The Sphinx's Lair

Why would it be acceptable? The wordplay half is typically a series of instructions or descriptions of modifications, plus the words to be modified.

Mike Q

I mean why would it need a question mark at the end

Deusovi

Because it wouldn't be acceptable normally.

Sp3000

It wouldn't make sense in this case, but I've seen some clues which are "backwards", like we once had "Sitcom, EG? (5,6,5)" for "Upper Middle Bogan"

Deusovi

Question marks are sometimes used to say "something about this clue makes it atypical". (I wouldn't accept that even with a question mark.)

I don't get that clue. I see where the G comes from, but what about the E?

Sp3000

E is the upper, as in drug

Deusovi

12:20 AM

Huh, I've never heard that.

Sp3000

(as in ecstasy, I should say)

Found that one a bit unfair personally, but I meant it's not unusual to see that sort of backwards clue once in a while (wish I had a better example)

So I meant the answer could be something that gave COD by dropping the last of CODE (e.g. if "tailless code" was a phrase and the cluing was (8, 4)), but with 6 letters as the answer it wouldn't make sense in this case anyway

boboquack

I think we need to have another chat room called '@Will's room' where he can bamboozle us with all of his cryptics.

(sorry for the ping @Will)

Will

We do not.

boboquack

I am inclined to disagree

Will

It would be quite dead...

boboquack

12:30 AM

As in the solve per clue rate?

Or would you not join? That would be disappointing

Will

No, as in most of the cryptics in my stockpile are easy or only difficult because they are utter crap

Deusovi

You say they're easy...

Rubio

That's like saying "000-ish" is a good cryptic. Oh, wait. Bad example. :)

(I like the new profile @deus hehe)

Deusovi

It's a great cryptic. I don't know what you're talking about.

boboquack

Find all general solutions to a^2+b^2=c^2 in integers. It's easy if you know the answer!

Rubio

12:33 AM

See? It's not a good one. hehe

Deusovi

Anything that elicits "damn you Deus, you right clever b----d" sounds good to me.

Rubio

^ x6

Deusovi

And you definitely knew it was the answer once you got it.

x6?

boboquack

What's b----d?

Sp3000

I'd have stuck a '?' at the end but otherwise I quite liked 000-ish :)

Deusovi

12:34 AM

Presumably there should be an extra hyphen there.

Rubio

A word I don't actually use, but it captured my feeling well enough to hint at it here hehe

Will

No, they're genuinely easy. Like, here's one of them: Without China, Mao is just a frequent flyer (6)

Rubio

Nah. The ? would have ruined its sleek elegance. It was a fantastic clue.

boboquack

And what is the answer to 000-ish (excuse me, I'm horrible at cryptics)

Deusovi

It was a hard clue.

The answer was OVOID

boboquack

12:35 AM

Oh

Deusovi

first 0 is O, second 0 is VOID, def: "0-ish"

boboquack

Unrelated, but what do the dotted lines that show between posts mean?

airman?

No idea!

yup

12:36 AM

that's weird. hehe

Deusovi

Maybe it just means that there was a longer-than-usual pause between them?

Oh! It means that you switched out of the tab and came back

boboquack

Like this?

Rubio

Yeah - it marks the last chat message it thinks you saw

Sp3000

@Will Is China not CN?

Rubio

(And only you see it, as it's specific to you)

boboquack

12:37 AM

Aw

Deusovi

I don't get the China/Mao clue. Annotation?

boboquack

Oh! And they fade away

Rubio

(ch)AIRMAN

i'm not a fan of ch for china

Deusovi

Ah, makes sense.

Rubio

but chairman for mao is obvious enough

boboquack

12:38 AM

新年快乐！

Deusovi

I mean, I don't think that's a bad clue.

Sp3000

> People's Republic of China (FIPS and NATO country code CH)

Hmm

Deusovi

Wait, really? Weird. I thought it was CN too.

Sp3000

Well country code and top level domain is CN - depends what system you're going by :P

boboquack

恭喜发财！

Sp3000

12:39 AM

I'd go with CN personally, but maybe that's just me

Will

Yeah, NATO was the intent there.

Pavel

Minichallenge: what is not a bit of 7000?

boboquack

No-one wants to celebrate the lunar new year?

7001

Oh! 2 because bits are only 0 and 1

Pavel

Nope!

Deusovi

You mean 7?

Pavel

12:41 AM

No, I mean 7000

boboquack

3 because it's the first non-factor of 7000

Deusovi

No, I was talking to Boboquack

boboquack

7001 because it is the first number that is not part of 7000

7 for what?

Pavel

None of thsoe

Deusovi

the three 0s are bits, but the 7 is not a bit

I think this'd be closed as too broad on the main site.

Rubio

12:42 AM

I am voting to close this question because it is too broad.

Durn it

Pavel

That's why it's a CMC and not a main post

Rubio

Too slow typing today :)

Pavel

Hint: ~

boboquack

Will you ban me if I flag for moderator? :D

Rubio

Behave, you

boboquack

12:43 AM

Is it time to bring up a random marsupial?

Deusovi

Stop.

boboquack

OK

Deusovi

Anyway, that seems like the logical not from programming

Pavel

It is

boboquack

Isn't that '!'?

Will

12:44 AM

^

Pavel

Not logical not, sorry

^

~ is usually bitwise

xor?

18446744073709544615

12:44 AM

'not a bit of 7000'

Yep

Rubio

depending on your number of bits, that answer is right :)

Deusovi

I'm used to ¬.

boboquack

@Rubio Apparently that's not a registered phone number

@Deusovi Hear, hear!

Pavel

I would have also accepted 1191

boboquack

?!

Rubio

12:46 AM

perl -e 'print ~7000,"\n";' # whee

bitwise not, aka twos complement

Pavel

1191 assumes your ints are the minimum size necessary to represent 7000

boboquack

I got -7001 on python :D signed ints for the win!

Rubio

that's actually the better answer to be honest :)

Pavel

It's not just because they're signed it's because they're infinite precision.

So bitwise not in python is always going to be the negative original number +1

boboquack

My computer only has a finite number of memory...

^amount

Pavel

12:48 AM

Infinite up to your computer's memory, that is.

Rubio

it will always be -(N+1) unless you hit exactly on the boundary between positive and negative, assuming you have a highest-order sign bit.

Silenus

I learned "[]" square brackets, "<>" angled brackets

Rubio

I leanblue

boboquack

?

Rubio

political pedantry.

he said he leaned red

before his edit :)

Silenus

12:51 AM

I should turn back the edit.

But then this subsequent commentary wouldn't make sense.

boboquack

Yeah, you can see history anyway

Edit history is at chat.stackexchange.com/messages/35056179/history

There we go

@Will is TV time still on or did you forget to change your profile?

22 hours ago, by Will

after TV time maybe :)

Will

I didn't forget. I lack(ed) the motivation to actually do so. Also, I said maybe.

boboquack

Oh, and yes, some people actually do read those things.

Deusovi

While we're all trying to figure out Will's clue, here's one I wrote for Reddit's cryptic crossword "theme of the week":

Silenus

In a recent puzzle I clued ATTIC with the ddef "Greek floor." Initially I intended to use "Greek story" because there's greater misdirection, but I was hesitant because my semantic intuitions suggest that an attic counts as a floor but not a story. What do you guys think about the variants?

Deusovi

1:00 AM

Mario guy - he omits perversion! (7,8)

@Silenus For me, "floor" and "story" are synonymous. It might be a dialect thing.

boboquack

Oh, not the days when Gareth had his 'themes'

Deusovi

Hm?

Will

Also, if you're wondering, typical TV time is 8-10pm unless I'm too busy or otherwise don't feel like it at the time, in which case TV time becomes DVR time anywhere from like midnight to 3am :)

Silenus

@Deusovi And you think both are valid (if somewhat unspecific) crossword clues for attic?

Deusovi

Sure, I don't have any issues with them.

Yeah, they're a bit unspecific, but the fact that it's a double-def combats that.

(Prevents? Fixes? I can't think of the right word at the moment.)

Sp3000

1:02 AM

@Silenus I'm not quite sure how story works?

boboquack

@Will you watch Nadal v Federer?

Will

To me, story refers more to "height"/"altitude"... a "5th floor" could be the "4th story"

Sp3000

Oh, US. It's storey over here :P

Silenus

@Deusovi That's what I thought. Good to know there's a little leeway regarding specificity. Even in non-ddefs, the wordplay might combat it, if transparent enough.

Deusovi

Yep!

Will

1:04 AM

@boboquack Nope. I haven't watched tennis in a long while; though it's one of the few sports I do enjoy watching.

boboquack

@Will It's the final of the Aus Open!

Silenus

@Sp3000, good to know. Whenever there's a spelling or pronunciation difference, I consider whether I should crowbar in a term/phrase like "to an American" or "in the US"... But I always opt not too...

boboquack

I just let people view my profile if they're confused.

Sp3000

I wouldn't have minded too much in this case since the words are quite similar, I wouldn't have gotten it anyway, and I'd have just learnt something after the answer's revealed :P

boboquack

Like your profile has 'New York', TGE's has Perth, Australia, Sp3000 and I both have Australia...

Sp3000

1:08 AM

@Deusovi Man, 15 letters is hard without any cross letters :P

boboquack

Just to get people's opinion (shameless plug), what do you think about this wrap-up post?

Rubio

you got your brackets and parens backwa... nvm

boboquack

You mean my round and my square? :D

Rubio

And don't ask me, I've only just written my first wrapup myself and wouldn't mind feedback on it too hehe

boboquack

I thought yours was great!

Rubio

1:14 AM

btw, this sentence in yours just ends like so: "So finally once I made all 25 sub-puzzles, all that was left was to upload the links and put it in the sudoku. I hit up"

that seems unintended :)

I had a bit of fun with my most recent puzzle - had to upload one of the images about 6 times before it stopped giving me hashes with digits, which I couldn't encode

boboquack

Bye bye. That must have happened when my word crashed and I wasn't paying attention. (I as the start of an unfinished sentence and hit up as part of my report on the tennis.)

Yeah, that's not quite a hash without digits, NKHBDEL in any case or repeated letters in any case, and also no capital GMYX... (I think that one took me 10-15 minutes alone, and I had to do it twice)

BTW, I've created the circuitry tag, if anyone wants to tag their puzzles with it.

Or write the tag wiki for it (I can't be bothered).

Sp3000

@Deusovi ...interesting answer - def back half is a bit loose, but still fitting.

Deusovi

Yeah, I know. But (rot13) Avagraqb qbrf fbeg bs unir n erchgngvba sbe orvat snzvyl-sevraqyl (fbzrgvzrf rira GBB zhpu, nppbeqvat gb fbzr crbcyr) fb V sryg vg nccyvrq.

Sp3000

Tvira gur yrggref lbh unq yrsg bire (Znevb thl vf n avpr svaq), V qba'g zvaq gbb zhpu. Vg jnf whfg ernyyl uneq gb trg gur qrs vs lbh sbphfrq ba gung ovg :C

Deusovi

1:37 AM

@Sp3000 Jryy, zl bgure bcgvba vf "uvf gbzr vf tyvgpul", ohg "gbzr" jbhyq rira or jbefrgurer.

Sp3000

Yeah not that - it's pretty good clue as is :)

Deusovi

OH MAN, just came up with a better one. Hold on

"I'm the Mario guy, so eccentric (7, 8)"

2

Sp3000

Ahaha nice

Deusovi

This is perfect.

Silenus

@Deusovi Are you looking for answers?

Deusovi

1:50 AM

Hm? I mean, I think you should try to solve it. I think it's a good clue

Silenus

@Deusovi O, I have it, and it is good (I wonder what the theme was). But I won't spoil it.

Also, you might add an exclamation point to that second version

Deusovi

The theme is (rot13ed) ybat anzr nantenzf.

Silenus

@Deusovi Ah, well if you know the theme it's not too hard at all.

Deusovi

Yeah, agreed. It's not meant to be hard though

Silenus

@Deusovi, how is the reddit community? I was thinking of joining some time ago, but found this place instead.

Deusovi

1:53 AM

Ehhhhhhhh.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Silenus

@Deusovi Fair enough. You don't need to say anything else, if you'd prefer to keep your remarks off the record.

Deusovi

Nah, I don't mind. I go by a different username there anyway - I'm sure it's not that hard to link me to it, but I don't really care.

If you do join Reddit, unsubscribe from all of the defaults immediately, and only subscribe to small subreddits. (I'm a frequent contributor to /r/math, some puzzle game subreddits, and that's about it. Even then, /r/math is still pretty bad.)

Don't get me wrong, there are some good things. But a lot of the time, the bad outweighs the good. (Especially with politics. There are several "alt-right" extremist hate subreddits.)

Silenus

@Deusovi Thanks for the advice.

Gareth McCaughan

@boboquack I assume the Gareth you're referring to is some guy on Reddit rather than me?

@Deusovi The word you were looking for might be "mitigates".

Rubio

yes! I was blocking on that. thank you hehe

wb @GarethMcCaughan :)

Gareth McCaughan

2:06 AM

"wb"?

Rubio

Welcome back.

Gareth McCaughan

ah

I haven't been particularly absent.

Though maybe not very active.

Mike Q

@Deusovi Is CHARLES MARTINET a cryptic clue solution?

Rubio

for the Mario 7,8? seems highly unlikely

his update "leaked" some information that is I'm sure relevant.

Gareth McCaughan

It seems perfectly obvious how the clue has to work. Unfortunately I guess that actually solving it depends on knowledge that I lack.

Rubio

2:12 AM

same

Gareth McCaughan

(I un-rot13ed all the earlier discussion, but it only (1) told me things I'd worked out already and (2) gave further confirmation that there's probably a dependence on knowledge I don't have.)

Mike Q

You can apply rot13 in a cryptic clue?

Gareth McCaughan

no (well, maybe in a clue for an audience familiar with rot13 you could find a way to indicate it, but that's not what's going on here)

Rubio

@MikeQ Yes. But not really. But yes. Ask @Deusovi :)

Gareth McCaughan

there was some discussion of D's clue a bit earlier, and some of it was rot13ed

Rubio

2:14 AM

What was that rotten clue again?

(The real answer is almost always "no", but it has been done)

"It makes wet god - disgusting! (6)" was the clue

the answer is ROTTEN, because ROT-10 makes "wet" into "god"

As a general rule, though, it's not likely you'll see that kind of thing :)

Gareth McCaughan

ah, done D's clue

(with a little help from the internet, which knows many things I don't)

I have to say I'm not entirely convinced by gur frpbaq unys bs gur qrsvavgvba va rvgure irefvba.

Rubio

“Here’s to ~~alcohol~~ the Internet: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” With apologies to Homer Simpson.

Mike Q

I thought "eccentric" meant anagram, but there's no 7-8 for IMTHEMARIOGUYSO

Rubio

anagram, I think you mean

Gareth McCaughan

when you say acronym do you mean anagram?

Mike Q

2:19 AM

Apologies, I'm multimultitasking at the moment

Volatility

deja vu:

Jan 18 at 23:46, by Alconja

This new one, @Will... there's no indirect acronyms are there?

Rubio

lol

pretty sure not

Will

There is a very direct acronym.

boboquack

@GarethMcCaughan No, it's you, when you were doing CCCC's that seemed to be themed on certain subjects as you yourself pointed out.

Gareth McCaughan

oh, I remember now

Mike Q

2:40 AM

IMTHEMARIOGUYSO --> rot20 --> anagram --> BIGAMOUS CYCLING

Rubio

well. it's 7,8 not 8,7, and that would be quite a stretch :)

Volatility

3:24 AM

Is anyone still looking at clue 27?

boboquack

Watch the view count :D

@Deusovi Do you go by a similar profile pic?

Gareth McCaughan

3:49 AM

@Volatility Every now and then I look at it, scratch my head for a bit, and give up again. I briefly had the ghost of an idea today of how one bit of the clue might kinda sorta begin to fit something to do with the answer, but it wasn't real. (I don't even remember now what it was I thought of. But it didn't work.)

Volatility

What does the hint make you think of?

Deusovi

@boboquack Reddit doesn't have profile pics.

Gareth McCaughan

@Volatility To be frank, very little. Perhaps the "paper" is the computer screen, or the web page, or the part of the web page containing it; so notions like bits, pixels, HTML, etc., might come into it. Or, if it's specifically the relevant bit of the web page, maybe something to do with its colour. Beige, cream, ecru, one of those. None of that is giving me any useful ideas, even though I know what the final answer is meant to be.

Or maybe the "paper" is within the fictional world of the puzzle -- but that doesn't seem like it works because the puzzle is meant to be on a plaque rather than, say, a poster.

Volatility

You're on a cold trail :( Should I add another hint? I don't want the bounty to be wasted.

Gareth McCaughan

Yeah, I didn't think any of that was going to lead anywhere useful.

I'm going to be AFK for several hours now, but another hint might give someone some ideas...

Rubio

5:04 AM

27 seems way underclued and the hints aren't really at all helpful.

Volatility

@Rubio You're looking at them the wrong way. I'd say they're just as helpful as your level 0 and level 1 hints :P

Rubio

Sure, but that's why they're labeled as level 0 and 1 helpfulness. :)

Volatility

As for it being underclued, well, I thought people would throw things at the wall and the right thing would stick pretty quickly, but guess not.

Rubio

Unfortunately it seems there is so little to grasp that it's hard to even know which way to go with it.

The "enigmatic-puzzle" tag potentially hides some useful missing information as well. (like, it'd be nice to know e.g. if this is a riddle, vs a steganography, but we don't get that hint either)

It's fairly telling that even knowing the right answer for the past day, nobody's actually solved the puzzle correctly. usually hints can be seen to be relevant and correct in hindsight, but here not even that applies. that's ... quite unusual.

Volatility

Well, the hints hint at the process, not the solution, although they are somewhat related. It's hard to see where the solution comes from without actually doing the process.

boboquack

5:22 AM

Maybe we need to regard the clues with a pinch of the answer

Volatility

It might be worth saying that there's also a detail in the first-level yellow box which was supposed to be a confirmation of the answer, but I guess it's now a hint at the process.

Rubio

6:22 AM

This "Endless Loop" puzzle and answer are approaching Darglocian scale in combined length :)

Oliver

7:11 AM

hi

Gareth McCaughan

12:43 PM

On the face of it, having hints at the process and hints at the solution should be exactly what you'd need to make things easier. Clues at both ends, as it were. The hints so far feel (though I could be terribly wrong) like the sort that once you've solved the puzzle you look back at and say "oh, yes, that's what that was about" rather than ones that actually help in solving. Which I guess makes them potentially helpful to solvers who are trying one thing after another -- [...continues]

... eventually they may stumble across the right path and see the connection to one of the hints. But in this case I suspect most have more or less given up trying random things because it seems too hard to get a grip on.

manshu

@GarethMcCaughan Any ideas on humn's easy puzzle

Gareth McCaughan

1:27 PM

Only that it looks as if what's going on, in broad terms, is that each thing typed in (after the name at the start) is treated as some sort of instructions to transform the text currently "inside the machine" -- it looks e.g. as if, at least in some circumstances, a "?" removes a letter somehow -- and the goal is somehow to transform the text into the empty string ("just right"). OR ...

... and this is not so far from being equivalent -- maybe what you're doing is constructing a sort of matching pattern that you want to match the input, and it's saying how much surplus pattern or surplus input you have.

The places where it offers an alternative would be ones where (on the first interpretation) there are two ways to follow the given instruction or (on the second interpretation) there are two ways to match the pattern against part of the string. Or something like that, anyway.

I am no more than, let's say, 40% confident that any of this is actually how it works.

And I am puzzled by the apparent distinction between "Just right" and "0 chars remaining".

Sphinx

1:44 PM

1

Q: A puzzle-loving lady's phone number

First time submitting a puzzle here, hopefully the tags are correct and it's not too difficult. It seems there's already a puzzle with a similar setup, but I think this one's distinct enough. After a long day, you head to your local bar for a couple of drinks. Halfway through your second beer...

manshu

3:39 PM

about section of humn's chat profile says "181 chars remaining"

Rubio

3:59 PM

I remember noticing that in one place it says "no chars remaining" and another it says "0 chars remaining"

I got a "mastermind" vibe from it, similar to Gareth's second idea, but had no idea how to proceed from there

Sphinx

4:37 PM

0

Q: 2 circle with different radii covers same path on same number of turns... crack the fallacy

I found this puzzle from an old issue of a science magazine জ্ঞান ও বিজ্ঞান ("Knowledge and Science")(August, 1977); submitted by Amal Dash, a teacher of Scottish Church school, Kolkata; as mentioned in the magazine. Incidentally; the answer wasn't published there. The original pub...

geometry

Always Confused

5:35 PM

Please teach me how to properly use the command for vanishing (displaying text and photo only on hover). Other users used ` >! ` but that is not properly working.

Will

Do you have more than one line? You have to put two spaces at the end of each one if so.

Always Confused

Okay plz visit this

On my last edit I added after all line

Will

Delete the blank line and add another space after "because"

Always Confused

okay Im seeing.

yes now it is working. Actually I was trying to break the answer into 2 paragraphs like thai questions' s answer (that broken into top layer bottom layer etc blocks)

It is sufficient now,

however originally I was trying to keep the line "because" as visible ant the next content vanished.

Will

Oh, then just take "because" out of the spoiler and put it on its own line (it will require a blank line above)

Always Confused

5:50 PM

However THANK YOU SO SO MUCH For help

:)

Always Confused

6:01 PM

@ Everyone Visit this mad amazing internet game

Always Confused

synapsis-2

(Flash player plug in support required to play it)

Sphinx

6:20 PM

0

Q: Who is Paul's girlfriend?

Persons: Name Paul Max Alex Charlotte Daisy Alice Lucy Age ? 14 22 ? 16 ? ? Parents alive m mw w ? mw - mw Lastname ? 2 1 2 ? 3 ? sex m m ? ...

logical-deduction wordplay lateral-thinking word-problem

Sphinx

6:51 PM

0

Q: Miniature Puzzle

This is my first post on here, and I doubt it'll be my last I figured that I probably should do a little puzzle because it's my first submission, but unfortunately, I'm way too literal Everything you need to solve the puzzle is contained within the 4x18 pixel image, so no hidden info in this te...

enigmatic-puzzle steganography

Puzzling Meta

0

Q: Is there/ should there be an instruction / tutorial to use code to hide answer?

A great respect to puzzling SE that most users the command >! to hide their answer (and show up the answer only the visitor hover the mouse on screen), so that the visitors can apply their effort and doesn't get influenced. Recently I've met this question; none of the answers used this techniqu...

discussion feature-request

Sphinx

7:07 PM

0

Q: a text in a text

Organizations, ranging from multi-national for proft corporations to nonprofit charities, keep secrets for competitive advantage, tomeet legal requirements, or, in some ases, to conceal nefrious behavior. ew products under development, uniquemanufacturing techniques, or simply lists of...

wordplay

Deusovi

8:38 PM

Whoa, this puzzle is really good.

4

Q: Miniature Puzzle

This is my first post on here, and I doubt it'll be my last I figured that I probably should do a little puzzle because it's my first submission, but unfortunately, I'm way too literal Everything you need to solve the puzzle is contained within the 4x18 pixel image, so no hidden info in this te...

enigmatic-puzzle steganography

Rubio

9:21 PM

what do you use to check out images and get RGB values etc?

Deusovi

Paint.NET.

I just used the color picker.

Gah, I've extracted all the low-order bits but nothing is happening.

Rubio

maybe you're done fishing image data out

Deusovi

Nah, there are some anomalies in the low order bits.

That definitely looks pattern-y to me.

Wait... am I doing this wrong? D:

Yeah, I think I am. Hold on...

That looks a lot better.

Not sure what to do with it yet, but it's definitely better.

At least I don't need to fiddle around with bits.

Deusovi

10:09 PM

Done! :D

stacksfiller

It's all right!

Deusovi

Oh, welcome to chat! Thanks for the wonderful puzzle!

stacksfiller

I'm wasn't sure if you saw on the last bit or not, but each of the words was a different length

Hi, and thanks!

Deusovi

Oh duh. That makes more sense.

How long did it take you to make that?

stacksfiller

Hard to say

I had an idea to make a small as possible puzzle for a while

but i just kept thinking of more parts I could put in here and there

and it ended up turning into subanswers and a final answer

When it came to making the actual image, it wasn't too long. Just had to make sure I was careful

apparently not too careful though, on the semaphore part

Deusovi

10:19 PM

Hey, it's fine - I still got it. (Also, I'm not sure if LIMITED being the one that involved semaphore, which wasn't possible to express fully, was intentional or not. It was pretty cool though, even if unintentional.)

stacksfiller

That was a coincidence, but I think it works out cool too

I really liked how the KINDERGARTEN cluing split up

Deusovi

Yeah, that was pretty cool! I was surprised how it fit so nicely.

Oh, by the way, do you do any puzzle hunts?

stacksfiller

I know about some but haven't done any during the actual time they were happening

Deusovi

I think you'd like them, especially the metapuzzles.

stacksfiller

I was looking at some of the 2017 mystery hunt puzzles, but now they're not online? :(

Deusovi

10:36 PM

solutions.monsters-et-manus.com/hunt/index.html

They're here.

stacksfiller

Thanks! The link on mit.edu/~puzzle/currhunt.html doesn't seem to work

Also that site just completely doesn't have the 2016 one, which is kind of sad...

Deusovi

Yeah, the 2016 hunt is still up at huntception.com. It wasn't archived because the team that ran that hunt dissolved shortly afterwards.

stacksfiller

It's at huntception.com but considering the amount of work they put into making it you'd think they'd be able to put it on the site in a over a year

Deusovi

Most of them are still doing the Mystery Hunt, but they've split off into different teams.

stacksfiller

The current people have control of the site though right?

Deusovi

10:40 PM

The huntception site? I don't think so.

stacksfiller

I mean the mit.edu/~puzzle site

Deusovi

I'm not sure who runs that.

stacksfiller

11:07 PM

Thinking more about compressing stuff into small spaces along the lines of that puzzle, a single pixel has 24 bits of info, 8 for each of red, green and blue. If you think about those 20Q toy thingies that could guess a right a good chunk of the time if you thought of a common object, that means you can encode most common objects with A SINGLE PIXEL

Mithrandir

Pixels are powerful

Mike Q

11:21 PM

Hey all, did anyone figure out Deusovi's or Will's newest CCCCs?

Deusovi

Well, mine's not a CCCC. It's just a cryptic clue.

But Gareth got it

he didn't reveal the answer in chat though

Mike Q

What makes it not a CCCC? It's in chat.

Deusovi

the "chain" thing

CCCC is only the game where whoever solves one cryptic clue in the "chain" makes the next one.

Mike Q

Any reason there has to be only one chain?

Mithrandir

... Because then it's confusing.

Mike Q

11:25 PM

But they're puzzles, they're kind of supposed to be confusing!

Mithrandir

@TheGreatEscaper you're in Perth? Did you happen to know an Israeli guy who moved away from there a couple months ago? Named Assael?

Puzzling Meta

11:45 PM

1

Q: Analogy questions: acceptability and tagging

I'm new to this site, and I have an idea for a question, but before I post, I want to clarify a few things. The question I have in mind is in the format of an analogy, but it is not a typical analogy like you might see on some aptitude test (twig:branch::finger:_____), in the sense that it requ...

discussion feature-request

Gareth McCaughan

11:57 PM

(Pretty sure Sp3000 and Silenus both got Deusovi's 7,8 too.)

Deusovi

Oh yeah, Silenus got it. Not sure about Sp, but it seems like he did.

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