The Sphinx's Lair

Short Answer Only Long Answer Let's start with what we know. Also, because we know that: and Let's assume that: and so: Now, we've got some useful numbers. Almost done, let's use some $Ma+h$ and logical-deductions Last thing! Here, I'll explain how to properly weigh the ...

Rubio

1:59 AM

Not ESCHEW

Chris Cudmore

Good. Because I expected more rigorous cluing from you.

TrojanByAccident

What do you guys think of my answer so far?

Rubio

I would be mad at that ckuing. I was curious wherexeschew came from. And I generally won't entertain fishing expeditions by answering yes or no on anything less than a fullnsolve attempt so I ask for one when onexwasnt made. (Also helps me seecwhere a clueing went sideways if the guesses are way off)

Chris Cudmore

Jax doesn't work.

TrojanByAccident

@Rubio Keyboard troubles?

Rubio

2:04 AM

Yeah lol

Chris Cudmore

Looks like phone typing with auto defect turned off

TrojanByAccident

@ChrisCudmore ?

lol

Rubio

Dodgy tablet. Its terrible.

TrojanByAccident

@ChrisCudmore defect?

Chris Cudmore

Well, it introduces more errors than it solves.

Heaven and he'll.

TrojanByAccident

2:06 AM

lol

But seriously, what'd you guys think of my post?

Chris Cudmore

The dog liked it's butt.

I typed licked and its.

TrojanByAccident

@ChrisCudmore nice to know.

Chris Cudmore

Is there any trickery you could do by weighing multiple coins at a time?

TrojanByAccident

I assume so

but that would be counterproductive

Chris Cudmore

I haven't really thought about that puzzle. The potential for compensating errors is high.

TrojanByAccident

2:09 AM

I've spent hours on it

hence the long, winding answer

still need to complete that last bit

Chris Cudmore

With luck, we can get it in 2 single weighings

TrojanByAccident

Yeah

but it says minimum to guarantee it

Chris Cudmore

Or 1, even. If diff = 2, both are fake

TrojanByAccident

yes

so at best, it's one weighing

but that's highly unlikely

and isn't guaranteed

Chris Cudmore

But my gut says we can get it down to 31.

TrojanByAccident

2:13 AM

I've calculated this

trust me

Chris Cudmore

Ok. I will.

TrojanByAccident

@ChrisCudmore What if those 31 all turn out to be real? :P

.-.

I am legit really mad rn

Chris Cudmore

Fair enough

TrojanByAccident

I copied my decision tree

forgot to paste it

then copied something else by accident

arg

TheGreatEscaper

That puzzle looks like fun

TrojanByAccident

2:19 AM

@TheGreatEscaper 'tis

TheGreatEscaper

Why don't we just split it into two evenish groups?

Hang on, I think I have a solution.

TrojanByAccident

@TheGreatEscaper Because.

@TheGreatEscaper I think I can disprove your solution

TheGreatEscaper

My solution turns out to be very inefficient anyway

TrojanByAccident

You're failing to realize how much time and energy I have spent on this puzzle

TheGreatEscaper

Your solution is really clever.

I wanted to try something out before reading yours.

TrojanByAccident

2:24 AM

:)

TheGreatEscaper

...ill still see if I can beat it, though :P

TrojanByAccident

:P sure thing

TheGreatEscaper

2:40 AM

Trojan, I think I got you beat... :P

writing up a solution now.

TrojanByAccident

alright

:P

TheGreatEscaper

2:56 AM

Oof, maybe not! There's an issue I need to iron out.

This is a really fun question.

TrojanByAccident

ha, nice

@TheGreatEscaper I assume you tried to drop it to 31?

TheGreatEscaper

The number 31 hasn't cropped up in my partial, no

The funny thing is, that I'm pretty sure I can identify a real within less than 15 weighs.

Unfortunately the question is not asking for identification of a real...

TrojanByAccident

@TheGreatEscaper no, for it to be guaranteed, the minimum for real-finding is 31

Where do you get 15 from?

nvm, it's possible if you can weigh more than one at a time

TheGreatEscaper

I can definitely identify a real in a lot less than 31

TrojanByAccident

same

requires math I don't feel like doing rn, tho

TheGreatEscaper

3:09 AM

i think my solution is watertight, now.

TrojanByAccident

alright

TheGreatEscaper

Identification of a fake in 8 weighings, I believe. It might be 9 or 10 depending on how the last steps play out.

just need to double check...

TrojanByAccident

well, gj for math skills

TheGreatEscaper

thanks! I do math Olympiad stuff so my brain is probably just wired this way now

TrojanByAccident

lol

@TheGreatEscaper After you post the answer, want to play some HE?

TheGreatEscaper

3:12 AM

Yup, will do

yesterday I got bogged by my rebus puzzle

TrojanByAccident

^.^

TrojanByAccident

3:35 AM

@TheGreatEscaper almost done?

TheGreatEscaper

*yup!

yup,

it's a long solution T_T

TrojanByAccident

lol

I know the feeling

TheGreatEscaper

Gah, having to identify a fake instead of a real is really annoying in this last case, which I have titled 'THE ANNOYING CASE'.

TrojanByAccident

lol

TheGreatEscaper

Identifying a real can be done within 9 weighs for me.

TrojanByAccident

3:44 AM

I can help if you'd like

I promise I won't steal :P

TheGreatEscaper

Alright, do you have an address I can mail my solution so far, to?

*email, i mean

TrojanByAccident

How about just irc?

TheGreatEscaper

I really don't like IRC :P but sure, if ya want.

TrojanByAccident

:P

Deusovi

@Rubio "Roman".

Rubio

3:59 AM

times roman. got it.

thanks :)

Deusovi

"Roman type" means non-bolded/italicized/fancy.

Rubio

4:39 AM

@TheGreatEscaper you still here?

TheGreatEscaper

Yup!

What's up?

Rubio

your coins answer has lots of terms like "2*z*"

are you intending 2*z* or 2 z ?

TheGreatEscaper

Oops, i thought it did italics.

Rubio

it does but not like that

Ankoganit

You should use MathJax instead

Rubio

4:41 AM

you might want to ... yeah

$2z$

will be italicized

TheGreatEscaper

Oh awesome.

Rubio

you can also change things like (n+1)/2 to $\frac{n+1}2$

mathjax is pretty handy

I can run a quick pass over it if you like

Ankoganit

$\frac{n+1}2$, in fact

Rubio

oops. typo on that first brace sorry

TrojanByAccident

or be weird like me, doing stuff like $10$**g**

Rubio

4:46 AM

that's gross. :)

$10\bf{g}$

TrojanByAccident

bf?

TheGreatEscaper

Oh i just edited it

Ankoganit

@TrojanByAccident boldface

TrojanByAccident

i don't like the italicization

Rubio

i wish there was a good way to bold nonproportional in mathjax. if there is, I haven't found it.

Ankoganit

4:47 AM

@Rubio nonproportional?

Rubio

iiiwww vs iiiwww

Ankoganit

Okay you mean monospacing

yeah.

Idk either

I've looked. :)

4:53 AM

@Will Nice presentation!! :) And good solve.

TrojanByAccident

Anyone made more progress on the CCCC?

I don't remember if this was said before

but I'm feeling DD

Btw, how is @Rubio always dominating the starboard?

Rubio

I don't know that myself. hehe

TrojanByAccident

lol

Btw, @TheGreatEscaper, if you do manage to fully solve that puzzle, I'll give you a bounty ;)

Rubio

5:13 AM

weelllll hell. I think I did something invalid in my CCCC.

Ankoganit

Oh noo

You can still edit right?

TrojanByAccident

@Rubio and now the truth comes out ;P

Rubio

I'm going to change it to be absolutely sure

CCCC: First-last flow may help ease congestion. (6)

Not quite as nice reading but that should remove any doubt

TrojanByAccident

Ah

so east-west was what I thought it was originally

wait, no

what?

how does east-west match with first-last?

it would have to be west-east

Volatility

Presumably they both clue T?

TrojanByAccident

5:20 AM

.-.

@Volatility ah

interesting

Rubio

east-west probably doesn't validly clue what I intended. first-last for sure does.

sorry about that.

Volatility

...so probably not T then

TrojanByAccident

5:33 AM

@Volatility I think it's first, last, FloW

Volatility

What word starts with FW though?

TrojanByAccident

@Volatility A few, nothing relevant that I can see

@Rubio if it's what I'm thinking, I believe it might have.

Rubio

It might, but I'm not sure. Figured better safe than sorry.

Interesting tool btw. I like how it thinks "fw" is a word.

TrojanByAccident

lol

Rubio

And you click on it and it tells you:
FW

FW may stand for:

thanks. That's very helpful. :)

TrojanByAccident

5:49 AM

:)

Rubio

6:03 AM

I think someone should give this asker his gold badge. puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/24848/how-can-64-65

TrojanByAccident

@Rubio +1

Rubio

cool.

TrojanByAccident

@Rubio Someone commented on how the hypotenuses weren't "perfectly straight"

Rubio

well - moderately misleading but accurate

they're not actually hypoten{uses,ii,i} - what is the plural here anyway -

TrojanByAccident

It's honestly not that misleading

Rubio

6:11 AM

they just look like they are

TrojanByAccident

I could take GIMP and re-arrange the shapes so they match properly

but that would require effort T_T

Rubio

I think the answers already posted do plenty to show exactly how that works

TrojanByAccident

yeah

Beastly Gerbil

7:26 AM

Yay another question reached 100!

Rube Wordberg is next inline...

TrojanByAccident

gugtn, all

@BeastlyGerbil That was because of me, btw

Beastly Gerbil

And the 99 other people who upvoted it as well :P

TrojanByAccident

@BeastlyGerbil I mean technically, but I clicked 100.

anyway, gutgn

Techidiot

@BeastlyGerbil Has you day started? I am going to upvote your answer

Just wanted to be sure if you are capped or not

Beastly Gerbil

7:46 AM

@Techidiot thanks :)

Techidiot

Done.

10 ^ nice :)

Sid

8:03 AM

Yes, mathy guys.... Isn't x^2 + y^2 -4x=0 an equation of a circle?

Rubio

@Techidiot Just so you know, rep caps are aligned on UTC days for everyone. Has nothing to do with who it is or what timezone they're in.

and no, @Sid - that's not a circle

oh. wait, misread it. it is a circle. :)

Sid

Wait, is it or is it not?

Rubio

it is.

one sec, ...

wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+x%5E2+%2B+y%5E2+-4x%3D0

damn

Sid

Well, thanks... I had got into an argument with a friend over that..

He claimed that this was apparently a Parabola...

Rubio

can't onebox that

parabolas are y=x^2 [...]

not y^2

Sid

8:17 AM

Exactly..

The guy wouldn't budge on his stand..

Anyway, that Andy Crush saga, What are Irish Names, again?

Rubio

names of Irish origin

Sid

Which are?

Rubio

I list them

Claire and Bryony and Sinead

that or my sources are lying to me

Actually.... Sinead is unmistakably Irish. Claire and Bryony, I'm seeing, are debatable. But Claire should be covered by the no-twin rule anyway, and Bryony is 13, so excluded that way.

Techidiot

@Rubio I didnt knew if he was capped today or yesterday.. So was just checking

Rubio

he was capped yesterday.

(could also be today, but I doubt it. hehe)

he mentioned being capped about 3.8 hours before UTC-midnight.

Techidiot

8:32 AM

And if he was capped today, he wouldnt have earned any points for my upvote right?

Rubio

right

M Oehm

Morning, guys. I see you are looking at that pesky Andy Crush Saga puzzle.

Rubio

indeed.

M Oehm

I have the feeling that I will groan and roll my eyes when the solution is finally found.

Rubio

If there are any rule-outs you can spot that are not well justified I'd love to hear about it

because barring someone being inappropriately excluded, my latest update to my answer pretty much outlines the only possible solutions and why pretty much all of them suck.

Sid

8:39 AM

Jenna and Claire have to be twins. Maybe fraternal..

Rubio

they don't have to be

M Oehm

The teachers ale also on the list, but they are, of course, older than Andy. Other than that, Sister Nicola fits all requirements, perhaps with the exception that Nicola can be an Itialian boy's name.

Rubio

and Xavier is explicitly male, so he's a nonstarter

M Oehm

Plus he has a Kiss (X) in his name.

Sid

Who is Sister Nicola? I don't see that name in the list...

M Oehm

8:41 AM

The teachers are in the header, above the pupil list.

Rubio

Not on the list of students - in the header, one of the (presumably) teachers

Anyone have any idea why there are only a few horizontal lines in the student list, btw? That feels irrelevant but at this point I'm grasping for anything

M Oehm

It even says "Teachers" explicitly in red.

Rubio

oh. heh, yeah I guess it does :)

M Oehm

I guess the horizontal lines are just artefacts from exporting a bitmap without anti-aliasing.

Rubio

that'd be my guess too

or a crappily lossy image resize

M Oehm

8:44 AM

I had also thought about an out-of-the-box solution: What if every supposition, including "she", was wrong? So we'd be looking for a boy that is older, has an Irish name with gold or silver in it and so on.

Rubio

If that were the case, without a lateral-thinking tag I'd be angry.

M Oehm

That Danial Dollar Smith guy might be a candidate: Dollars are found in the US and there are silver and gold dollars. He's a DD. But, yeah, I can't make that stick either.

Oh, and flood-filling the list doesn't reveal any hidden names. (The first signs of desperation.)

Rubio

" Has EVERY name on there been ruled out?... you're nearly there,just have to tie all the different bits together... – Kit-Ginevra 2 days ago "

tends to strongly suggest there's someone on the list, anyway

the only name on there I hadn't explicitly ruled out was Sister Nicola

which I've now addressed in my answer.

M Oehm

But every name on the list has been ruled out, but maybe incorrectly. Kit-Ginevra has only commented on whether the crushes are correct, not on thereasoning for each exclusion.

Rubio

Amusingly, I had argued for each that it wasn't excluded

Sid

8:49 AM

I am telling you, Claire and Jenna are twins.. My little knowledge of Biology tells me that it is highly unlikely two children would be born within a year without being twins...

Rubio

and then found reasons to exclude them.

@Sid see my answer.

Sid

Even if they are adopted, they wouldn't know that, would they?

Rubio

Why not?

One may be a biological child, one adopted.

that sounds funny. What do you call a non-adopted child anyway? heh

M Oehm

They just share a family name. Would you bet that Jill and Jenny Miller are twins?

Sid

Of the same age? Probable

Rubio

8:52 AM

That's true too; they could be unrelated entirely

Mahon isn't a common enough name that I'd expect it, though. If it was Anderson I'd be more comfortable with that.

Sid

Well, but but... Instinctively, it feels that they must be related..

Rubio

I agree.

I found another basis to rule out Claire in any case.

M Oehm

Two of my classmates had the same family name, Stephan. Every new teacher we got went through the list and asked: "Are you related somehow?" They weren't.

Rubio

Though now I'm not so sure how firm that footing is. It seems the search I was using to see if names were Irish landed me on a pretty dubious site whose results I no longer trust.

But if Claire isn't Irish, then we have two girls not excluded, which is little better.

babynamesofireland.com/claire suggests it is Irish though

M Oehm

There's even a County Cla(i)re. My Irish friend's sister-in-law's name is Claire, too, and she's from the countryside where they all have names like Maeve and Séan. The name has certainly an Irish ring to it.

But we may be baring up the wrong tree here: Is Mahon and Irish name? If so, the whole twin discussion is moot.

About the family name Mahon.

Rubio

9:00 AM

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Claire
Gender Traditionally male, but in modern times more often female
Origin Word/name French/Latin

Claire or Clair /ˈklɛər/ is a given name of Latin/Viking origin via French; the name could mean "clear" or "famous". The word still means clear in French in its feminine form.

Interesting. So even if not Irish, still ruled out by "a proper girl's name"?

Ah. Good find @MOehm

I'm beginning to think this puzzle answer is going to irritate me.

M Oehm

Yes, Claire is a French form of Clara or Chiara. It still seems popular in Ireland.

Rubio

It'll end up being Erin Kiss. watch. *mutter*

M Oehm

I've had this feeling all along. Kit-Ginevra has posted three questions, all chock-full of red-herring material.

Rubio

heh. Erin is Irish in origin.

He doesn't have a crush.

M Oehm

Isn't Erin even a poetic name for Ireland?

Rubio

9:06 AM

Yeah.

Sid

Yeah, he doesn't have a crush. He did all that stuff to mess with his mom. That's the explanation.

M Oehm

That's more likely. He just sends his sister and mother on a wild goose chase, Cologne and litte hearts and all, so that he has them off his back.

Rubio

the only other possibilities are that the assumptions about AA/DD or Ag/Au are wrong

which isn't playing fair

M Oehm

I think the assumptions are good. If not, that would mean that these hints wouldn't rule out anyone, which doesn't seem likely. (That's why I think Jenna and Claire should be twins, otherwise that hint isn't good for anything.)

Anyway. Saturdays are laundry days. I'll let you ponder that puzzle a bit more and see you later.

Rubio

9:24 AM

yeah I agree about the twins hint, that was my principle point in assuming its relevance.

Rubio

9:43 AM

Welp. We'll see how that update fares.

Volatility

10:19 AM

This grid logic puzzle I'm making is driving me crazy. The time required to generate a valid n-by-n grid seems to increase exponentially with n: I took a minute finding a 3x3 grid, like 10 minutes finding a 4x4, a couple hours finding a 5x5, and still haven't gotten a 6x6 after a day.

TheGreatEscaper

10:31 AM

Ouch

Original mechanics, I assume?

Volatility

yeah (or at least, I believe so)

TheGreatEscaper

Original mechanics can be a pain. I'm trying to teach mine wordlessly, and while some mechanics have worked surprisingly well, there's one or two that I really need to iron out.

Also, does your puzzle have to be an nxn grid?

Volatility

yes

TheGreatEscaper

Ah alright.

Volatility

It's similar to Sudoku, except with more restrictions

TheGreatEscaper

10:34 AM

A latinsquare type thing with extra rules?

Sounds like fun :)

Oops, I need to head off!

Sorry

Volatility

No worries, see ya!

Sphinx

1:04 PM

3

Q: I'm the other form

The other form, they call me Horror is all they can see I am not a killer bee Yet a queen I serve fiercely Dark in color, light in steps Silently we close our gaps Next, a thing - your face it wraps A young will be your mishaps What am I?

Rand al'Thor

1:36 PM

@Sphinx Already solved before you posted it, Slowinx.

Sphinx

2:28 PM

-2

Q: Is there a Rubik's scramble generator for top layer only?

I want to practice solving the last layer, but the online scramblers I've seen are full cube only. Is there a Rubik's scramble generator which generated the top layer only?

rubiks-cube

Chris Cudmore

3:23 PM

Cox and Rathvon is unusually difficult today.

Rand al'Thor

?

Chris Cudmore

Newspaper cryptic

Normally takes an hour with maybe 1 clue unsolved.

It's been 2 hours and I'm not half way there

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