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12:20 AM
I have a question of etiquette
Recall @RosieF's cipher puzzle
It turns out that Phlarx's suggestion essentially works
and I have the answer
but basically all I did was to notice that actually Phlarx's approach yields 27 not 26 symbols (which is good news since we know we have letters+space), to implement it in the obvious way with a short Python script, and to feed the output to quipqiup
well, I also noticed that space had to be one of {5,6,7} and tried each of those for space with the other two for 2-digit numbers
but only space=5 worked
("had to be" on frequency grounds)
and anyway my question, if anyone happens to be reading this, is: Should I (1) put the solution in my existing answer, (2) edit it into Phlarx's, (3) tell Phlarx and invite him/her to put the solution into his/her answer, or (4) something else?
because on the one hand, y'know, I've solved it
but on the other hand Phlarx's suggestion is essentially 100% correct
and on the other other hand it's not terribly different from the stuff I was already trying
but on the fourth hand it wasn't actually one of the specific things I'd tried
I guess one version of (4) is make it community wiki but it seems like someone should be getting rep for this :-)
(I don't particularly mind whether it's me or Phlarx or somehow both)
hmm, apparently no one is actually here in any useful sense so I guess I'll agonize over this on my own for a bit and do whatever seems reasonable :-)
 
@GarethMcCaughan I'm here, but not really sure what to advise.
Another version of (4) would be to put the solution in your own answer and then award a bounty to Phlarx's answer for giving you the idea.
 
oh, that's a clever idea.
 
1:11 AM
@randal'thor Please. Shut up. — ToTheMax 4 mins ago
:-/
 
Blimey.
 
Not sure. I don't think it's a cipher.
(see my answer to it)
 
Yeah, I was unsure. It's marked cipher, and as a cipher questions it's not great
 
indeed
and maybe it really is a cipher (the thing I pulled out of it isn't super-convincing)
 
I ran it through a binary-text converter, and lopping off a few characters seemed to reveal utf chars
 
ones that make actual sense?
it looks to me as if the tendency for 0 to follow 0 and 1 to follow 1 is a bit too strong for that sort of thing to be credible
 
1:42 AM
I got this: +UÈ/ÿýÅt¿ø|æ€BáP?ƒ&#‌​240;
it is marked lateral thinking tho, so your answer wouldn't be far fetched if the cipher tag wasn't there
 
Looks pretty untextual to me...
the cipher tag might be deliberate misdirection, though I don't much like it when questions do that
 
I'm going to try converting the numbers to letters. People have done that?
 
I've no idea whether anyone's done that.
 
the deliberate misdirection?
 
oh, sorry, I see. I'm not sure whether anyone has, but I guess yes. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a question about it in meta.
 
1:52 AM
Oh, that would be annoying. And the numbers didn't return anything sadly
 
 
2 hours later…
4:07 AM
0
Q: Is it okay to post a spoiler-tagged answer to a riddle, in the question?

TheBitByteFor example, a riddle question has the main riddle in the post, and below the main riddle, in the same post, there's a spoiler-tagged solution. Is this okay? What about posting the solution after x hours/days/etc?

1
Q: Do we have a quality problem with riddles specifically?

AnkoThere is much furor around the perceived question-quality of riddle and others. All such reactions and discussions that I have seen have relied on anecdotes and gut feelings, rather than hard data. Of course, a regular puzzler's gut feeling might be a good estimate, but confirmation bias is a t...

 
4:47 AM
@randal'thor Well done, Gareth and Phlarx. Awarding a bounty would be extraordinarily generous of Gareth when he and Phlarx both deserve to gain rep. No need to do that. Now, how should I award points? Have I recognised the contribution of each of you? ...
 
0
Q: Are questions about maintaining, repairing, improve, etc physical puzzles such as Rubik's cube with the scope of the site?

hippietrailIs the site only about solving etc of puzzles? I was going to ask a question about what easy to obtain lubricants are suitable to use on a speedcube that's getting a bit sticky. Would that be on-topic here?

 
... Gareth did the frequency analysis (credit due for even thinking of counting bigrams). Phlarx thought of treating two digits as prefixes, found the correct two, and wrote a program to lex the ciphertext on that basis. It remains to decipher a substitution cipher. Gareth did that, and also arranged the key table's columns into the correct order, having found out the author-related reason for this order. ...
I'm inclined to award points like this: accept (but not UV) Gareth's answer, and upvote Phlarx's. What do you think?
 
 
1 hour later…
6:07 AM
Cancel that. I'm inclined to award points like this: accept (but not UV) Phlarx's answer, and upvote Gareth's.
 
6:59 AM
0
Q: Wrap-up posts: What should the formal part of it contain?

BmyGuestThis post relates to the brilliant suggestion by KeyboardWielder on opitoinally creating warp-up answers to solved puzzles. There is also a sandbox for examples now. One, I believe, important thing for this idea is to have some standardization of the answer post, or at least some template hea...

 
7:33 AM
@randal'thor of course.
 
Hello all
"all"
 
 
2 hours later…
9:43 AM
@RosieF I think you should accept Gareth's answer since it actually contains the final solution and Phlarx's doesn't. Especially since Gareth is being very gentlemanly and promised to award a bounty if Phlarx gets too big a disadvantage rep-wise.
 
If I were the OP, I would have accepted Gareth's answer, as well. And upvoted both.
 
@Randal'Thor I see your implication in your first sentence -- but it seems to me that that would mean the final solving-step must deserve more credit than the preceding steps.
 
In a way it does. If someone comes to look at that question in the future, and sees an accepted answer which doesn't include the final solution, they might assume it's something like this which hasn't been fully solved yet at all.
 
problem is I still don't see the decoded text in neither of those
 
True :-)
 
9:50 AM
@MariaDeleva Graham identified it. (And even found out that I'd put title and author credit in a "coda" -- so that shows that he didn't just decipher the first few words.)
 
so in a way they are both incomplete answers
 
@RosieF s/Graham/Gareth
 
I do believe he has the text, but I don't :)
 
:) Sorry Gareth!
 
10:15 AM
The decoded text isn't there because the questioner specifically said not to put it there.
PS. If in a few days' time it looks to anyone as if the rep for that puzzle is unfairly apportioned and I haven't done anything about it with a bounty, someone please remind me. I'm very good at forgetting things.
(and, for the avoidance of doubt, yes I did decipher the whole thing.)
 
0
Q: Should [reverse-puzzling] be a synonym of [puzzle-identification]?

rand al'thorThe reverse-puzzling tag is for: A question where you must identify a puzzle based on a reasoning to solve it. The puzzle-identification tag is for: A question inquiring about the name or nature of a specific puzzle, given its description. From the tag wikis, there doesn't seem to be ...

 
10:35 AM
I have never doubted you, Gareth. It is just that I am very bad at ciphers - even with all this information in both of the answers, I will still not be able to solve it on my own. :) goes hiding in some rabbit hole...
 
@MariaDeleva If you're looking for rabbit holes, there's a couple in Phlarx's answer ;-)
 
@Randal'Thor I saw them :)
 
11:23 AM
Which question are y'all talking about?
 
Hello again everybody. I have a question.
I am creating a puzzle. You'll have to find something hidden in a conversation between two people.
 
What is the question? :)
 
Once you find it, I'd like to add the 'ending' of this conversation in a comment to the answer (for the sake of the story/puzzle). Is it allowed? I remember having seen such a thing in an old post, but I can't find it now.
 
11:39 AM
@IAmInPLS You mean just for the sake of the story (it's not required for the puzzle)?
 
Yes, exactly. It is not required at all, it's just to complete the backstory of the puzzle.
 
Sure, why would that be a problem?
Fun is always usually sometimes encouraged :-P
3
 
:-) It would be great if you could find an example on this site (I'm pretty darn sure I have already seen it), since you've been around for some considerable time
However... could it ruin the question for future viewers?
 
@IAmInPLS One example is the SErial Killer puzzle series by Joe. He left 'in-character' comments on each answer, either giving an indication that it was wrong or explaining what happens next. For instance:
While skiving during a tediously show morning's work, you start sleuthing away on an incredibly complicated problem. After a little while, you jump on to PSE and open this question. You instantly spot the anagram indicator, and unscramble "antimony" and connect half the dots (antimony translates as "not alone", killed sites are all math related to suggest the number of antimony). Confident that you're on to a winner, you head over to Area 51... — Joe Nov 13 '14 at 19:59
 
11:55 AM
Yes, this is what I was talking about. And this is indeed the post I saw containing something like this! Thanks.
I could also add it in the question in spoilers, once the answer has been found. I'm really not sure how to proceed, even though I think the puzzle is well-defined with or without this backstory.
 
@IAmInPLS Not really, if it's a comment on the answer. By the time a future viewer has got down that far, they've probably already read the answer and seen the solution anyway.
 
@Randal'Thor Thanks for this input
 
I agree with Rand al'Thor. And I think you should spoilerify anything that you think would spoil the fun for readers.
 
@GarethMcCaughan Thanks Gareth. I'll think about the possibilities while finishing this puzzle.
And don't worry, it will be posted today, you impatient :-P!
 
 
1 hour later…
1:13 PM
I heard this is where to come to get the lube
 
Be careful what you ask for when talking about lube :-).
 
He's talking about his Rubrik's question
 
or the kind that gums up or irritates the skin (-:
 
They suggested here because in chat you can talk offtopic (-:-)
 
i can talk about nonpuzzles yay!
 
1:16 PM
I figured I'd join the face crowd :P
 
@dcfyj I know right! I was the one voting to close, but I retracted my vote after @hippietrail edited his question.
 
As for your lube, I've no idea I have a few cubes of my own, but I don't speed.
 
In the comments, LeppyR64 gave a good link I think.
 
keep in mind that the blog post about shopping does not just say "all shopping questions are off topic". it's much more detailed than that.
i don't really speed either. but in taiwan it was easy to find a speedcube for $4 AUD and i wanted to get better at solving one handed
the cube is endorsed by Mats Valk and was super fast - too fast for me - when i bought it a couple of weeks ago
yep it is a good link but note that most of it is about specific products you can buy online. that's what i anticipated when i asked the question in the original form.
 
I only glanced at it, but doesn't it mention types of lube?
 
1:24 PM
plus if cube lubes are anything like skate bearing lubes there's a lot of overpriced ripoffs that are sewing machine oil in a different bottle with a sticker of a cube (-:
 
It looked like it mentioned pros and cons of various types of lube, and had links to specific branded subtypes with additional info
 
it does also go through various types. most have a big negative. degrading the plastic is common.
 
@hippietrail I know, but it really looked like an off-topic question at the beginning; it's a bit better since you edited out, but I'm still convinced Google is a better place to find this type of information.
 
yep it's definitely not a bad link. not sure i can find something in taiwan. i failed to find talcum powder today (not for the speedcube)
 
"Puzzling Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for those who create, solve, and study puzzles." In my mind this question falls under the study part.
@hippietrail It may be called something else there
 
1:27 PM
@dcfyj Of course it does now.
 
just googling can turn up a lot of ads and spam that are hard to distinguish from expert answers. SE is purely aimed at expert answers
run into that kinda thing all the time on travel.SE my main site
 
I agree that you'll get the best answers here
 
oddly sewing machine oil is not mentioned in the article.
 
I just found this really cool tool. Great for riddles :P
 
1:41 PM
It's not like I'm using it verbatim, just for word and sentence ideas
 
2:28 PM
@hippietrail I suppose that water-based lubes will do great
 
2:44 PM
@MariaDeleva: I think those would end up corroding the mechanism which metal includes springs and screws in most cubes
 
Oops, I forgot about the metal parts.
 
What do you think of this:
9
Q: A harbour once fashionable, coloured by dead lovers

abligh A harbour once fashionable, Coloured by dead lovers, Loved by the young that later exude oriental smoothness, And reportedly circled by the young that later either wash their faces, Or occasionally observe mammalian explosion. What am I? Clue 1: Clue 2:

Too broad? Looks pretty nice, but there are already 3 answers which almost fit...
 
but none of them actually fit
Verona was what I thought at first on seeing it, but half the clues don't work
 
@Sconibulus Quite true.
 
If there's a single answer which fits and a bunch that almost fit but not quite, then it's not too broad.
(as a general principle, not necessarily about this riddle in particular)
 
2:54 PM
I think I wrote it pretty well.
Oops, didn't realize I missed a double space
 
@dcfyj I typed in "I like to make nice and hard puzzles" and after five iterations, it became "I have to upgrade than standard and troublesome issues."
 
it's OK, I fixed it for you
 
lol
 
it feels like there might be multiple closely related solutions, though it's a bit premature for me to say that since I haven't got anything quite fitting yet
 
@Ankoganit Like I said, I was using it for ideas, I didn't use everything it gave me, in fact I didn't use most of what it gave me haha
 
3:00 PM
@dcfyj At least it's a cool way to avoid boredom. ;)
 
(if my conjecture about the kind of thing it is is right, it's surely more like unilateral soliloquies of bickering)
Sconibulus's answer is the first thing I thought of too, though I am still unconvinced by the last line.
 
how so?
 
what was your thought for the first line? The fact that some of them have lights?
 
@Randal'Thor Did you award two bounties on this answer?
 
if "how so?" applies to my unconvincedness by the last line: well, "only one friend" meaning every PC with a USB port seems a little dicey to me, and flash drives are still almost always connected to PCs rather than anything else. (I take it a Mac is just one more variety of PC in this context.)
 
3:06 PM
It's a two part hint. It's flash memory, but flash can also refer to lights, so i refered to the ones that have lights as well.
 
@LukasRotter Yes. Ha, that looks funny: Rand al'Thor and Rand al'Thor!
 
@Randal'Thor Yeah, just asked this on meta. I'll probably edit it soon to include your statement here :P
 
@GarethMcCaughan One friend refers to pc's (as a whole not individual ones) as a friend, but now playstations and xbox can also communicate with them along with other devices.
 
@LukasRotter You don't need my statement; you can see in the question history that both bounties were mine.
 
@Randal'Thor Even better! Thanks.
 
3:09 PM
@Sconibulus Did you also find my little secret hint? :P
 
The title? Yeah, that's what I saw first point me there
UBS + Flash in the first line -> USB
 
Amusingly enough I sort of randomly picked those words after I wrote the riddle, and it turned out to be true, it is a set of unilaterally bickering soliloquies haha
 
might have guessed it anyway, but I would have been a bit slower, and less confident. Probably wouldn't have ended up posting because the other answer was similar enough
as it was, I didn't see that there was another answer until I was finishing up spoiler formatting, so I was committed
 
The main issue with the other answer is the fact that his "I" jumps from object to object, it's not consistent
Starts off as a computer, but later it changes to RAM
 
I think he means that it's bigger in terms of RAM, but smaller physically
or it's faster because of lots of RAM, not that he's talking about being RAM specifically
 
3:14 PM
plus his last line is wrong
either way, it's answered correctly, I'll check you in a bit.
 
yeah, but it's closeish, so if I was a lot slower, I'd probably comment to help fix his than taking credit on my own
 
he also skipped the first line of the riddle entirely
(just noticed that)
 
incidentally, the alternate answer I was thinking of was: any sort of storage device connected via a Thunderbolt/Lightning connector. A different sort of flash, and this time the first friend is presumably the Mac, but it seems like it fits almost as well.
 
Never even heard of that.
That iron riddle got hints on it really fast...
Oh nevermind, he posted it with hints on it already.
 
@IAmInPLS "a call time for ants" is an anagram of "mental factorials" which is almost certainly irrelevant but rather nice.
 
3:29 PM
@GarethMcCaughan Mental factorials could be relevant, I just wouldn't want to do any above, say, 10 or so.
 
that far it's just a lookup table
I hope they aren't relevant to the question
 
@dcfyj "Mental Factorials"="All more fantastic!"
 
Fantastical morel. Yum.
Are we supposed to do something with A BRO FEINT TRULY? IRREFUTABLY NOT.
2
though it contains the letters of BOUNTY which I can imagine being relevant
 
He's the real wolf man!
anagrams to A Heathen's Fell Worm
this sounds vital
 
Those heathen's and their worms...
 
3:39 PM
it doesn't seem as if any of the obvious things to take anagrams of yield anything useful
but the anagram tag is there
I'm slightly worried that I may actually be the other side of the conversation, although I don't remember any of it :-)
 
Peter Zoo is zoetrope?
 
oh, that's nice (but relevant? I guess that might be the gift)
 
no idea
 
but it seems like the filler:content ratio would be very large if that were the whole story
 
No kidding haha
 
3:44 PM
the fact that the number of seconds is 26 seems like it should be significant too
 
26 letters?
 
just so
but I don't see what to do with it
 
Or maybe every other of 26 letters?
 
Interestingly enough doing every other letter of the alphabet it wields 0 vowels
26 seconds maybe = every second letter from 26
 
3:47 PM
hmm, maybe
but how would we use that?
 
No idea, probably the wrong rabbit hole to be digging
 
26 might just be a hint at the number of pieces we're supposed to pull out
 
that too
 
like 26 'second letters of the word' or something
 
hm, maybe. but it seems more likely a hint at something to do with the alphabet
clearly we should ask IAmInPLS to translate the puzzle into Greek or Russian and see whether the number changes
 
3:50 PM
the real wolf man ~ fellow earthman
 
haha that's great.
 
Oooh,
the only letters that don't appear are KQX
 
Wow, I did not know that seeing others struggling to solve a puzzle could be this enjoyable.
 
that strikes me as ... not a very unusual set of letters to not appear in a text of this length
 
3:52 PM
lol, so mean
 
@IAmInPLS, I thought you were probably enjoying watching us squirm
 
Anyway, Mental factorials is irrelevant, indeed :-)
 
which is a callsign for a flight from Australia to China
so you're going on vacation!
 
@Sconibulus, ingenious but I really hope it's wrong
especially as I'm pretty sure IAmInPLS is not in Australia.
 
@GarethMcCaughan Too bad I can't stay longer :-(. And @Sconibulus, he's right. Nothing to do with these missing letters!
 
3:54 PM
"The real wolf man"="Farewell, no math!"
 
Have fun while I am away :-)
 
a call time for ants ~ from Atlantic sale
 
finding anagrams of random odd-looking bits of the text is fun but I'm pretty sure we're going to need at least one more actual idea to solve the puzzle.
 
have we had a first?
 
well, maybe "idea" is too generous
but we've noticed it says [steganography] and [anagram] and tried anagramming bits of the messages
which is probably at least part of what needs doing
 
3:59 PM
hmm, I think, if we count an Emoji as one piece, there are 26 pieces of punctuation in the combined texts of T
 
anything interesting immediately before or immediately after them?
 
(beofre the last one)
not really, some are next to eachother
maybe those represent blanks, or word breaks?
oh, wait, I missed some, never mind
 
looks like a coinkidink to me
 
counting apostraphes is hard
but now I have 26 before the very last text, where he explains he was messing with us
 
4:26 PM
So, I have an idea but i'm not sure if it works since I'm horrible with anagrams
What if for every given text message sent you take every other letter and try to anagram that?
For line 1 I get Umsrcncllse6eodwaiiaalieons
 
4:37 PM
that looks rather unlike an anagram of actual English text to me
 
It could easily be multiple words though, ignoring the 6 that's in there.
 
@GarethMcCaughan Oh, I think it has possibilities, e.g. I would also silence 6 Americans.
 
It's possible the first line isn't supposed to work either, as it lays down the rule (with this though process)
 
@RosieF OK, I take it back. (I thought it was very vowel-heavy, but I realise now that I was looking at the end and not noticing how consonant-heavy the start is)
 
Us 6 Americans laid silence wool?
 
5:03 PM
@IAmInPLS Just posted the discussed puzzle. Let's see what happens :P
 
Sid
@LukasRotter it's fiction, right??
 
@Sid Yeah, no one would use such an ugly messenger :P
 
Also, he mentioned he might make this puzzle earlier
 
Sid
Maybe he broke up with someone, i m free sort of symbolises towards that...
 
I was more inclined to a prison escape or captivity escape :)
 
5:12 PM
For those working on this puzzle, this anagram site may be of help.
 
5:44 PM
26 does NOT refer to the alphabet. It's an unfortunate coincidence.
 
I believe 26 refers to the count of letters we need to extract - did someone mention there were 26 punctuation signs? perhaps we need to take every second letter after a punctuation sign? I don't really have the time to try this now though
 
@MariaDeleva No, 26 refers to nothing, really ^^. I could have put 15, 17, 56. I needed a small number for a phone call :-)
 
6:20 PM
0
Q: Do we have to clarify that the story of a puzzle is not real?

Lukas RotterLet's say a puzzle has a story that might seem real to some people. For example, a puzzle could have a story like "So my friend sent me a message". Do I, as the puzzle creator, have to clarify somewhere in the body of the question that the story is fictional? I'd like to list the pros and cons I'...

 
 
1 hour later…
7:31 PM
Is anyone of you working on this one? I'm stuck and it seems an intresting puzzle puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42151/…
 
I've looked at it, but I see nothing that really point me to the direction that should be taken.
 
The "nones" should be about the roman calendar and the numbers are only from 1 to 12 so I'm thinking it might have something to do with months
 
how does "nones" mean roman calendar?
 
It's the name of a day in the roman calendar and if you see OP's comment on the only answer he seemed to confirm that
*more days, not one day
 
Oh cool, my question got on the HNQ list.
Still not seeing how "nones" relates to the Roman Calendar...
Or how the comment confirms it.
 
7:43 PM
and in the comments: They meet on 5th september 2016. Because, according to Roman calendar Nones indicate 5th day of short months and 7th day of long months.. – Sathi Reddy
to which he replied: @SathiReddy you got one of the clues but they definitely can't meet in the past
 
Sathi isn't the OP, jmb.mage is
 
I know. Sathi said what "nones" is and OP said that he got one clue right
 
Oh well, idk, I'm heading out. See you around.
 

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