The Sphinx's Lair

TrojanByAccident

11:00 AM

Ey all, want to hear a Haiku I wrote?

humn

Of course, TrojanBAccident! (B is short for By)

Rubio

Susan By Anthony dollars.

TrojanByAccident

Five syllables here
Seven more syllables here
Amazing, right, guys?

4

TheGreatEscaper

slow clap

TrojanByAccident

lol

humn

11:02 AM

[sucker for self-reference]

Will

Very lovely poem
Even if a bit meta
Consider us fans

TrojanByAccident

That first line is sketchy...

humn

Rrr, the starrrboard doesn't do poetry readings well

Will

very can be quite if that tickles your fancy more

TrojanByAccident

@humn It's probably a good thing that the starboard doesn't show line breaks

@Will Would fit better :P

Rubio

11:04 AM

people at work who leave a screen unlocked while they're away traditionally find later that, in their absence, they've sent an email to a wide distribution group - usually either some frequently off-kilter "confession", or an admission of their crime of not locking their screen

TheGreatEscaper

This is a haiku.
Each line has fixed syllables:
Five, seven, then five.

Rubio

I started a mini-tradition of making them haikus

unguarded laptops
invite emails sent to all
this is one of those

___
here we go again
another screen left unlocked
will I never learn?

humn

@Rubio probably didn't type that

Rubio

and so on :)

TrojanByAccident

I never knew PSE users were such poetry fans :P

humn

11:07 AM

don't make me pull out the world's shortest poem (tied for...)

"lies"

IAmInPLS

my contribution

L’éclat d’un ciel bleu
Et le goût de tes lèvres
Tracent mon chemin

It's French mouhaha

humn

Gonna have to go make gTranslate repeat it slowly

IAmInPLS

It's.. romantic

humn

Hey IAmInPLS, glad to see that puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/47243/… got recognized in maze suggestions the other day!

27

Q: A blue, white and red maze

First, let's give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar: this maze comes from the mind of Dave Phillips, a brilliant maze designer 1. So, for the maze. It is a fairly easy one: Your goal is to exit by the blue tile on top left, after having entered the maze by the red tile at the bott...

mazes

Like recent grid puzzles, I really enjoyed the way it made me feel like i was traveling through an adventure

TrojanByAccident

Speaking of grid puzzles, I need to finish solving mine

humn

11:11 AM

Solving the one you're making?

TrojanByAccident

yeah

IAmInPLS

@humn Glad to see you liked it! As it is stated, it's not mine, but when I found it in a book, I immediately wanted to share with PSE community!

humn

Thank you all the same.

IAmInPLS

:-)

humn

Did you find that salty French Haiku in a book too? (got it translated)

IAmInPLS

11:15 AM

@humn hehe, no, this one has been shared by an old friend of mine (but I think he got it from the Internet)

humn

It's okay, you don't have to pretend not to read French books.

IAmInPLS

@humn French literature is good :-)!

humn

Good for you to be able to read it. Closest I have is Tintins in 4 languages, of which I only read 1 1/2

Rubio

0

A: 1 Fake Coin among N Amount of coins

I have discovered a maximum of Explanation:

@TrojanByAccident Is the explanation too long to fit in the margin?

IAmInPLS

@humn Tintin is a lot of fun

humn

11:20 AM

There (on my shelf) is even a Tintin French/English dictionary!

...

IAmInPLS

^

This is amazing

humn

IAmInPLS

ooh, damn

I never saw something like this before (about Tintin)

humn

the guy gets around

IAmInPLS

An illustrated dictionary with Tintin, what else

TheGreatEscaper

11:28 AM

That french haiku made me think of The Witness.

IAmInPLS

A video game
That will deeply tests your brain
This is The Witness

humn

at least one of the previous two fortune strips needs elaboration

TheGreatEscaper

Guys can we all stop? These haikus are out of hand, just chat normally.

5

Oops

humn

do enjoy seeing all the wordplay here!

(what others type here looks like fortune cookie fortunes, what i type looks like litmus strips)

... guess I'll make like TByA and head back to the assembly line ... Rubio scratch-and-sniffed to get me here ... continued in the future ...

Volatility

11:54 AM

@TheGreatEscaper Quick question, are all the WITLESS puzzles fully deducible? I've been doing a lot of them by trial and error.

TheGreatEscaper

12:05 PM

They all have a logical solve path

some of them are a bit less clean then others

for example, 6.3

But Summit has a very nice logical path

It was designed specifically to always have a breakin

Several puzzles were trashed simply because they weren't nice to solve, so most of the ones left in this final version have nice solve paths when you see it, apart from the odd one or two that I included for other reasons (6.3 was a bit of a showcase to show that square clues by themselves could enforce a complex unique solution)

TheGreatEscaper

12:22 PM

No one's solved all 3 constellations yet... :D

Volatility

I SOLVED THE SUMMIT!

unfortunately it's bedtime for me :/

TheGreatEscaper

Congratulations!!!! :D

Hope you had fun with it

Have a good night :)

Volatility

It was very nice. Unfortunately MIT will probably prevent me from doing any more of it this weekend, but I look forward to the descent afterwards.

TheGreatEscaper

Ah, have fun with MIT!

Are you with TSPI?

If so, I'm on your team, and if not, we'll be on different sides of the playing field :P

Volatility

@TheGreatEscaper yes I am ;)

TheGreatEscaper

12:29 PM

Nice :D

Gareth McCaughan

(huh, annoying: when I star something it gets a special-coloured star because I am -- all bow deeply, please -- a room owner. Which means I have no mechanism for just saying "I find this useful/amusing/interesting" just like everyone else does. Oh well.)

Volatility

Just peeked at the first Constellation. I have no idea what to do with puzzle 2.

TheGreatEscaper

shrugs

Gareth McCaughan

I'm going to be That Guy and remark that actually a haiku isn't just any thing made up of 5+7+5 syllables. Which doesn't stop the haiku-ish wordplay being funny, of course.

Volatility

anyway, I'm off to bed, cya!

Gareth McCaughan

12:34 PM

good night Volatility

TheGreatEscaper

Haikus should be about nature, and usually have the presence of kireji

Gnight Volatility!

You're not the only 'That Guy' Gareth :P

Rand al'Thor

12:45 PM

@GarethMcCaughan No, everyone sees their own stars as yellow.

Nobody else can tell which messages you've starred (unless you pin them).

Comment of the week on Aviation:

Hey now, this isn't Puzzling.SE! — fooot yesterday

Techidiot

^ Haha.. It has an amazing answer as well :)

TheGreatEscaper

1:16 PM

I should have a new grid-deduction puzzle up within the hour!

dcfyj

Funny, I'm working on one too :P

(although mine isn't a type)

TheGreatEscaper

My one is just a ripple effect puzzle

But hopefully it's quite characteristic and fun :)

Woo!

Finished the design

Time to make it look nice, now

dcfyj

I'm making sure mines solveable right now, in theory I'll be posting it soon ^^

Rand al'Thor

1:31 PM

For the sake of fun, could we look at this puzzle with it wrapping around the board? So that an arrow sending us over the top sends us to the bottom instead of "to our inevitable doom" :) — Piotr Pytlik 11 mins ago

Any thoughts on this?

dcfyj

That'd be a twist

Rand al'Thor

I mean, technically I haven't specified what happens when an arrow sends us over the top. But both answers so far have assumed that means inevitable doom.

On the other hand, neither of those answers are very long or complex, so the answerers might not mind if I edit as Piotr suggests.

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor Ahhhhh. I wonder why I never noticed that before. Perhaps just because I don't star things very often.

Techidiot

@Rubio What is the depth of MathJax knowledge required there? :p

Rubio

?

TrojanByAccident

1:41 PM

@Rubio My explanation got lost somewhere, and then I got distracted. I'm also not 100% sure that my scenario was a 'worst-case' scenario, rather just a scenario in general. I think I'll delete that for now

Techidiot

@Rubio For solving your puzzle I mean

Rubio

Zero knowledge of MathJax is required to solve my puzzle. That wouldn't be very fair, would it :)

TrojanByAccident

lies

you have to know how to make a number look mathjaxy

is that a word, you ask?

it is now.

Techidiot

@Rubio The imgur image was found using MathJax option right?

Rubio

The imgur image was found by clicking where it said "scratch off for hint". How does that require knowledge of MathJax?

Chris Cudmore

1:46 PM

No. You just click it and the number appears.

Techidiot

My browser didn't gave anything :-/ See my edit on Leppy's answer. That's how I got it yesterday. And I thought it was just saying that no key is required

Oh, I suppose there aren't any similar things in there. Else, I won't find it with this browser atleast

Rubio

You probably want to remove your edit. For people with a sane browser, all they have to do is (left) click the seal to show what's under it.

In any event, there's nothing else like that in the puzzle.

Techidiot

Oh okay. Something is wrong with my browser then.

Rubio

What browser is that?

Techidiot

Older version of Chrome - Version 49.0.2623.112 m

Rubio

1:50 PM

The only thing I've found that doesn't handle that correctly is (ironically) the iOS StackExchange app

Current Chrome handles it fine. I'd actually be very surprised if something as recent as 49 didn't.

Techidiot

Hmm.. Well, this browser is no more supported and I am on an outdated OS as well (Vista) which may be adding up

The math jack option once "Activated", it works fine

But it's not active when I start the browser

Rand al'Thor

Rubio

^ that.

Rand al'Thor

@Techidiot It's as simple as that ^^ for me.

Techidiot

Yeah. That happens with me when I activate MathJax

Rubio

1:53 PM

Weird. I've never heard of MJ needing to be activated.

I mean

Techidiot

Rubio

if it was completely not doing anything, the entire page wouldn't even render

Huh. Mine isn't active. That's the MJ Explorer you're activating, and isn't required at all to make it clickable.

Techidiot

Now that my Mathjax is active, I dont need to even click it :p

Rubio

Something's dodgy with your setup.

Techidiot

The circle simply appears

Indeed, very weird!

TrojanByAccident

1:55 PM

I love the fact that TGE's comment about stopping the haikus was, in fact, a haiku

Rubio

(In fact, activating the Explorer breaks the control.)

You should be able to click it to reveal, and click again to hide again

Techidiot

Yeah. That's what is happening now and its tough to deactivate it again :p

Rubio

so I see. You've broken my browser :)

Yeah please remove that from that answer, I don't want to be indirectly responsible for trashing people's MJ

Chris Cudmore

Yeah, I activated it, and now it won't render properly, and I can't even get the menu to de-activate it any more.

Rubio

To fix, disable Explorer and then make sure Accessibility→Collapsible Math is not enabled

Techidiot

1:58 PM

Hahaha.

I already removed it

But, again, this is how I saw the code last night. Without that I was not able to

I did a reset default with my browser and it was back to normal

Rubio

Well. Chances are actually very good that if you look at the Revision history for when the button was added, in side-by-side markup, you can see the unscratched version without having to do anything

Not that that's how people should do it, but yeah - there's a couple of ways at least to find the text

dcfyj

@Techidiot your comment makes no sense to me. Why are you pointing to Sconibulus' question?

IAmInPLS

@dcfyj Yep, did not understand the comment either

It's a nonogram too, but not the same

Techidiot

I mean, the puzzle is about solving it right?

dcfyj

Of course, it's a puzzle, it's meant to be solved...

Sphinx

2:05 PM

1

Q: The Peculiar File

So I was browsing through my computer files earlier and I found a file I'd not seen before. I was wondering if you guys could help me figure out what it's about. This is where I found it: This is its contents: What does it say? And what is it referring to?

grid-deduction

Techidiot

Oh got it. Its grid-deduction after all :)

Sorry, took my comment back

dcfyj

>.< grid-deduction is the only tag on it lol

Techidiot

I didn't see the tag. I just saw the question asking

TrojanByAccident

lol

Techidiot

"What does it say? And what is it referring to?" and the answer was nonogram :p

TrojanByAccident

2:07 PM

How do you not see the tag?

Techidiot

If there are visual's, I see them first and the content.

TrojanByAccident

Btw, I notice two things of significance in the file location

Techidiot

And then I comment.. and then I see the tag :p

TrojanByAccident

first, the bottom bar says that there are two items, when we only see one

Techidiot

The image says "2 items" but it has only one

TrojanByAccident

2:08 PM

also, there appears to be an eye at the top

Techidiot

Yeah that ^

TrojanByAccident

@Techidiot ninja'd :P

dcfyj

@Randal'Thor I've never heard a nonogram called descartes enigma, interesting

@Techidiot That because I removed the second irrelevant file from the image (if I'd noticed the 2 I would've fixed that too)

Puzzling Meta

0

Q: We have a problem with the [english] [language]

english (200 questions) Puzzles that crucially depend on some feature of the English language or that only work in an English formulation. language (131 questions) A puzzle that heavily depends on linguistic features; for instance it may concern foreign languages, or only work in some p...

discussion tags

Techidiot

Ahh okay

Rand al'Thor

2:11 PM

@dcfyj ~~There's a mistake in your nonogram puzzle!~~ Wait, maybe not ...

@dcfyj I used to play Descartes Rainbow; that's where I first came across this style of puzzle ;-)

dcfyj

There shouldn't be. I wrote from image to numbers and then removed the image and test solved using the numbers alone

Rand al'Thor

Sorry. I think I might have missed something. Checking again ...

dcfyj

It should be a fairly simple puzzle

Rubio

Gareth already solved it

@GarethMcCaughan You're too fast :)

dcfyj

Partly, he's missing the more subtle part (the second question)

TrojanByAccident

2:16 PM

lol

not really

@dcfyj isn't that answered in the second spoiler?

Will

Hmm. I want to set a CC with a gimmick, but before I can set it at all I've gotta decide how hard I want it to be to crack the gimmick. As of right now it's super easy, as an unintentional side effect of me choosing words poorly. Oops.

dcfyj

@TrojanByAccident No, that would be the "What does it say?" part :P

TrojanByAccident

The parentheses

dcfyj

Parentheses?

Rubio

@Will "Super easy" for a Will CC seems like it'll only take 8 hours, so that's probably just about right. ;)

Gareth McCaughan

2:18 PM

@dcfyj @TrojanByAccident I edited my answer.

TrojanByAccident

@GarethMcCaughan I know

dcfyj

I saw, but you still haven't answered the second question from what I've seen.

TrojanByAccident

hmm

Gareth McCaughan

Interesting. Let me think some more, then.

dcfyj

Like I said, it's subtle

Will

2:19 PM

@Rubio The gimmick would be introducing another tag - nothing to do with the actual clues. It's legitimately easy. Something I'd never tried before & it took me all but two minutes.

dcfyj

lol, "One of myself"

Rubio

Is this a BreakOut reference?

TrojanByAccident

@dcfyj not enough lol to earn an upvote? ;)

dcfyj

done

TrojanByAccident

Marius's response is amazing

Rubio

2:22 PM

Well, that's one word for it :)

TrojanByAccident

just did a double-take

re-read the CCCC, thought it said "cruelty enhanced vehicle"

TheGreatEscaper

Oh, wow!

Thanks for the shout-out, @dcfyj :D

TrojanByAccident

dw, he wasn't referring to you

TheGreatEscaper

nawwwww :P

TrojanByAccident

8 mins ago, by dcfyj

I saw, but you still haven't answered the second question from what I've seen.

:P

TheGreatEscaper

2:28 PM

I'm testing my new grid logic puzzle

And i'm stuck on a deduction that i designed

xD

TrojanByAccident

same

TheGreatEscaper

I vividly recall loving this section of the puzzle when I designed it

But I can't recall the actual steps anymore

TrojanByAccident

I didn't like it at all to begin with

it's meant to be a nightmare for the rest of you

TheGreatEscaper

AHHHHH I GOT IT!

TrojanByAccident

only problem is, it's a nightmare to myself, too

TheGreatEscaper

2:30 PM

and now i'm stuck again

Just a warning for you all, this is a standard type puzzle, (ripple effect), but it is NOT easy

TrojanByAccident

mine is basically a mix between ripple effect and number slope

except it's in squareception style

Rand al'Thor

@dcfyj Gareth has edited.

And my solution is complete, but you probably already saw that.

Wow, I wonder how many puzzles we have by now which are homages to specific users?

TheGreatEscaper

Additionally, the eye is a recurring symbol in WITLESS

Gareth McCaughan

oh, that's true

I have to say dcfyj's second question seems like it may be too what-am-i-thinking-of for my taste...

TrojanByAccident

I'm going to make a massive puzzle with homages to most of you here, and watch you guys try to figure it out

wow

people on PSE are really against dating, I guess

Rand al'Thor

2:36 PM

@TrojanByAccident ?

TrojanByAccident

-2

Q: Can you help me get a date with this girl?

There are 3 puzzles below. To reach the second puzzle, you have to solve the first. The image has hidden messages and keys. I need you to help me get a date with this pretty girl in my uni. She prefers smart guys, so she placed the name and address of a restaurant on her blog. Can you help me i...

enigmatic-puzzle visual

Rand al'Thor

This puzzle isn't bad; I suspect the downvotes are because of the title, which some might find offensive. I'm reluctant to upvote (though of course I haven't downvoted) for the same reason. Maybe you should edit the title? — rand al'thor May 15 '15 at 21:40

TrojanByAccident

lol

I find nothing wrong with the title

it's part of the puzzle flavor

Rand al'Thor

Asking people on the internet to help you get off with some girl sounds a bit creepy to me.

I realise it's fictional, of course, but still.

Will

Yeah, I was gonna say. It's not just the title.

Rand al'Thor

2:41 PM

I've also flagged the porn comments on dcfyj's puzzle.

dcfyj

@GarethMcCaughan I probably did make it too subtle but you did mention its reference in your newest edit

TheGreatEscaper

Oof. 'Ripple Islands' Will be up in a few mins

Gareth McCaughan

@dcfyj So my only problem is that I haven't successfully guessed which of the things I guessed you were thinking you wanted me to guess you were thinking? :-)

dcfyj

Yeah, clearly made it too vague, my bad. I can point out which piece of information you need if you like

Thus is the bane of creating puzzles and assuming things

Gareth McCaughan

If it's the eye, have a look and see whether my latest edit makes things any better

If it's that I have noticed something that needs explaining but haven't figured out what explanation it needs, then it's my bad at least as much as yours.

dcfyj

2:47 PM

The latest edit I would say satisfies question two

Gareth McCaughan

@TrojanByAccident I think the "Can you help me get a date with this girl?" puzzle is a pretty weak puzzle quite apart from the slightly creepy/stalkery/objectifying vibe.

@dcfyj aha, splendid.

TrojanByAccident

@TheGreatEscaper I'm curious to see how it looks

dcfyj

As for the thing that "needs explaining" I'm going to take a guess and say you're probably talking about the "2 items" which I stated earlier (in here) that that was an oversight on my part.

TrojanByAccident

@GarethMcCaughan ehh

Gareth McCaughan

@dcfyj What I meant about a thing-that-needs-explaining wasn't so specific. It looked to me as if your question 2 was asking, in effect, "find the thing that needs explaining and explain it" and I thought maybe my list of things might have included the thing-that-needs-explaining that you had in mind but not yet found the intended explanation. If you see what I mean.

dcfyj

2:51 PM

It did in a way. You found the eye, but not the correlation.

TrojanByAccident

@TheGreatEscaper you might have spent some time to put thin lines separating the spaces :P

TheGreatEscaper

Aren't there little bright gaps in the coloured picture?

Anyhow, I don't think any part of it is ambiguous at all

Gareth McCaughan

@dcfyj I've edited my answer to tighten it up now that I know what reference you had in mind.

dcfyj

Yup, looks good