The Sphinx's Lair - 2017-02-13 (page 1 of 2)

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3:23 AM

0

Q: Rubik's cube swapping edge pieces middle layer diagonal

I was wondering if any one knew how to swap 2 diagonal edge pieces. Assume the white squares don't matter. Image generated on https://ruwix.com/online-rubiks-cube-solver-program/

2 hours later…

5:42 AM

0

Q: My frends ridle

My friend gave me this riddle. It's in Hebrew, and I had fun solving it. So I want to share: The red horse jumped. It killed the man. Blue blood trickled. The fly flew, and the elephants, trumpeted Man marched over the rod. The king wished to concur But no horses wer...

3 hours later…

8:40 AM

Curiosity killed the cat, but for the high-rep users, what 'milestones' has PSE gone through?

(or am I not allowed to know)

9:22 AM

Okay.

1 hour later…

10:22 AM

0

Q: Solid round the number 1!

Solid round the number 1, A motley few, this road, walked on, Yes I'm a coward now be gone, Made of two but I am one! Submersing ship with unhinged crew, Twixt 'Of' and 'Gave' another clue, Never in a shade of blue, I warn of danger, please don't sue!

2 hours later…

12:27 PM

0

Q: Blood Relations

L,M,N,O,T,U,V and W are eight members of a family.They belong to three different generations.There are three married couples.They are all sitting around a circular table facing the center but not necessarily in same manner.N and L are children of O.L is not immediate neighbour of his mother.O and...

logical-deduction

12:51 PM

0

Q: How is this the correct answer in this number sequence?

I have this sequence: 24, 63, 10, 48, 35, 72, 44.... The next number is How is this the correct answer?

number-sequence

1:13 PM

@Sid I now understand why you were asking about "san". As I answered earlier it's an honorific, what I hadn't thought of at the time (I didn't know you were talking about grid thirty-six) is that san also means three.

1:27 PM

0

Q: Coding and Decoding

In a Certain Code Language: 'Great Ghost goes Germany' is written as FOTF4T 'round she goes crazy' is written as ZEHR 'Canada can create ' is written as CAK3X 'Just not good enough' is written as UOOJ please anyone share the logic for the Question,How the sentence can be decoded,please anyon...

logical-deduction

TheGreatEscaper

SAN can also mean mountain

Sort of

They do say "fuji-san" but that's more of an honorific (which I've heard used for many things)

TheGreatEscaper

San can be appended to names

It's polite

Yes, that's an honorific lol

TheGreatEscaper

But the thing with mountains with SAN at the end isn't about the honorific

1:32 PM

I've seen it used for animals, household items, mountains, etc

Gareth McCaughan

Wikipedia saith: This "san" is not the honorific suffix used with people's names, such as Watanabe-san, but the Sino-Japanese reading of the character yama (山?, "mountain") used in Sino-Japanese compounds.

TheGreatEscaper

Yup

Its just literally the mountain pronunciation

Gareth McCaughan

(the question mark is, in the original, a superscript linking to Wikipedia's help on non-European character sets; if I'd been less lazy I'd have not copied it here; apologies for any confusion :-).)

TheGreatEscaper

So San = mountain isn't just 'sort of', it's literally one of the two common pronunciations of mountain :)

I've never heard of the SAN being appended onto household items, that's really interesting if it's the case

I can sort of see the animals thing

@TheGreatEscaper Reading that particular article, it's still "sort of" because yama means mountain, san is just a pronounciation of it :P

TheGreatEscaper

1:35 PM

Yeah, buts that's like saying 'superfluous' only sort of means extraneous, because you can also use the word 'unnecessary'

Who wants to do Clue 29 or whatever number it is now?

TheGreatEscaper

@mith bit busy now, you missed my sweet spot around a month ago :P

It's taking a long time to go through that calfire hill painting list isn't it?

TheGreatEscaper

All Kanji have two readings

(sometimes one, actually, and sometimes a lot more)

(but generally you just say there are two readings)

San and Yama are the two readings for mountain

@TheGreatEscaper That I don't know, I know more about the phonetics than the written language.

TheGreatEscaper

1:37 PM

Point being, SAN isn't a semi word for mountain

It can just literally be translated as mountain :P

1 hour later…

2:45 PM

0

Q: How do people find more efficient algorithms for cubing?

I was wondering how people are able to simplify Cubing algorithms. Is there a piece of software or something that brute forces possibilities. Or is there an actual method to this?

2:58 PM

@dcfyj That's the problem when one word has multiple meanings..

Considering the context it would mean three

3:32 PM

It helps with the legibility of it, yes. but it's not a requirement per se.

Just to help improve your spelling, that sentence should be like this: "Will take a two week crash course"

I know the words to, too, and two can be a little confusing, as can there, their and they're

@Wheatley out of curiosity, what is your native language?

4:23 PM

3

Q: J, KK, LLL, what's next?

What comes next in each of these sequences? $$\begin{array}{align*}\textbf{ 1 }&\text{J, KK, LLL, MZ, A, BO, ?}\\\textbf{ B }&\text{HNAKXR, EERREA, LOGYND, INOPOO, ?}\\\textbf{ C }&\text{NMLLARY, JBZALOY, KMMRA, DBJTML, ORMSLBL, ?}\\\textbf{ 4 }&\text{C-N, E-N, NW-S-NE-C, S-SW-W, WSW-SE-N...

cipher pattern trivia knowledge

2 hours later…

5:57 PM

CCQ: is it allowed to use small filler words like 'at' between anagram fodder and its indicator?

I don't believe so, but I'm not sure

I remember Deusovi rejecting this idea.

A cryptic clue has three parts:

a precise definition (acceptable in traditional "quick" crosswords)
a fair subsidiary indicator to the same answer (usually involving wordplay)
and nothing else

"And nothing else" so may be not allowed

That... doesn't really answer the question lol

Any thoughts @Deusovi?

the internet lists "adrift" as an anagram indicator

@Matt Normal puzzlers like myself wouldn't be too dissatisfied. Extraordinary ones like Deus would be most terribly unhappy.

6:02 PM

I know grammatically, the word "is" is not needed, but for example's sake: [fodder] is adrift ...

@Matt I see "adrift on this list so I'd think it's ok (Deusovi linked that website a while ago as a fairly reliable source)

@Matt Meta-cryptic?

that's exactly where I got it from

:P

@Sid not quite ...

sometimes I like to make cryptics when I'm bored at work. My next puzzle probably won't continue the metacryptic series

I do have other ideas ;)

6:04 PM

Today, I posted 2 answers, the most I have done since, well... perhaps the beginning of the year and got a grand total of 10 rep out of them. Lol

@dcyfj adrift is on the list, but "is adrift" is missing

If this isn't for a puzzle, mind sharing what you have?

@Techidiot Given up on the Nad-Fed puzzle.

@Sid I didn't see. +1 for both

1

A: The Definition of Insanity

Partial(Collection of the data mostly)

I was in control of Insanity

sorry @dcyfj - I keep these around just in case

6:07 PM

@Sid You are close to that

dunno what the case is, but you never know.

I know, I am close. I don't know how to proceed.

Ok, tell me what you think about Flight?

Airplane? Common letters with Nadal

Airplane.. Good.

Go on, what more? What's enigmatic about Airplane?

6:09 PM

Um, they have wings, engines, pilot? Air hostess?

How do they relate to the Capitals?

They fly from one place to another?

Why I didn't use countries instead?

From one capital to another?

Where do they fly from?

6:11 PM

Airports?

:)

OMG! Don't tell me..

I wont :)

That was a lot of prodding, mayhaps the puzzle is a tad difficult?

There was no Geography tag, right?

6:12 PM

No geography tag. I think that would have made solvers move in wrong directions

With visual things, drawings etc

Enigmatic - Yes, because, there have been many similar puzzles recently with the same theme

Why Closest, then? If there's no distance factor?

You will see

Try solving it

Gareth McCaughan

@Matt You can't put arbitrary words between the definition and the wordplay even if they are short, any more than you can insert random words into an ordinary English sentence. Some specific short words are OK, like "is"; maybe sometimes words like "gives" or "yields".

thanks @GarethMcCaughan

I found an equally suitable indicator that fits the surface just as well :)

@GarethMcCaughan Any take on this

?

6:17 PM

@Techidiot What is that supposed to link to?

Oh damn!

@GarethMcCaughan updated the link :p

The chat-ception was interesting though.

Haha

You say the text is related to the numbers, but you never say how

Gareth McCaughan

@Techidiot I haven't really looked at that puzzle so I don't think I can comment.

6:21 PM

@dcfyj Yeah. As I said, most of the answer content is data.

Because it might be boring for solvers to type in the things and then solve :)

I see they are related, but still thinking how. The text says about rearranging the words. But I don't see any non-arbitrary way of doing it

Also, I tried combining two words and taking the center of each to see if I can get something meaningful out of it

But no luck

I ended up getting gibberish letters

Tried anagram's but didn't work

Have you tried pairing all like number together?

Rearranging might be need from what I looked at with the ones

But how can it be applied to the hint?

?

Hint follows the same pattern

HERE - 1
ARE-1
SHORTENED-1
PROGRESS-1
TO-1
AND-1
YOU-1
WORDS-1
INCORRECT-1
A-1
MYSTERY-1
DECIPHER-1
IS-1
IS-1
NEED-1
A-1
BE-1
OR-1
ELSE-1
IF-1
USE-1
NONE-1
BE-1
OR-1
BE-1
YOUR-1
ENDEAVOUR-1

(accidentally hit the enter key)

6:29 PM

Hmm.. May be arranging them alphabetically?

that wouldn't work, more than 1 "A"

You'd get A,A,ARE

It may work, A, ARE...

Yeah

In my mind that still makes sense with the hint

You can see the lines say, Take the Middle/Central and leave else

It also says "use a pair"

6:31 PM

Yea, I tried combining two words and then taking the central part

A pair would be of like items no?

Like ALITTLE

i.e. A, A

Ah, I'm thinking words, you're thinking letters

Herbrew?

Thankfully I know what you're talking about @Wheatley, for future reference you should use @{user name} to reply (especially after a long time has passed)

6:33 PM

@dcfyj Yeah, I am thinking words. But again, they do not give anything relevant

Oh, is that for the puzzle of king? :P

@Techidiot Nah, I asked him what his native language was.

Oh okay

So, taking the central letters gave gibberish things and hence I gave up

Rearranging using the numbers fails too right?

Haven't tried, but what I've noticed is that you have spare numbers

Also, I don't find any shortened words in there. Do you?

Spare numbers?

Near the bottom, you have a bunch of 1s and 2s, but the bottom of your text is using 1,2,3,4

6:37 PM

Oh yeah.

I think those are for the next step for the other images.. fill in the blanks

So the numbers are matching the way you think they are (in my way of thinking anyhow)

Hmm.. Yeah.. See, the next image..

They have 5 words in the first line..

Hmm.. Interesting..

Hey @xnor

@dcfyj What you think about the hint? Why those indices ?

Either this is the limit of my brain or may be its tired :p

That tag enigmatic can be steganography..

@Sid Made any progress?

Oh, sorry. I actually went about solving Physics problems and forgot. :-)

PSE To PSE? :p

Lol. Yeah, you could say so..

So, no progress. Perhaps someone will take over or I could see that tomorrow(Technically today)

6:47 PM

Oh. I thought you got it and was drafting an update :D

Nah, I did look at International airports, but got nothing initially.

:)

Even their IATA codes to see some similarity with names, but to no avail.

So, I thought, better to do something that I know. :P

You reached the codes and didn't find anything?

Really?

:D

No, nothing. There were too many ambiguities.

6:52 PM

What ambiguities?

Do not complicate it. It's too easy

For example, Airport of Brasilia had IATA code of BRB, which doesn't have any similar letters with NAD or Fed.

I like Physics! We love to complicate stuffs!

I always thought you liked Chemistry :)

Anyway, so BRB, who wins?

Puzzles in chemistry are easy to make, since all you require is a Periodic Table or some basic stuff. Can't make puzzles in Physics that easily..

Take a look at the puzzle and read the hint carefully once more

Apparently, Fed wins but I don't see how.

6:55 PM

What's the hint saying?

Some highlighted stuff becomes important on getting airports.

Good. What is highlighted?

WORDS!

^

Nah. . Apart from tournament name?

What is highlighted?

6:56 PM

Countries, And some emboldened stuff. (an R initially and the name)

R!

What is R?

A letter? Roger? Rafael?

Nah. In context of the puzzle content

Breaking the glass badly.

What is B here?

Starting letter?

A LETTER!

A CAPITAL!

6:59 PM

^^

27 secs ago, by Sid

Starting letter?

This.

I've a feeling you made your puzzle too hard , tech

Haha..

Yeah, Starting Letter. Great!

@dcfyj The starting letter hint is simply not required

So, we start from R?

7:00 PM

It's too easy to recognize.

When you have the list

And the tournament name saying closest

Oh, you mean closest to R?

Sid, the easiest thing to do is, create a list and then check who wins at which code

By the way, the insanity puzzle, we have to somehow get from 527 letters down to 156 (give or take)

Or closest to start?

@dcfyj Yeah. That's true. Cruel isn't it :D

@Sid Can you paste the code and who wins?

For each?

You can simply see and guess the answer

7:02 PM

Hold on, I need to check everything. I hadn't noted and closed the tab.

@Sid, have you looked at airport codes?

Yeah.

And now that you know first letter is crucial, you will not need any efforts.

@dcfyj back to business..

Shall we start with the hint?

That's a smaller one to solve :p

Theoretically, could be considerably harder to solve for all we know

Seriously is 9 letter word and there are 9 ones :D

I still think taking the central part is the next step or may be rearranging and then taking the central part. Just not sure how to rearrange

Also "RIGHT INGREDIENTS ARE PRESENT, HOWEVER SHORTENED" this complicates things for me

"MAYBE YOU NOTICE SOME WORDS ARE ODDLY PLACED" and this

7:06 PM

Yeah, I don't see any "oddly placed" words

A LITTLE ATTENTION HERE IS VERY IMPORTANT , Here should be at the end I think

That's ambiguous because it fits fine just about anywhere...

oh, never mind, I misread what you said

@Techidiot Really? Federer winning at Paris?

Haha. Yeah.

Not in a million years..

7:08 PM

@Sid :p They will play in India?

:p

Well, possible if Modi is elected again bringing some acche din :D

"HERE" is the 4th word...

Yeah

But, do we need Here twice then?

:-/

The first number is "4"

HERE LITTLE ATTENTION A LITTLE ATTENTION HERE :p

Doesn't make sense :-/

"A LITTLE ATTENTION IS VERY IMPORTANT HERE" is what I was thinking actually lol

7:11 PM

Yeah. That's what I said up there. But, as you said, it fits how it is originally

:D

I was looking strictly at the words, and noticing that "here" is oddly placed at the 4th placement and 4 is the first number

@Techidiot I also said I misread what you said :P

I thought you meant the sentence, not the word :P

Oh..

"middle or central" could refer to the sentences rather than the words.

Oh.. Are you seeing something coming out of that?

Haven't looked into it, just seeing possibilities

HERE
ARE PRESENT,
QUICKLY,
WISDOM
SOME WORDS
AND METRE
AND ENJOY
THE

7:20 PM

Yeah.. Do you see anything? I can't :(

nope, lol. but we may need to place the odd words in their proper location first

I haven't used Metre ever. What's that?

Probably he picked it for filling the pattern

Possibly, meter/metre is used in poetry mostly

Oh okay

Has to do with the flow of the sentence, intonation, ride and fall of sounds, etc

7:24 PM

@Sid You got the answer right, but I don't see complete reasoning for why B,D,C,I for federer. You may want to add it mentioning it relates to closest :)

@dcfyj Yeah, eventually I googled many words in there before going ahead :D

Did you see the exception I discovered in my answer?

It would be interesting to see how OP handles it :p Let me leave a comment on the question

Kind of hard to miss it with the way you pointed it out :P

With how the question is, I'm pretty sure it's intentional

It's unlikely but possible

I made a similar mistake in one of my puzzle

So, I think it is an error.

I don't see any clues in the title

I got one more clue

There are twelve lines and 4 digits 1,2,3,4

For the next block we have four lines and 2 digits 1,2

The definition of insanity is a fairly well known quote/joke: To try something over and over expecting different results.

And for next, 2 lines and 1 digit 1

Yeah. That's what google gave me

Do you think if this matters? The thing I mentioned?

Splitting like 1,2,3,4 | 1,2,3,4|1,2,3,4| etc

The thing you mentioned?

7:32 PM

About 12 lines and 4 digits

No idea

There are 29 4's and 27 1's 2's and 3's in the numbers

I counted 26 2s

online-utility.org/text/analyzer.jsp

Used this

Note that, I have not considered the last 2 blocks of numbers

Only the ones which relate

Seriously, the ninth tothe fourteenth line: very interesting

I still think this is how it might be

But I am not sure about rearranging stuff

How do you get that?

7:43 PM

By taking the central part

ah, ok

And if the word length is even, merge with the neighbor

in that case I think should be: Seriously, the ninth to the fourteenth line: very interesting

Yeah. That is plausible as well.

"IF YOU MUST CHOOSE, USE A PAIR"

7:45 PM

Right

I have done it but it gave gibberish things.

Shall we try again?

Although, the next line...

BEGIN, COMMENCE QUICKLY, SOLVE, PROGRESS - This line is weird. And seriously needs modifications

Also this - TO BE ACHIEVING WISDOM, POWER AND SUCCESS

TO BE...

yeah

@dcfyj OP added a word

:D Yay!

Something to cheer about :p

And no

:-(

It was me Hahaha

Wait. I have some typos as well

Let me correct them first

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Feb '1713

The Sphinx's Lair

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