzle before it's solved, so "this guy writes really good puzzles" can be a strong indication of quality in itself.

One of these days, @Alconja should post a complete troll puzzle with no solution and trick everyone into upvoting it anyway :-P

8

GentlePurpleRain

Knowing Puzzling, someone will come up with a valid solution anyway.

2

IAmInPLS

3:13 PM

@GentlePurpleRain Agreed, even if it was more for the joke than a real thing :-) (well, I did upvote this puzzle, of course)

And what a ratio at the moment, 1 vote every 4/5 views, wow

Beastly Gerbil

4:20 PM

Can it really be true? I've actually solved even a little part of Alconja's puzzle?

Probably not...

Sid

Actually I haven't understood that puzzle yet... Hence, I have still not upvoted it.. It has sort of "puzzled" me

Beastly Gerbil

@Sid, if you stare at @Alconja's puzzles too long you'll end up hypnotized...

Sid

Lol, I better give up instead of blankly staring at it

@BeastlyGerbil This too broad?? puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/43249/…

Beastly Gerbil

I'd say so considering the range of possible answers

Beastly Gerbil

4:42 PM

Okay now I'm pretty sure I got the first part of the answer

Beastly Gerbil

5:03 PM

Can't work out the second part though....

Maria Deleva

3gpacmu

Beastly Gerbil

?

Maria Deleva

if someone can work out what this is and what's wrong with it :)

of course, some people are actually excluded and should not give an answer (they know who they are - if unsure, whether you are excluded, you are probably not).

it is my way of saying "hi" :) on the puzzling chat

And about Alconja's puzzle - I upvoted it - because it seemed like well-designed puzzle :)

Deusovi

5:19 PM

Yeah, I upvote whenever I see a puzzle that clearly has a lot of work put into it.

It just so happens that Alconja's puzzles are always like that. :P

Beastly Gerbil

You don't get nearly a 1000 upvotes without a little effort

I'm surprised I figured something out :P

Maria Deleva

hint: the people who are not allowed to answer, can read it fluently

Deusovi

hm

is it Russian?

зграсму maybe?

Maria Deleva

close.

Deusovi

yeah, not quite sure about g and u

Beastly Gerbil

5:31 PM

Something to do with Bulgarian?

Maria Deleva

Close for the Russian :) not Russian, and the letters you got wrong are g, m and u :)

@BeastlyGerbil correct :) but what is wrong with it?

Deusovi

well, the fact that it's written using the Latin alphabet, for one

Beastly Gerbil

Don't know don't speak bulgarain :P

Deusovi

there doesn't seem to be a g other than Γ

so that might be what's "wrong"

Rand al'Thor

@MariaDeleva Edrasti? (going with the "Russian letters" idea)

Deusovi

5:34 PM

...could it be upside-down?

Maria Deleva

@Randal'Thor If written in Latin alphabet, you got one letter wrong

Rand al'Thor

@MariaDeleva Well, edrasmi is the other possibility.

Maria Deleva

The first letter is wrong

Deusovi

it's not "E", it's "Z"

Maria Deleva

Correct

Deusovi

5:35 PM

and it's "Hello"

Maria Deleva

Hi actually

:)

Deusovi

I got tripped up by the cursive for g/m

Maria Deleva

well, you did :) But a native can fluently read that and it just looks like the letters have been written in some slightly weird font :)

Beastly Gerbil

@Deusovi, you speak Bulgarian?

Deusovi

Not a word of it.

Google Translate speaks it, though.

Beastly Gerbil

5:38 PM

:P

Maria Deleva

g and m are actually the hand-written version of д and т which are respectively d and t

Rand al'Thor

Oh, Zdrasti!

Gotcha :-)

Maria Deleva

:)

Beastly Gerbil

Hi Rand

Puzzling about Alconja?

Rand al'Thor

I was getting the 'z' letter mixed up with the 'e' (as opposed to 'ye') letter.

Maria Deleva

5:40 PM

Well, E is written the other way around. Speaking of which, we have a letter Я

and it is not read as an "r" but more like "ya"

could be confusing :)

Rand al'Thor

Yep, I know.

I spent some time learning Russian years ago :-)

Maria Deleva

:)

Rand al'Thor

So Bulgarian doesn't have the э letter?

Maria Deleva

nope

Beastly Gerbil

Anyone had any breakthroughs with Alconja?

Rand al'Thor

5:42 PM

@BeastlyGerbil You? :-P

I haven't been working on it.

Beastly Gerbil

Just the first part I posted as an answer

Now I'm stuck

Maria Deleva

@BeastlyGerbil I think that the 05 could be the cubes but not really sure... Never been good in reassembling cubes

Beastly Gerbil

I'm pleased I got something though :P

Maria Deleva

Good job

Rand al'Thor

I'm still struggling with this one. I think I've got part of the intended method, but only half of it at most.

Beastly Gerbil

5:45 PM

Yeah I gave up on my answer :p

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/43293/…

I'm so glad I thought of that :P

Sconibulus

6:24 PM

0

A: The Cipher Machine

Input: THIS IS ANOTHER TEST Output: Input: Output: BZHPNPNN KUV AE The cipher is I noticed that the

Is that enough of an answer, or should I explain more of the test cases?

Maria Deleva

It sounds good enough for me

GentlePurpleRain

I'm unsure why anyone would downvote a "wrap-up" answer... (just happened to me)

Rand al'Thor

@GentlePurpleRain Did they flag it as NaA as well? :-P

I didn't downvote yours, but I was tempted to downvote this one: puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/43272/5373

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor I downvoted it. The entire point of wrapups is that they go after the puzle. (Sorry, mobile.)

Maria Deleva

@Randal'Thor me too, but I didn't.

GentlePurpleRain

6:35 PM

@Randal'Thor You just answered my question. That should certainly be downvoted.

I'll have to rephrase my statement: "I'm unsure why anyone would downvote my "wrap-up" answer..." :P

Maria Deleva

the "wrap-up" post got deleted

Rand al'Thor

@GentlePurpleRain Especially when yours was the highest-voted wrap-up answer on meta. Meh, it's just 2 rep anyway.

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor I deleted that post. It wasn't an answer or a wrapup.

GentlePurpleRain

@Randal'Thor I'm not worried about the rep, just a little confused...

Maria Deleva

@Deusovi ok :)

Rand al'Thor

6:38 PM

> This doesn't wrap up or explain anything. Therefore, it is not an answer or a wrap-up, so I am deleting it. – Deusovi♦ 38 secs ago

Deusovi

I can undelete if you all think that was a mistake. It wasn't really a wrapup though...

Maria Deleva

@Deusovi, certainly not a mistake

Rand al'Thor

Have we been taken over by orcs or ogres?

Maria Deleva

Or maybe by this guy: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/80/80/3e/…

Sconibulus

0

Q: In how many ways can one get a total of $19$ using $1$, $2$ and $5$ bills?

No restrictions on the number and kind of bills are present. For example, even 19 1$ bills would count as a valid answer set. Also, worth noting is that answer sets like {5,5,5,2,1,1} and {5,2,5,5,1,1} are counted separately.

mathematics algorithm

flagging this question as "Requires someone who knows MathJax"

Beastly Gerbil

6:49 PM

:P

I fixed it for him

Sconibulus

8:29 PM

@Randal'Thor Do you mind if I steal your Modular Riddles idea?

Beastly Gerbil

8:39 PM

I have nearly finished creating a 3d cube of Alconja's first net

2

However I'll have to finish it tomorrow, I have a day of school as I am excused of a field trip because of my rib. There are pros to being injured... :P

Deusovi

Ooh, nice

Alconja

@Randal'Thor @GentlePurpleRain - yeah it's a weird balance. I get uncomfortable when people say they're voting because it's me, because you should be voting for the content not the user. But at the same time I'm guilty of it myself with some users because you grow to "trust" their ability. That being said, i now find I get down votes regularly too (my last few have got them, and this one already has 2)...

My guess is that it's someone trying to "balance out" the blind up votes (though maybe someone just doesn't like my stuff - style over substance maybe?)

GentlePurpleRain

@Alconja It's possible that some people just aren't a fan of the style of puzzles you create. Maybe they only like math puzzles, or word puzzles, or riddles...

Alconja

Yeah, it doesn't phase me, just curious

whrrgarbl

9:06 PM

@Randal'Thor haha, I can't speak for the other guy but my username is inspired by this

Deusovi

@whrrgarbl beautiful

Dan Russell

9:24 PM

@Alconja Perhaps: Too much attention to detail? Or the downvoter prefers pixelated low-quality graphics? Maybe points off for originality? Or, most likely, your completely believable Ikea instructions have just touched a sensitive nerve for a couple people.

3

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

7

Q: The Cipher Machine

WELCOME. THE MACHINE WILL DO A QUICK TEST. ANSWER IT, AND YOU GO. FAIL TO ANSWER IT, WELL, LET'S JUST SAY WE DON'T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN, DO WE? OF COURSE, WE DO NOT. LET ME INFORM YOU OF THE PUZZLE: CIPHER, CIPHER, CIPHERS. I LOVE CIPHERS. A LOT. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I LIKE THEM....

cipher story

Alconja

@DanRussell Ikea based PTSD I can definitely see. :)

Alconja

9:45 PM

Also, if there's any native Swedish speakers around, I'm curious on how I did with the pronunciation of "rejbäs". My research (and google translate) says that it should be reasonably close to "rebus", but I'm guessing it's still not great...

TheBitByte

@LukasRotter Think inside the box.

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

10:01 PM

4

Q: The outset of the edge of cipher

This is an entry into the 16th Fortnightly Challenge : reverse-puzzling Person 1: Look at the paper. Person 2: Yes, I see, I see, but I don't know what cipher this is. Person 1: Okay, let me give you a hint: The outset of airplane becomes the edge of airspace. Person 2: What ...

story reverse-puzzling

Rand al'Thor

10:31 PM

@Sconibulus What's Modular Riddles? (Sorry, I've written so many puzzles that I don't remember them all :-P )

@whrrgarbl Yeah, I figured :-) I've seen that meme before.

Sconibulus

26

Q: Reassemble the riddles!

I'd just finished writing four short 4-line riddles, painstakingly making sure each line was correct, when a wind caught the slips of paper I'd been using to write on and blew them all over the floor. Quickly I picked them up again, but the order of them was lost. I'd written each line of each ri...

riddle reverse-puzzling

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja "rejbäs" would be pronounced something like "ray-bess". (Not a Swedish speaker, but I spent long enough there to pick up the basics of the pronunciation.)

Alconja

@Randal'Thor Sweet. Close enough. Originally I was using Å (simply because I thought it looked cooler) until I found it was pronounced oa as in boat.

Rand al'Thor

Å is more like "aw".

Alconja

Well there you go. Still no good in "rebus", but shows how hard it is to read about pronunciation.

Rand al'Thor

10:42 PM

In fact the third member of the Swedish letter trifecta would be the best. Rebös doesn't sound exactly like rebus, but it's close.

Alconja

Yeah, from what I could determine ö/ä were close enough that I went with ä just on aesthetic preference. Similarly, I squeeze the j in to make it "look" more Swedish without destroying pronunciation.

Rand al'Thor

11:55 PM

recommend Puzzling SE as a better place to post this. — DJMethaneMan Sep 1 '15 at 13:15

Um, no.

(And damn, just realised that post is a year old. I thought that was a recent comment :-P )

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