The Sphinx's Lair

the essence of the dad joke

Haha..

I haven't looked at the puzzle since you've started making progress

trying to flesh out a new puzzle

8:15 PM

That was an easier joke to catch while the Next one was tough

Progress? Oh no!

Let's eat grandpa!
Let's eat, grandpa!

Commas save lives!

There is no progress(though the answer posted seems like I have done wonders there) :p

last I looked at it, there were no answers posted, so yeah, progress

It's just a transcript mostly of the images..

With some assumptions tossed in :P

8:17 PM

It would have been better if the dots were simply morse code :(

hehe

That would be too easy

22

Q: "Free" tickets?

Today I received an email from a friend: Hi Bob, I managed to get those concert tickets you wanted so badly! Your ticket is in the first attachment. However, since it took me quite a while to get them, I'm not just going to give you the ticket. It's protected with a 10-character password. You c...

password steganography

Looking at his other puzzles, he can do wonders with steganography

@tech how did contact go after I left?

This puzzle scares me

I lost @boboquack :D eventually someone posted a clue for my word :D

Oh well… now you know how to play!

8:19 PM

But at EOD, I have got a good knowledge of how it works and I am compatible for the future endeavor's :D

BTW, does anyone want to play now if you're not making much progress on the puzzle?

@dcfyj And this is still unsolved my god!

@boboquack I will join tomorrow. Right now, I am dealing with a puzzle.

Ok!

No idea what you're talking about

@dcfyj Those two are the puzzles posted by the same guy

who posted the insanity one

It's gonna be tad difficult it seems

8:23 PM

@Techidiot That second one you linked has gps coordinates in it

@boboquack If you are free, you may jump in to solve the puzzle puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/48899/…

Yeah.. And it is still unsolved

@dcfyj What I meant was, the difficulty level is on the higher end with his puzzles I guess

Well, I would help, but I have to go do a job now. Sorry!

It's a little too heavily music related for me to help much with that one.

I won't touch that one. People like Dan have left it unfinished so who am I to crack it :D

I looked at the puzzle a bit, but I don't know what you've found already

8:26 PM

In general, I'm pretty bad at solving most puzzles...

@Matt

This is the rhyme

A LITTLE ATTENTION HERE IS VERY IMPORTANT
RIGHT INGREDIENTS ARE PRESENT, HOWEVER SHORTENED
BEGIN, COMMENCE QUICKLY, SOLVE, PROGRESS
TO BE ACHIEVING WISDOM, POWER AND SUCCESS
MAYBE YOU NOTICE SOME WORDS ARE ODDLY PLACED
OR GRAMMAR IS INCORRECT AND METRE MESSY, WRONGLY PACED
LOWER EXPECTATIONS AND ENJOY A MYSTERY
DISENTANGLE AND DECIPHER; THE REST IS HISTORY

TO EXIT, THERE IS ONE THING YOU NEED
A SINGLE WORD AND ONE WILL BE FREED
MIDDLE, OR CENTRAL, IS ESSENTIAL HERE
MAKE EVERYTHING ELSE DISAPPEAR

the word counts of each line match the number counts

the ninth line references "one thing you need"

Yes

4 2 3 1 2 3 4
3 1 2 4 2 1
4 2 4 3 1
1 3 4 3 3 1 2
3 1 4 4 1 4 3 4
3 3 1 2 2 4 2 3 3
3 3 2 4 1 1
3 4 1 3 4 1 2
3 4 4 1 4 2 2 1
1 2 3 4 4 3 1 4
4 1 2 3 4 2
3 2 1 2
1 3 2 4 1 3 2
3 4 4 1 4 2 2 4
4 2 2 1 2 1 2 3
1 3 4 2 1 1

and then the hint says (1 1 1 1 1 1 ... )

Yeah, we caught that already, but we're slowing down drastically in progress...

8:28 PM

I'm guessing you tried putting the like numbers together in an effort to "disentangle"

Each word in the rhyme has been indexed to 1,2,3,4

We have simply related words to digits as they appear

A - 4
LITTLE- 2
ATTENTION - 3
HERE - 1
IS - 2
VERY-3
IMPORTANT-4

RIGHT - 3
INGREDIENTS - 2
ARE-1
PRESENT-4
HOWEVER-2
SHORTENED-1

BEGIN-4
COMMENCE-2
QUICKLY-4
SOLVE-3
PROGRESS-1

TO-1
BE-3
ACHIEVING-4
WISDOM-3
POWER-3
AND-1
SUCCESS-2

MAYBE-3
YOU-1
NOTICE-4
SOME-4
WORDS-1
ARE-4
ODDLY-3
PLACED-4

OR-3
GRAMMAR-3
IS-1
INCORRECT-2
AND-2
METRE-4
MESSY-2
WRONGLY-3
PACED-3

LOWER-3
EXPECTATIONS-3
AND-2
ENJOY-4
A-1
MYSTERY-1

DISENTANGLE-3
AND-4
DECIPHER-1
THE-3
REST-4
IS-1
HISTORY-2

TO-3
EXIT-4
THERE-4

What are all the 1 words?

We went through that path as well but no luck

Lets see again

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

These are 1 words

There are 29 4's and 27 1's 2's 3's

That's how far we have went

Tried to take the middle word/letter/sentence but it didn't hold good

The rhyme talks about rearranging, taking the middle/central and skipping rest etc

no idea

A number for each word

What about the hint? It follows the same pattern

Seriously, the ninth to the fourteenth line: very interesting...
(1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1)

Seriously-1
the-1
ninth-1
to=1
the-1
fourteenth-1
line-1
very-1
interesting-1

8:36 PM

There's clearly 1 number per word, the issue is figuring out what the number is for...

Yeah

A <s>LITTLE</s> LOT OF ATTENTION HERE IS VERY IMPORTANT

:D

It definitely has nothing to do with word length or letter weight, because of the "A"s

Yeah

TO DETAIL
V
A <s>LITTLE</s> LOT OF ATTENTION HERE IS VERY IMPORTANT

Boo, lack of spaces

Haha

8:38 PM

a little attention here is very important

@dcfyj Matt is on my way now. He didn't get your boo

:D

lol

Yes Matt, tried that. But it ends up badly without anything good

If you see the next part, we need to fill in the blanks. where first word will be of 2 characters

So, we tried to rearrange the first line as A LITTLE ATTENTION IS VERY IMPORTANT HERE

Which gives IS as the central word

And fits nicely to the blank part in the next image

But again, not sure how to go ahead

Are the numbers stating rot's @dcfyj? :p

First line,

e nkvvng dwwhqwlrq ifsf ku yhub mqtsvxerx

Gives garbage

Apply Rot as per the numbers gave first letters as
E
N
D
I
K
Y
M

8:46 PM

Why the first and not the central ones?

Hi @vol!

It's just that I got meaningful END...

:D

Volatility

hello

Oh! You're Australian too. I didn't realise...

@dcfyj Which rot did you apply?

I applied a rot for each word in first sentence and then took the first letters

8:48 PM

Use quipqiup

@Techidiot 1-4 depending on the word

@boboquack where?

quipqiup.com

I mean, quipquip for what?

It's good for ciphers

8:49 PM

Nah, there's no cipher yet

This isn't a cipher though...

Some plain text instructions to form a meaningful word

@dcfyj IF YOU MUST CHOOSE, USE A PAIR
IF THERE ARE NONE, ONE MUST NOT CARE

This could mean, group 2 words in each line

uh, yes?

Possibly

If a word remains, let it be as it is

So, first 2 words give center as T

Have at it, I'm out of ideas at the moment

8:56 PM

Next two gives T again

Phew..Bad!

Hi @Emrakul!

user61230

Hi, @boboquack!

T I V E IMPORTANT!

user61230

Just here to drop a quick note.

user61230

Please be careful about too many people helping a new user. It's great that we have so many people who are willing to help new users - it really honestly is - but too many people trying to help at once can be intimidating and difficult, especially when they may not understand the language.

9:00 PM

What new user?

user61230

Just in general!

Sp3000

9:29 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Nice points on subjectivity and about puzzles where guessing the answer is the only real solve method :)

Gareth McCaughan

The latter is really hard to avoid with some kinds of puzzle.

ugh. it's never easy to think of titles.

Sp3000

That's true (re: Gareth) - I was just thinking that in some cases it serves as a good warning that your puzzle might need some cluing or that you've picked a bad idea to make a puzzle

Sphinx

10:31 PM

0

Q: What is a United Word™?

If a word has a certain property, it is a United Word. Use the examples below to find the property: $$\smash{\lower{28px}\bbox[yellow]{\phantom{\rlap{rubio.2017.01.30} \Rule{18px}{20px}{0px}\begin{array}{|c|c|} \textbf{United Words }&\textbf{Not United Words }\\\end{array}}}}\\ \begin{array}{|c|...

pattern word-property

Alconja

11:13 PM

Feb 9 at 5:50, by Deusovi

Huh, I thought this one would fall quickly.

(said 6 minutes after posting the CCCC which has been stuck for 5 days)

Yeah, really quickly... Is @Deus going to be on the banned list now?

I'm surprised I wasn't already.

Alconja

It's ok deus, you'll always be banned in my heart. :P

I'm wondering if there's some angle we (I) haven't considered like political parties or something...

...of course the "as a whole" addition makes that less likely

Curiosity killed the cat, but for the high-rep users, what 'milestones' has PSE gone through (or am I not allowed to know)?

Alconja

It was all before my time, but I know that originally PSE was supposed to be purely "about" puzzles (i.e. how to solve, how to design, etc), not for puzzles themselves.

I think there was some bad blood as things shifted across to the mostly user created puzzles content that it has now

And I think in the transition there was some disagreement over what constitutes puzzles (eg, maths, riddles, etc)

But then I arrived, and everything has been super calm and harmonious. Can't be a coincidence.

11:29 PM

Obvioiusly not

Oh, hi @Stacks!

stacksfiller

Hi!

"Bad blood" is right. There were lots of... less-than-pleasant comments on the main site.

@Alconja, @stacksfiller: I'll provide another hint.

"Party as a whole" should be synonymized into a word. (It's a bit questionable.)

Sphinx

0

Q: Two missing numbers

Two numbers go at the $?$s, what are they and why? $733,\space \space 716,\space \space 645,\space \space 565,\space \space 324,\space \space 276,\space \space 77,\space \space 75,\space \space 64,\space \space 56,\space \space ?,\space \space ?$

pattern number-sequence

11:44 PM

@Emrakul Ha, I guess you saw my comment flags on that recent question ;-)

@Alconja Deus is in a band?

@boboquack You mean historic milestones? Well, it depends how fine-grained a scale you want. The biggest milestones were surely 1) the start of the site, 2) the Great Puzzling War, and 3) graduation. But there have been plenty of smaller events too.

stacksfiller

Hahahaha, That answer on that "Two missing numbers" post

I totally thought that was the intended answer /s

@Randal'Thor I'm curious what the Great Puzzling War and graduation are

Graduation is when a site stops being "beta" and becomes a full-fledged Stack Exchange site.

Gareth McCaughan

I'll make an observation on Deusovi's clue that I haven't noticed anyone else make although I thought it was obvious: the hint saying just "!" probably means "this is an &lit clue".

You get your own design, customizability of ads, and you get to elect mods. (That's how I became a mod!)

stacksfiller

And the Great Puzzling War?

11:52 PM

Major conflict between the users of the site and mods.

Y'see, most sites are Q&A focused.

Questions, answered by experts, making a repository of good information from knowledgeable sources.

That's the goal of every site on the SE network... except two.

Code Golf and us.

@Deusovi Well ... it was a bit more nuanced than that.

We were originally supposed to be for Q&A about puzzles.

@Randal'Thor Oh, absolutely.

It's not that they were two different sides. I probably should've phrased that more clearly.

But anyway, at some point actual puzzles created by users started popping up.

Some of the users were siding with the mods. And those who didn't were spread across many different levels of ... shall we say, extremism.

Long story short, some people liked this new direction. Others did not.

@Deusovi Which led to the Ridiculous Activity Spike that immediately preceded the Great Puzzling War.

11:55 PM

There was a mod post attempting to "steer the site back on track". It did not go over well.

^ understatement of the year