The Sphinx's Lair - 2017-03-02

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1:52 AM

0

Q: The sheep and the lions: is the conventional answer right?

I am challenging the solution to this classic riddle. Read the link if you are unfamiliar with it. The bottom line of the riddle is that an even number of lions won't eat the sheep, and an odd number will. I fully understand the recursive reasoning behind this. But suppose there were an even n...

riddle logical-deduction

1 hour later…

3:12 AM

testingsomethingdon't mind me

3 hours later…

6:14 AM

0

Q: What word answers this riddle of letters and numbers?

As you enter a clinic, you catch a whiff of a disgusting 2156. Oh, it must be that 351 that 123456 was eating for lunch. Eww, it's starting to 624, 425. Oh hey 16. Smith, didn't hear you come in. No, we didn't 4621 on your 324, it was already dirty when we came in. Oh, yes, we threw away your 351...

7:07 AM

1

Q: What Is A Plus Word™?

In the spirit of the What is a Word™/Phrase™ series started by JLee, a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. If a word conforms to a special rule, I call it a Plus Word™. Use the examples below to find the rule. $$ % set Title text. (spaces around the text ARE important; do not remove...

pattern word-property

7:33 AM

@BeastlyGerbil You should add to your answer why the title fits

7:47 AM

0

Q: The following puzzle has no description. (#1)

Admittedly, this one is fairly easy... I hope it isn't too bad, it's a first puzzle. Whether it is bad or not is up to you. Since I suck at embedding images here it is. Edit: Thanks suomynonA for the fix. :P

enigmatic-puzzle

@Rubio ooh does the title give 100 as well!?

The title is pretty much always part of these puzzles in some way. Sometimes by sharing the same trait as the words themselves, sometimes in other ways. I won't comment beyond that, except to say that (as always) the title here is not gratuitous.

Hmm... doesn't add up to 100

Adds up to 230 (-TM)

It's probably something to do with 100

Ooh the first letters add up to 105. Not that then...

0

Q: Last few letters and numbers too easy? How about this?

19bhmmf Note: Yes, that is the entire puzzle. It's longer than you think.

enigmatic-puzzle

8:02 AM

@BeastlyGerbil ..."plus" refers to addition.

Is it that simple?

That's what got me thinking about a1z26 to start

I don't see what else it could be.

Ok well I'll add that for now unless @Rubio says otherwise

nah. I think this may be a bit unfair actually

Oh so it's not that

8:05 AM

Huh.

It's apparently nowhere near as uniform as I thought

Obviously not :P

The intent was A+ = 100%, so the puzzle title - which deviates from the norm in that it says "What Is A Plus Word" rather than the usual "What is a Plus Word" - was supposed to hint at "A Plus" = 100

Oooh I see

Ah, clever.

8:07 AM

but yeah, it seems all kinds of different interpretations and markings are used for the "A+" - A* for Brits, apparently?

The reason I didn't get that is we don't use As and Bs anymore

Ohh. Heh

I've always heard "A+" being in the ~97%+ range.

And wow, that's a lot of nonletters.

It's changed to 1 to 9 - 9 being A**

@Deusovi I'm seeing 98-100 for that in some places, and in others, strictly for >100

8:08 AM

Well I'll add that to my answer as well

Locally, it was only used strictly for ==100

though nowadays who knows :) it's been a while since I was a student

That was supposed to be a quickie anyway. I just thought of the play on the title, and spat it out; took about 20 minutes to make

We're the first guinea pig year for the new GCSEs. It's all changed now, our teachers don't even know what to expect

I'm curious though, did you notice the 1.5 semi-red-herrings in there?

Lots of EST words.

the .5 being the large number of "est" endings

8:11 AM

Er no?

the 1 being ... well ... maybe you missed it entirely

No idea.

I thought of A1Z26 before even clicking on the puzzle :P so that was the first thing I tried

Hah

I may add one non-100 word and repost it as a different puzzle, then, lol

Uh I hate mobile. Can't look at the puzzle and chat simultaneously...

8:13 AM

Yeah, I'm on mobile too

It really needs so much work done on it

How does the shading in the title look for you? It should be either dead on, or either one pixel unshaded or one pixel overshaded into the data

depending on your device and on the phase of the moon

One pixel unshaded for me

Android?

iPad.

8:15 AM

huh. I thought iDevices rendered exactly; interesting

I had to split the difference on it, so that's as good as it gets. hehe

8:32 AM

Can't get FLATTER out of my C4 head

huh. how are you getting that?

Fine (F) + latter (second option)

Ohh. Makes sense.

But nvm it's B (second option) + RIGHT ("OK then...") = fine @Volatility

heh - well done.

I wouldn't have connected BRIGHT and fine

Weird. Someone downvoted my PSE Assessment Exam. I wonder why.

8:44 AM

Hmm no idea, looks solid enough at first glance at least

Deus made fairly short work of part 1, despite a blunder in one of my cryptic clues for which I hang my head in shame. The next bit is where it gets a little more interesting

oh @Deusovi - QUESTIONTOANSWER (or ...OF... for that matter) isn't right btw. "for" isn't being anagrammed. (Even my blunders have limits hehe)

I saw the first part when you posted and decided I was too lazy to research :P

formatting in chat sucks. lol

I'm assuming you want OR in the middle

Not many other choices. hehe

9:16 AM

@Sp3000 yep!

:) nice

I wanted to do something like a guy asking a "smart" person, "it's B, RIGHT?", but I couldn't get the surface to work

Eh, clue's taking me too long so let's just archive dig for the next one

CCCC: European Union leader caught hemisphere's (Western half's) enhanced interrogation perhaps (9)

TheGreatEscaper

9:58 AM

is the bracketed part important?

hey it's Houdin...i mean, @TheGreatEscaper! howdy

TheGreatEscaper

Heya Rubio!

10:33 AM

Bracketed part is part of the clue, if that's what you mean

@Rubio both these profiles are created 29/28 days back puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/34009/pie314271 and puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/34043/jan-ivan suspicious? Or was he really that fast? :-/

Speaking about this answer

10:50 AM

pie is new to PSE, but not new to the network

It may be something to watch, but doesn't seem conclusive enough right now to really excite suspicion

Hmm. Yup

Btw, are you going to drop another mail for your puzzle? :) I am trying to take out the meaning out of the word Discount but failing to do so

I'll be honest, there's really not much more I can add

That's the only important word which seems to be repeated 2 times in the message

Probably a tag? :)

"Every word is important" is, um, important. :)

I am not sure which direction to go, stegano, cipher, wordplay or something else

There are loads of adjectives being used

10:58 AM

Wordplay is specifically given.

I can see words forming between two words, but no real pattern there

Ok I left a clue for the answerer as a comment, something that wouldn't make sense as an email. Feel free to see what you can do with it

11:56 AM

0

Q: A riddle about a place contains the treasure

There is a secret of death and a secret of life Both are held by the family of clark's wife

2 hours later…

1:45 PM

@Sp3000, EUPHEMISM = EU+P(HEMIS)M

Yup

"leaders" might have been better. I meant to ask about that and got distracted :)

oh. wait. hah, I see what you did. nvm :)

I like that

CCCC: Part of a man’s tattoo in writing (8)

@Techidiot I knew I should have gone with "Henry" hehe

@Silenus PROS(TAT)E

1:58 PM

Haha :p I was counting the stars to make sure, but doesn't match with potter :D

@Sp3000, you got it. Maybe I should have went with "Part of a man's ink in writing".

:P

2:29 PM

0

Q: Can you find the missing lad and the treasure?

$\mathtt{Once \ upon \ a \ time, \ there \ was \ a \ young \ sailor. \ This \ young \ sailor, \ however, \ was \ a \ pirate. \ The \ scourge \ of \ the \ seas.\\ \ You \ may \ have \ heard \ of \ him \ - \ the \ infamous \ Blackbeard!\\ \ With \ his \ band \ of \ cutthroat \ pirates, \ he \ sta...

enigmatic-puzzle treasure-hunt

@Sphinx Yes, I may have gone overboard on the MathJax. As I said, it was necessary to disguise the part that needed it.

Your "grid" isn't a grid, on my screen.

No?

Hmm.

Screenshot?

Problem with MathJax is there is no particularly good way to force a fixed width font

Neither on mine

2:35 PM

I didn't use MathJax on the grid.

The grid is Unicode.

user image

Huh. That is not how it looks on mine o_o

2

A: Is there Markdown to create tables?

You can create table by using Box Drawing Unicode. This answer helps the new users about the required box-drawing Unicode uses with Unicode-Key. For creating Table, the following Unicode are essential: 1. Two lines: Horizontal ━ U+2501 Vertical ┃ U+2503 2. Four ...

user image

Well, there are image versions included :P

user image

It's a bit of a mess. :)

2:37 PM

user image

the second one is no better for me either

user image

Well, this is why it was a good idea to include image versions too :P

If you wrap it all in <pre> ... </pre> it may work, I suspect it will

@Rubio ...It's in code formatting. That's why it's gray.

oh - i didn't look that closely

2:39 PM

user image

The wordoku image version is missing the dots, but...

0

Q: Tiling with T-tetrominos in gravity

The goal is to tile all the white squares using T-tetrominos when there is gravity pulling the tetrominos downwards like regular tetris. If you have played tetris, it is obvious what gravity means but just for clarity here is an example: The red one is not allowed because it will fall down. Th...

logical-deduction tiling

user image

CCCC: Spooner's present spread very quickly (4-5)

I can see some colored letters which may form the tinyurl

(I spent 6 hours creating that puzzle. If something goes wrong, I am going to smack my computer.)

2:47 PM

M two gq27rva

Both station 1 and two are hidden in the note. Remember that, @Techidiot.

Yeah

I somehow got spain :p

(Sleeping so I won't be able to confirm C4, but it should be pretty obvious when gotten)

@Sp3000 Night!

seeya @sp3000

2:49 PM

@Techidiot Too early, man! See that that comes after the two? :P

Yeah.

Since most of them are Vigenered with the key as the previous location, it's best to go in order.

WTH! :( I came accross a bloody and an aweful tinyurl yuksss

?

o_O What did you do?

Mebbe :-X

2:54 PM

O_O

....No.

That is not where you are supposed to go.

red herring into which many are going to fall :p

changed is to maybe

@Techidiot For looking at that, I'm going to give you a hint - Bat bogey.

Not sure what that means, a spell?

*is quiet*

And Potterhead could probably tell you :P

0

Q: A simple nonogram

Solve the nonogram. (Click for a larger version.)

3:18 PM

@Sp3000 Post-Haste. (Present [HOST] <-(spoonered)-> spread [PASTE]; very quickly [def.])

paste=spread?

yeah... think, say, tomato paste

oh duh

I thought of post-haste but could parse that part

Ok I may get grumbles about one part of this when it's solved but I'm gonna go for it

CCCC: Most flower growers, we hear, make fun of a wrong snake. (5,8)

TheGreatEscaper

Has anyone else been having trouble with loading images?

viewing the images in puzzles on PSE has been a fuss for me for a few days now.

3:32 PM

@TheGreatEscaper yes, it's Amazon's fault.

S3 was being fickle and disrupted half the Internet.

@Rubio WATER MOCCASIN? (Water=flower grower, Mock (homoph.) a sin)

Yup, that's it

(Most flower growers [WATER(s)] we hear [hom.] make fun of [MOCK] a wrong [A SIN])

and the intended meaning of flower here was 'river' :)

CCCC: Stupid like 19 (7)

eh, that got posted twice

yeah that was weird

It sometimes happens with a slow connection

Ooh @mith you are a mod now!

3:39 PM

Yep :D

who are the other lit mods btw?

Emrak and Hamlet

no nod for rand huh

@Ankoganit This answer is, clearly, "teenage". ;)

lol no

wait wait wait

isn't Deusovi 19? I see what you did there! muahahahaa

(this is too fun)

3:43 PM

YOU SAW NOTHING

(flagged)

(declined)

I made a better clue for Deus some time back:

Nov 19 '16 at 16:18, by Ankoganit

@Randal'Thor You inspired me to make another cryptic:
Fake video about American puzzler (7)
:-)

oh. nice.

ASININE

yep

thanks :)

3:49 PM

hm, let's try this-

CCCC: Diaper my son, maybe after a snooze. (6)

I like that surface reading hehe

I just winged that. Felt good, actually. :)

NAPKIN - Snooze=Nap, My son=Kin. Diaper_Def

@Rubio ^

Very nice Sid :)

And welcome back!

Um, I don't really have time to make a good one now...

Give me a minute.

3:59 PM

Are you still on hiatus or are you back back?

Half hiatus. :-)

Don't quite expect me till April

aww. OK :)

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/49086/somethings-missing is that answer now complete btw?

CCCC: Sensitive Bigot. (10)

Oh, Yes. It is correct. I have been terribly busy. Forgot to accept. Thanks for the remainder.

Have a nice day all.

Well. That's an interesting c4.

lol

user image

glanced over, saw that. I like what Firefox thinks of us PSEers.

MONOMANIAC? ddef?

4:09 PM

I don't see how that fits either

Or enthusiast?

I don't see how that fits either, either. ;)

:p

4:24 PM

@Techidiot did you use the Vigenere link I provided?

Oh no. :) Its not opening up at my end

Ah, Martin got the crossword.

Yeah. :) I will still edit my answer and make the clues proper. He has the answers anyway.

4:40 PM

Have you figured out Bat Bogey for the first station yet?

Nope. Apparently, I watch and forget about the movies :)

Movies? MOVIES?

*facepalm*

Anyway, these people might be able to inform you about Bat Bogey things:

chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/198/mos-eisley

Ok let me give a try

@Mithrandir What was that? :p

Bats coming out of nose :O

@Techidiot they failed

Look at my latest message there.

@Mithrandir Yeah, I got the hex thing. But not sure how to take a hex value from Mtwo

or M2

4:51 PM

You pointed out different letters have different colors, right?

Yeah

So take the Hex value of the M and go from there.

M -> 4d and then two -> 4d2/4dtwo lol

@Rubio Nope, I'm 18.

Youngun :P

4:58 PM

Hehe, that was fun(ny) though.

GentlePurpleRain

Is there any way a Cryptic Clue can be only two words and be anything other than an ddef or an &lit?

I think you'd need more than 2 words.

Not that I can think of.

Unless you've got some weird thing going on.

GentlePurpleRain

I'm guessing that this one might have to do with some form of the word/sentiment DISCRIMINATE (although that is too many letters).

@Mithrandir I guess the sudoku yields an imgur with JPG letters in there.

INTOLERANT

sensitive in the allergy sense

5:12 PM

@Techidiot nope

GentlePurpleRain

The problem is that all these words describe a bigot, but they don't mean "bigot".

Intolerant \In*tol"er*ant\, n.
An intolerant person; a bigot.
[1913 Webster]

Regarding the CCCC, I'd investigate the period.

You don't think it's INTOLERANT?

Unfortunately Sid is not going to be around any time soon, by the sounds of it

@Rubio Oh yeah, that seems like the answer.

5:17 PM

Ok this one is Deusovi's favorite kind. ;)

I'm sure he'll hate it when he sees the question. I hope he'll actually like it when he sees the answer.

CCCC: Legal team ate turned-over turnover; ingested a bit of mead, kept last bit for last, odd bits not used were tossed out the window. (13)

Gareth McCaughan

oh gods it's another thousand-word essay cryptic :-).

I bet the answer is DEFENESTRATED

Yeah, this one was extended for the sake of the surface. Apologies, but I liked how it ended up.

Gareth McCaughan

but haven't made any attempt to figure out why, apart from the obvious definition, as yet

legal team: DEFENSE (I guess) ate TART rev. -> DEFENSTRATE; ingested E, a bit of MEAD, -> DEFENESTRATE; kept last bit (D) for last -> DEFENESTRATED

yup. Simple, but fun.

(I hope.)

Gareth McCaughan

"odd bits not used" seems to mean only that the odd-numbered letters of MEAD aren't being used, which is a bit redundant but does help the surface reading.

5:22 PM

Well, I figured they should be accounted for somehow. Maybe that wasn't needed.

"odd bits tossed out the window" felt wrong, and not doing anything with them felt more wrong

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, "odd bits tossed out the window" would mean using the odd bits of MEAD or maybe the odd letters of BITS or an anag of BITS or something; that wouldn't do at all

but I think you could have just not mentioned the "odd bits"

yeah

I just happen to love that word, and the fact that that word is a thing. :)

Gareth McCaughan

oh yes, it's a very nice word

also "were" because the literal usage is pretty archaic. :)

Anyhoo. You're up

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, I know. Thinking.

5:31 PM

0

Q: The Shifted Music Library

This is a spin-off and heavily inspired by Levieux's puzzle that I enjoyed helping answer/solve. And I've never used ciphers or things like this before so I wanted to learn some new puzzles :) I have an alphabetically sorted collection of singles in my library. Unfortunately somebody shifted thi...

cipher pattern knowledge

0

Q: The Unclad Riddle!

I may be black, though, not the snake. I may bounce, though, not the ball. Always tied, but, not the cuffs. Not even the boots, but quite often tall. Call me a swine, I really don't care. Both XX and XY may hold my possession. I will lay back there, quietly as always. Will...

Lol. The simple nonogram is awesome.

Good job @Silenus and @GarethMcCaughan

Gareth McCaughan

Thanks. (Though as you'll gather from the comments I screwed it up a little. Now unscrewed, I believe.)

Yeah I saw, but the fundamentals are the gist of it, the details can be fixed afterwards

5:55 PM

Heh, cute. I like the nonogram one.

Gareth McCaughan

CCCC: Pervert the depths of hell with wrongdoing (7)

6:17 PM

We're flying through C4s today

2

Q: odd one out pattern

Which of the above images is the odd one out?

@Sphinx Looks too broad to me

4 hours later…

10:50 PM

@GarethMcCaughan DISTORT - (def: pervert) DIS (the depths of hell) (with) TORT (wrongdoing)

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Mar '172

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