The Sphinx's Lair

12:00 AM

truly no rush, after months, i'll bring it up again another time

...

I'm really not sure what I'd have to say. You're far more eloquent than I am, and I honestly don't have much more I could say than what I've said here

It was a fantastic puzzle. It's just hard to remember exactly how I solved it when it happened over the course of a month, four months ago.

humn

maybe i'll commandeer your comments from here over the course of those months, about turning for instance

Deusovi

That was the one thing I was pretty sure I could talk about. (Originally, I didn't do anything with complex numbers at all - it was all geometric! It was just easier to express it that way.)

humn

that's just what i was hoping for!

i was in play in discovering those patterns, but the geometric form took over in laying them out

it was like unrolling a tread from a wheel

like violating a desert with art by driving and leaving tire tracks

without the harm

Deusovi

I get the impression of you being "in play" from all of your puzzles.

humn

12:07 AM

thank you for playing along!

Deusovi

They're always so expressive and full of metaphor, and both the presentation and the eventual logic behind them are stunning.

humn

You more than took my breath away with your adventure through TGE's grid-climb

Deusovi

Ah, Grid-36? That was a fun one.

humn

I don't remember it by that name

Deusovi

Hm? It may have been something else then

humn

12:11 AM

13

A: WITLESS - A Puzzling Journey

Partial Answer - Sets 1-12 solved, Summit partially solved IMPORTANT! READ ME FIRST! Try the puzzle before reading this solution. Please, it's worth it. If you can't figure out a mechanic, take a break and come back. Only look at this guide if you absolutely have to - for example, you've been ...

Deusovi

Ah! Yeah, I really need to go back to that one and finish up the rest of the solution.

I know it's been posted by others, but it'd be nice to have it all in one post. (Plus, solving the rest for myself would be fun.)

humn

It is such a lesson in so many ways!

With the partial hints, for example, that decompose the puzzle

Deusovi

It's based off a video game called The Witness - you should definitely check it out!

humn

Witness? about a person getting stuck in a grain silo (at one point)????

Deusovi

No, it doesn't involve grain silos. A quick Google search tells me you're referring to a movie from 1985.

humn

12:13 AM

And that you might be referring to one from 2012

Deusovi

I'm referring to a video game, not a film.

The Witness (2016 video game)

The Witness is a 3D puzzle video game developed and published by Thekla, Inc. The Witness was released for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 in January 2016, for Xbox One in September 2016, for Android, via the SHIELD Android TV, in January 2017, and will later be ported for iOS devices. Inspired by Myst, the game involves the exploration of an open world island filled with natural and man-made structures. The player progresses by solving puzzles, which are based on interactions with mazes presented on panels around the island or hidden within the environment. The player will have to determine...

(Don't read too much though - IMO it's best to go in blind.)

humn

hoo, what a difference the word "game" makes after "video" .. there it was all along

another thing i like so much about your answer is getting swept up in the adventure

your narrative is action packed in an i-am-there way!

Deusovi

I think you'd love The Witness. It has the same style of discovering the rules as you go, plus lots of allusions to Zen Buddhism and other philosophies involving "aha moments".

@humn Thank you! I think you're giving it too much credit, but I really appreciate it.

humn

not too much credit... agh, phone call...

Deusovi

Oh, also - on the topic of geometric puzzles, I posted a simple one a while back.

11

Q: Pairs of Pairs of Pentominoes

Split the 12 pentominoes into three sets of four. Can you pair up pentominoes so that each set makes two of the same shape? For instance, one of your three sets could look like this: That uses the L, P, F, and U pentominoes, meaning you'd no longer be able to use those in any other sets.

The statement itself is fairly simple, but I think there's only one solution.

humn

12:19 AM

...call was quick...

I saw that pentomino puzzle but not in time to get in on it!

Deusovi

You should try it out (if you haven't spoiled yourself)!

(AFK for a few minutes myself - walking to lab)

humn

You bet, thanks for reminding me.

(walk safely)

humn

12:35 AM

I just looked at your solution to GRID-THIRTY-SIX, Deusovi, and remember it now. And have a slightly different way of saying one of the things I enjoy about some of your narratives: you can create an extremely effective and compelling feeling like we're right there solving with you.

Deusovi

Back!

Oh, thank you! I'm hoping to become a mathematics teacher, and I guess that style of writing has seeped into my puzzling too.

humn

Sure! I always learn the best when i feel like i'm in the passenger seat rather than watching from the curb

Classes where the instructor just copies notes to the board are almost a waste of time.

(paraphrasing a great quote:) The material can transfer from the notes of the instructor to the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either.

Deusovi

Heh, that is a pretty good quote.

humn

So all of a sudden i'm distracted by pairing up pentominoes.

Rubio

CCCC is Cryptic Clue Chat Chains - see this awesome guide for a cryptic clues primer, and join in!

Deusovi

12:42 AM

Oh, did the pin disappear?

Rubio

yeah. annoying.

Deusovi

@humn Enjoying the puzzle? It's more difficult than I had expected when I came up with it.

humn

I felt completely lost at first, now think I'm seeing a couple of edge areas that make enough difference to simplify things

The puzzle would definitely be in contention for Most Puzzle per Pound

Very clean.... even the image of all pieces (oh, thanks to dcfyj) is pixel-clean and easy to play with in an editor

Deusovi

Yeah, that wasn't my image. :P

humn

I often don't remember who makes which puzzles but i do remember your jumping in to help someone else solve a different pentomino puzzle, with odd rotation

Rubio

12:48 AM

the pentomino fiddle site wildbillmunson linked to is much easier than playing in an editor, btw. I spotted that puzzle a bit too late to have a real shot at finishing first, but had a bit of fun messing with it. came close, but .. no cigar

humn

You'll get another chance to solve a puzzle first, someday, if you're good and deserve it, Rubio

Rubio

is it just me or are quotes falling off the star board?

humn

(Now everyone's looking at the star board to see if you're falling off it)

Rubio

the bottom used to be "the first thing TGE did", like, two days ago

yesterday it was my PSEidol quote

and I don't think it's changing order, it feels like stuff has vanished

Deusovi

Yeah, starred quotes "decay"

I don't know the exact way that they do that though

humn

12:53 AM

(not exactly to the point, now i'm wondering how different it might look depending on screen dimensions)

Rubio

oh screen dimensions definitely affect how many entries show

Alconja

It's a combination of age and number of stars. The less stars a quote has, the faster it decays.

(and hello)

Rubio

ohai alconja

humn

(!)

Rubio, i just remembered a nosy question for you: Are you behind a YouTube video about using a buzz saw to make paper?

Rubio

if we're not careful we may soon end up with enough people to free Contact from its doldrums

and no - I don't have anything on YouTube

humn

12:56 AM

It was linked to a video you listed here. and a riot, actually

Rubio

Huh. I wonder which video that would have been. I don't post many.

I have a feeling I've seen the paper one you're talking about, or one similar, though don't remember it being particularly funny

humn

it's not coming up in a search.

it was a real chainsaw and a real tree and real funny, to me anyway

spoiler: it didn't really produce real paper

sorry if I have the video-post reference misattributed... it was an hour of trololo

Rubio

oh dear. :)

Yeah that sounds like something I might have posted

it was probably the 10 hour version actually, I usually link that one at people

humn

that's the one! ... not finding it, though

Rubio

aww.

Trololo 10 hours

►

The linked-to video, who knows - those tend to be very much dependent on your own search history

humn

1:02 AM

I had never seen that before. And can't stop laughing. Probably the only one in the world who finds it funny.

Rubio

Best comment on that one, btw: "can you add 100 hour vercion of this please because i get tired of keep clicking replay botton."

humn

(just laughing)

Half-seriously, though, i might be among the fewer in the world who are genuinely impressed by the singing!

The staging is out of this world, though.

Rubio

TROLOLO MAN-FAMILY GUY.

►

humn

^that's the one my music-teacher friend found to check it out!

I also found a video of Trololo Joe himself watching YouTube spoofs of himself. Precious.

(rest of story: The teacher also hadn't seen or heard it before and had the same reaction as I did: Nice singing (technically)! But what's wrong with the rest of it?)

Rubio

The singer (Eduard Khil) died in 2012. If you think the old staging was something, you may find the updated one even more interesting... or maybe less so, depending on your aesthetic. hehe

humn

1:12 AM

I want eyes like that before I die.

Maybe he doesn't need the orignals anymore.

Rubio

Dude was 77 in that last video, not all that long before he died.

humn

And he can dance! Probably took most of those decades to get that good

Rubio

Commenters suggest he's lip-syncing it, which is actually plausible watching it. either way, he had "it" hehe

humn

Dude's no stranger to lip syncing that for sure.

Rubio

"The YouTube national anthem", sung by the "Troll Father".

humn

1:15 AM

But the original black&white recording-studio video looks genuine.

Trololo crazy live FULL version 1968

►

In any case, Rubio, thank you for another good deed in bringing the anthem to my stereo.

Gareth McCaughan

@humn I can do your superelliptical thing in 11 symbols, but regrettably 11<9 remains obstinately false.

humn

And this time you admit to following a clue, Gareth.

Gareth McCaughan

I do? I mean, I may well have followed a clue, but I don't recall admitting it :-).

Rubio

Your secret is safe with me

Gareth McCaughan

If you mean your remark that logs were a red herring, I was never expecting them to be otherwise; applying trig functions to u and v was the "obvious" thing to try, and having scraped together a few minutes I tried it :-).

humn

1:22 AM

You're halfway there, Gareth. Once again I was insecure about it being too easy so i did a trick you might discover next.

Gareth McCaughan

There's a new answer from bmcfluff which says the answer is cos x + cos y

humn

! someone might have gotten there at the same time?! what are chances?

Gareth McCaughan

presumably meaning cos u + cos v

humn

I should have called it h(u,v) all along

Gareth McCaughan

and actually I think that's what I actually meant (I mistranscribed something)

which is kinda frustrating :-)

yeah, the thing I posted actually doesn't work

oh well

I've updated my answer so it's not outright wrong any more

but obv bmcfluff gets the tick

humn

1:27 AM

what timing! it was obvious to me that you were about to go the rest of the way

Gareth McCaughan

There only was a rest of the way because I cocked up when converting my experimental diddlings on one computer into an actual answer on another. Never mind.

(in other circumstances I'd wonder whether bmcfluff read my broken answer, figured out how to fix it, and jumped in -- but that clearly isn't what happened, because there's plenty of working in their answer and if they could hack that together so quickly they could just as well solve the puzzle from scratch.)

humn

and now that i look more closely, both of you did skip my to-be-first-worksheet/hint step

unbelievable photo finish. Gasp!

Alconja

1:47 AM

So, on the CC, I'm wondering if "top spin" could indicate a rotation of characters... eg: "trap top spins" => *RAPT*, or "top spins [chat]" => *ATCH (or even "top spins" => *OPT*)... Of course that leads me nowhere, but maybe it'll inspire someone else.

Rubio

I've been looking at that, especially following Sconibulus' comments about it being "easier" if discourse was chat - I really want to know if "easier" means "valid", or if it actually just means "easier".

qwertyu63

Quick question: I'm sure I'm overlooking something obvious, but how do you upload images for an imgur-maze? Do you just upload them from the question screen, or is there another page for that?

Alconja

Question screen (and then delete the auto-included link)

Rubio

You can upload them in the question page (there's a link at the top of the box to upload a picture) -

qwertyu63

Ok. Thank you.

Rubio

1:58 AM

it will insert a link, which you can delete (after you note what it was, of course) so that it doesn't appear in your question

As an aside, you can also upload them here in chat (that's what that "upload" button does), but I wouldn't recommend it ;)

Sphinx

2:10 AM

0

Q: Harry Potter Puzzle!! (no harry potter knowledge required)

I come to you with a puzzle that supposedly can be solved without knowing much about Harry Potter. It has been driving my friend and I completely insane, as we cannot seem to make progress. Here is the page with the puzzle. All the clues are described there, and supposedly the answer is a set o...

riddle enigmatic-puzzle

Sp3000

2:44 AM

Re: Alconja's C4 comment I tried looking into words with an anagram of OPT as a substring, but that didn't seem to help :/

Makes me wonder whether top is just first letter indicator

Alconja

3:29 AM

@Sp3000 Wondered that too... but then you only get 1 letter from either "trap top" or "top spins", which doesn't leave much to work with for the other 6 letters.

Has scon dropped any other hints (other than the discourse => chat one earlier)?

Other idea I had was that "spins" hints at physically rotating a word 180°... eg. "top spins" => DOT

Sphinx

4:12 AM

1

Q: Dungeon Quest: a twisting and turning imgur-maze maze

You've come to this strange dungeon in search of lost treasure. You've reached the final floor and the door has sealed behind you. All you have are your wits, a clue picked up on the previous floor and the following poem: Arrows point the way, Circles return the next day. Squares twist, c...

visual mazes imgur-maze

Beastly Gerbil

7:14 AM

Hmmm imgur still doesn't work for me

Oh no it is now

Rubio

8:24 AM

@BeastlyGerbil You still here?

Sp3000

@Alconja A little loose, but one potential parsing is (synonym for crawler) trap/insertion (top of "spins") = discourse. Having said that I think I'm digging into progressively looser interpretations right now :P

Rubio

8:39 AM

well @BeastlyGerbil - assuming you come back - I want to include a very obvious reference to "you", a.k.a "Bestial Hamster," in a future puzzle, for which I need (a) your ok, and (b) a time, from 5m00s to 14m59s The time will have a minor significance but you get to gamble as to whether you should pick high, low, or random.

Sp3000

9:01 AM

@Sconibulus CAPTCHA = Crawler trap = CAP (top) + (CHAT -> TCHA)

Got Alconja to thank for the last half there

Beastly Gerbil

@Rubio yeah I'm game. I'll pick 10m27s

Rubio

ok thanks :)

Beastly Gerbil

Gtg now though so good luck with that :)

Rubio

Oh good heavens. Nice job @Sp3000

I had even spent time pondering "crawler" in the web-crawler sense, but didn't think of that :)

Sp3000

9:16 AM

I spent way too long on that clue, in many ways :P

Rubio

I bet. :)

Sp3000

9:51 AM

CCCC: Crawler traps: each page follows misguided aim, producing joke response? (1'1, 1, 6)

Should be easy enough

Sphinx

10:02 AM

0

Q: Robot Dan and I

Robot Dan, world smartest vacuum cleaner, and I took our packages and fly to trip. We had to took our big pistol, that could shot down a tank. Last time we almost started world war 3, by shooting someone called "Canady." Lovely! Andes were our first stop. But we were disappointed by cheese food. ...

enigmatic-puzzle story knowledge

Volatility

is I'M A TEAPOT a thing?

(I'M A*) T(EA+P)OT

Sp3000

Yes it is :) (HTTP status code 418)

Volatility

heh, lol

(also, nice surface reading, I was stuck on BEAPOT for a bit before realising a TOT was a crawler as well :-) )

Sp3000

Not a very subtle surface though since it directly correlates with the def :P But just wanted to play with the last clue

Rubio

10:21 AM

That's one of my favorite status codes, btw :)

Volatility

10:33 AM

CCCC: "Fine, the second option. Ok then..." (6)

Sp3000

Me to clue: Are you okay? You sound exhausted.

Mithrandir

11:12 AM

How do I put a space in MathJax?

@Rubio, you know MathJax. I know nothing about it...

Rubio

\

that is, backslash+space

Mithrandir

Like, $This \ is \ a test$?

Rubio

yup

Mithrandir

Thanks!

Sphinx

12:20 PM

0

Q: Cryptic Mastermind

And now for something completely different: Cryptic Mastermind! Given below are five sets of five cryptic clues each, all resulting in five-letter words. The black and white pegs, like in regular Mastermind, indicate the number of correct letters. A black peg indicates a correct letter that is...

word cryptic-clues mastermind

Sphinx

12:33 PM

0

Q: PSE Assessment Exam

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #27: Treasure-Hunt... Welcome to the PSE Assessment Exam! This exam is designed to assess your aptitude, knowledge and experience as a high profile member of the Puzzling Stack Exchange community. This is a timed test conducted in a closed room with ...

enigmatic-puzzle cryptic-clues treasure-hunt

Sphinx

12:51 PM

0

Q: Non-Congruent Fillomino

Here's a Fillomino puzzle (rules can be found here). The gimmick is that no two areas can be congruent. Enjoy!

grid-deduction

Sphinx

1:17 PM

0

Q: Introducing Domidoku!

Come one, come all! Come see the new type of logic puzzle, the Domidoku! Here's a sample for all to try! The process is simple! First you solve the Sudoku and then you solve the Dominosa! Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any injuries, be they physical or mental, that occur while solvin...

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