The Sphinx's Lair - 2017-06-02

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12:38 AM

0

Q: King Arthur's Sandwich Secret

You are from a kingdom that is a long time enemy of Camelot, King Arthur's kingdom. You have sent your best spies to uncover his attack plans. King Arthur sits at his round table with his knights. He puts down a piece of toast, engraved with a secret message. Your spies shuffle to get their bino...

logical-deduction cipher

12:52 AM

0

Q: Don't shed a tear when I'm gone

My name is a thing you might do to a tune Or a thing you might find in a hot air balloon Gravity first makes me hold on quite tight I follow a street to find action at night See me you may, in the streets of L.A., Embroiled in a blood-feud to this very day If I spot a pede...

riddle word wordplay

1:14 AM

Silenus is a duck now.... Wat

they're clearly a rabbit

Oh yeah.. sorry

2:16 AM

@Silenus you could maybe reference the title in your answer, not that it's necessary

2:28 AM

lol. actually "tear" in the title is another word for rip. :)

5 hours later…

7:40 AM

0

Q: I dropped a nickle in my drink

I dropped a nickle in my drink And stirred it around This made me think Of a little bird's sound Why?

0

Q: How the snake laid down in the ground

This my puzzle is inspired by this puzzle. A sleeping snake has 36 segments. It is hidden in the 6x6 grided square ground. Each snake's segment fits exactly 1 grid square. Each row has only 1 special segment. (A special segment is the segment which multiple of 6.) Each column also has only 1 sp...

logical-deduction logic-grid

1 hour later…

8:58 AM

0

Q: Find a non-intersecting polygon

The playground $S$ are the points $(x,y)$ with $0\le x\le 8$ and $0\le y\le 5$ and $x,y$ integer. The goal is to draw a polygon $P$ so that Every vertex of $P$ belongs to $S$. Every edge between consecutive vertices on $P$ has length $\sqrt{5}$ (in other words: the edge connects $(x,y)$ to $(x...

mathematics geometry combinatorics optimization

1 hour later…

10:08 AM

1

Q: Guess what I am

I get wet when you're nervous I'm weak but can become strong I'm controlled by strings I have the same color as you I get heavier when you get married You use me everyday Who am I?

10:46 AM

0

Q: Dare to guess what I am?

I have many colors I'm a transformation of another thing I can be different things, if shaped properly I can hurt you I used to be strong, but now I'm thin and fragile I usually don't come alone I'm here for a really long time I can be of use alone or with other things There is no age lim...

1 hour later…

11:56 AM

GaMen and happy Friday

Wow, no one's said anything since what I wrote yesterday afternoon in sf

No one wanted to go play anymore :(

but it's fun

I know :)

Happy Donut Day :)

I don't eat donuts

12:06 PM

Well same but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm sure our reasons are different :P

I'm intrigued now

:P

I just try to avoid it for the unhealthiness :P

I'm not overfond of sweets in general, but the main reason is I don't eat wheat.

12:12 PM

Mmmm gotcha

Think we can wrangle a third for some falling?

Depends how they feel about tripping

And Adele

I find adele fairly annoying to be honest

I don't really like her either but I can't unsee skyfall -> spyfall

lol

12:48 PM

0

Q: Help wanted, pretty please

“Knock, knock” doors said (red doors from the future, don't think about it too much). "Come in please” and without moving my eyes from computer I continued: "Please sit on chair.” After that I noticed something strange. “Hi there“ said that person - "I'm new here.” And it was really true. At l...

story steganography

@dcfyj :O

1:01 PM

:P

1:15 PM

Hello there,

I don't have the privilege to comment on answers yet, so I will share something I noticed about this puzzle that may help the others to solve it.

1- I have translated the decimals to ASCII and I got what it appears to be A base64 code
2- I took the mod 26 of every number on the pic
3- then I decoded every letter by the value of it's square after the mod 26
4- I got a string of only two letters h and n, and sometimes d replaces the numbers that got out of the ASCII

So is that only a coincidence or it's a clue for solving the puzzle?

Hmmm I'm not quite sure what you did between 1) and 2) - are those related?

Yeah, and can you explain what you mean by "decoded every letter by the value of its square" - do you mean Caesar shifting? (for instance, D + 3 = G)?

Yeah for example 119 in Decimal is w in ASCII
then 119 mod 26 is 15
Caesar shifting w by 15 gives h
and etc

I'm not sure that this is a thing maybe it's a coincidence but it holds true for the first 4 rows I'll check the rest

Hm. It seems like a coincidence to me - after all, caesar shifting like that automatically eliminates all the odd letters

since you're adding a number to itself (which gives you an even number) but with 26 subtracted multiple times (which doesn't change parity)

Shifting a value based on the value itself seems a bit weird to me yeah

1:26 PM

not sure why other even letters don't appear, though - that is a bit strange

Are you ruling out that the 0-255 are White to Black shades

Oh, they are. It's just a way of visualizing data though.

by that I mean they line up, so there's no extra information

I mean the tag is visual, and they said the 0s are filling a gap

yeah that's why I thought it's a clue or something trying to Decode it with Bacon with the property I=J & U=V

and then taking the output as base64 and decoding that gives Y>4 for the first and fourth row, if we took every third row, not sure that's a thing nor how to continue

the output with Bacon gives WR+NBA for first and fourth row

wait, idea

there are three ==s

those typically indicate the end of a base64 string

maybe we take every third line and get three base64 strings representing red, green, and blue parts of an image?

1:34 PM

Hm, the every third line part seems logical but don't know about the rest, I think we should decode it and see

I already tried decoding it as regular base64. Got nothing.

wgsZ7b3fBdJGl3tFS/NaJSZ1Y+ADGHGmxhVQWknqCsZS5JA4YiyC2Or8qbhh/l7e956Pezhb+OCAkHpiSO2R6r9una0bOGn3J12KB63RvEK1YfimObq/1lpkHLLp9YVi8UoIBpTivuK9MIMOSEUnBP8YZrv3zvIfFZvfoLLB+qo9t4bQLNTQw8czFuD7jZkNxl9BFrLb8alnJcuApNqi07pepFX/DyJTmACUMZpDW6m0dupBr93mYsKcmmzcczj7I1ufdqhQG03OkWQ8WWILzZgqfh8Gj3yybBqdJherBt1tfC9tGibOzbfhqzfIlLQ==
v6XsRpMPgkbeIIziRvUkq/k0B1YaMvu2PKinRkWxvVIt3R1aGN6VAEVsAH8hW4HWn0Erb11D53nUSht+74j+o91ubaMxMr5QGLN8AnyXnhxDTaL1Gt3Usk/OUT+2yM9KDW7zsmBYireiMsOlsiVavGMq1KQR0zkhZP8kEIgcHREO78P5h1U1cs0Jy9WG3uEym9udNuhjNnPkZYsOw+/Ere0TCs8A/cRpoNuAgf2vgvUKvVCqpW60WExxnvdzuzHU0gRcdMT48hp5ZirzXtR…

There are the three lines if you wanna try things out.

Side note, why is it that so many poor questions get a random favorite even with no votes/downvotes

Thanks, I will check it out

Probably someone who just wants to know the answer anyway

@n_palum Because favoriting something has no real meaning. People can use it to mark a question they want to revisit, for any reason. Or can use it to mark their own stuff. Or any of an endless list of other reasons, including "I felt like it".

1:41 PM

Fair enough

1

Q: What's wrong with minesweeper?

First of all; sorry for the bad quality of the picture. Now guys seriously what's wrong here! I started playing minesweeper few days ago, its agood game and all, but just check the picture: - the 2 i had the mouse on has 3 mines around it. - the 3 above it, has 4 mines around it. - the other 3 ...

@n_palum often it's the OP.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1:56 PM

Well, you do get a badge if you get enough favorites...

2:12 PM

@Sphinx OK, now can we get this reopened?

It doesn't matter if it turned out to be a misunderstanding problem rather than an actual puzzle. It's a problem the OP ran into while trying to solve a puzzle, so it should be on-topic.

Hell, asking about the different symbols used in Minesweeper and their meanings should be on-topic, and that would cover this.

Minesweeper is a video game, belongs on Arqade :)

@n_palum I know a mod on another site who uses favourites specifically to mark bad questions, so that he can easily find them again to check on whether they need closing/reopening/editing/deleting/whatever.

I'd reopen, but I can't :P

@Randal'Thor Thanks

8

A: Why do people favorite a question, but not upvote it?

Well, there could be several reasons for this: Maybe they're out of votes for the day, and want to come back and upvote later Perhaps I want to answer this, but I don't have time right now, so I'll answer later More people want to try to come back and solve it later because they don't feel like...

@Sconibulus I beg to differ. Minesweeper is a puzzle, with a long history on this site.

Back in the olden days before people started posting puzzles as questions, this whole site was about things like Minesweeper, Rubik's cube, and so on, and all questions were actual questions based on problems the OP had faced.

I've always been against the crowd who think that's all Puzzling should ever have been, but we don't want to drive out those questions either :-)

GentlePurpleRain

2:16 PM

@Randal'Thor Minesweeper is a puzzle, but the question doesn't have anything to do with solving a puzzle. It's not asking "How do I proceed from this position in Minesweeper" or "What's an optimal strategy for Minesweeper"; it's simply asking for clarification on the Minesweeper UI. That doesn't seem on-topic to me.

That Minesweeper game is frequently unsolvable, I think that makes it not a puzzle

I think I agree to IanMacdonald: "it's just a lack of understanding of the UI presented to you". If we leave this open, would we also allow questions like "Help I can't close this minesweeper window"?

I wouldn't fight against someone saying it was a puzzle, that's just the way my thoughts go first

@GentlePurpleRain Ah, but it doesn't say "what does this symbol mean", it says "why is this position possible". Just because the answer turned out to be about the UI, that's not immediately apparent from the question.

I agree with GPR and Scon here. I don't consider Minesweeper a "pure" puzzle, at least.

2:18 PM

Answers shouldn't make questions off-topic.

GentlePurpleRain

@Randal'Thor Fair point.

@Deusovi That's not what I said.

@Deusovi is just a purist

Related - totally different scenario, but the underlying principle of "answers shouldn't make questions off-topic" is the same.

I know that's not what you said. I meant that I agreed with you two on two separate points.

@Deusovi What makes it less puzzley than any other grid-deduction game?

2:20 PM

The fact that you need to click stuff to reveal stuff?

The fact that it's not always solvable through pure deduction.

GentlePurpleRain

@Randal'Thor, why haven't you voted to reopen?

not always isn't necessarily a problem, but I would go so far as to say it is usually not solvable by deduction

GentlePurpleRain

I think regardless of its "pure" puzzle status, we have plenty of precedent to indicate that questions about solving Minesweeper are on-topic here.

@Deusovi Hmm, true, but then lots of the games/puzzles which are on-topic here have an element of chance.

@GentlePurpleRain Um, because I was too busy getting into a debate? :-P

2:23 PM

Sure, but there's a difference between an intentional element of chance and one that just seems like they didn't care. I dunno, maybe it's just my bias against Minesweeper.

Also, once someone VTROs, it goes to the review queue, and then Gamow, Glorfindel, and JonMarkPerry will be the ones who decide its fate. Better to get some tSL people involved first ;-)

Yeah, I really don't understand the thoughts behind people who only review and don't... talk. On meta or in chat, I mean.

^ Preach sistah

GentlePurpleRain

Has anyone been looking at this puzzle:

1

Q: Help wanted, pretty please

“Knock, knock” doors said (red doors from the future, don't think about it too much). "Come in please” and without moving my eyes from computer I continued: "Please sit on chair.” After that I noticed something strange. “Hi there“ said that person - "I'm new here.” And it was really true. At l...

story steganography

Me neither, but then I've always been a chatty sod.

2:25 PM

@GentlePurpleRain Yes and I've been debating if they actually mean stegano

GentlePurpleRain

I noticed it seems to be using three different quotation marks: “ ” " seemingly at random.

We're a small community. You can recognize usernames after a month or so.

Which one, GPR?

GentlePurpleRain

Maybe that's where the stego comes in.

i think those could just be mistakes? my windows computer does that when typing in word

@GentlePurpleRain It looks like just nonsense, but the OP seems to have a good record, so maybe it'll actually be something clever.

GentlePurpleRain

2:26 PM

@thecoder16 But it's inconsistent, and sometimes backwards.

oh, for some reason your message didn't show up until I clicked Rand's response

Also, is the OP's English actually that bad, or is it part of the puzzle?

in the third line, "hi there" is surrounded by two forwards facing quotes

@Randal'Thor I think the English is weak that's all

GentlePurpleRain

Or this:
> ”I see“

2:27 PM

Hence "my neck chocked"

@Deusovi Not so small these days :-)

he says his english is bad here puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/48650/…

True!

GentlePurpleRain

The problem with steganography is that you can't really go in and fix anything up without worrying about breaking something...

^ my concern

2:29 PM

(And OP's other question seems a lot like "guess-what-I'm-thinking". I'm not sure that this one will be worth it to solve.)

Hey, I should write a puzzle in broken English. Trouble is, everyone would know immediately that that was part of the puzzle :-P

The title also says, help me please

pretty please could be a ference

sets up sock

reference

2:29 PM

@Deusovi I downvoted it, but I'm open to changing my vote if it turns out to be cleverer than I'd thought.

Oh, at first I thought you were referring to the other one.

yeah, that seems to be the problem. we don't know what's purposely wrong and what isn't...

(The one that had already been solved.)

I also downvoted the Minesweeper one, but also VTROed.

Hopefully at least some of the 4 people who upvoted my comment there also have VTRO privs.

I think that's reasonable. I don't think it's off-topic, but it's not a good question.

2:32 PM

@Randal'Thor 1 was me, so I can't help you sorry

I can mod-unhammer. :P

@n_palum Get yourself some more rep, dammit :-)

@Deusovi You would never!

@Randal'Thor I'm trying D: I have a puzzle coming and it's taking a long time..

@Deusovi Sounds like @GentlePurpleRain also thinks it should be reopened (?), so that makes three, even if only two can actually vote due to hammers.

Fun with truncating: GPR is a real @gent.

GPR's an agent?

2:36 PM

Reopened. (That felt weird. :P )

Gent, with a ping.

I @ran away.

Humn can @hum catchy tunes.

Btw @Deusovi , I wanted to know something: why are plagiarised posts deleted, and not simply edited to add attribution? I assume it's something to do with site policy or something?

GentlePurpleRain

Hopefully none of these puzzles are @n_p-hard... :P

What's that supposed to mean!

Yeah, the policy is to delete the plagiarized posts - often, they're posted without permission from the author, which isn't allowed even with attribution

GentlePurpleRain

2:38 PM

@Ankoganit I think it's mostly because it's a lot more work to find and add attribution for all of them.

That too.

41

Q: A policy on plagiarism

A few of you may be wondering why nineteen questions just disappeared from the site. This meta post is meant to explain what just happened, and set a goal for how to handle similar situations in the future. These posts were deleted because they were plagiarized. They were directly copied verbati...

discussion questions plagiarism

NP-hardness is a computer science term relating to computational complexity

GentlePurpleRain

NP-hardness (non-deterministic polynomial-time hard), in computational complexity theory, is the defining property of a class of problems that are, informally, "at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP". More precisely, a problem H is NP-hard when every problem L in NP can be reduced in polynomial time to H, that is: assuming a solution for H takes 1 unit time, we can use H‎'s solution to solve L in polynomial time. As a consequence, finding a polynomial algorithm to solve any NP-hard problem would give polynomial algorithms for all the problems in NP, which is unlikely as many of them are...

@GentlePurpleRain But you need to find the source to know they're plagiarised in the first place.

2:39 PM

I didn't even get pinged so it's okay :P

A wild @man has entered the room!

@n_palum Probably because of the hyphen, @N_P

Stop that

I have never been welcomed before like that :p

GentlePurpleRain

With some names, it becomes a bit of a strech (@sp ?)

Actually, the top answer on that plagiarism thread, from a CM, says "I find the deletion on sight policy a little harsh; especially for questions", and suggests editing the question to add attribution instead.

2:41 PM

You're back!

FWIW, that's what we've tended to do in cases of mass plagiarism on SFF: for plagiarised questions, delete if it adds no real value to the site (e.g. no highly voted answers), otherwise edit in attribution.

Example.

Hmm, makes sense.

Hmm, I wonder if we should reopen that discussion on Puzzling ...

For that matter, on what grounds have the mods been deleting plagiarised questions for years rather than simply editing and commenting as Jon suggested?

The purist regime will not be brought down!

I feel like attributions usually get edited in

people say "Hey, this seems outsourced" in the comments, then OP has a few hours to change something before a flag is raised (in my experience)

or at least before a flag is handled, I'm honestly not sure how quickly they get raised

2:48 PM

@Sconibulus I can't think of a single example when mods have edited in attribution instead of deleting a plagiarised post.

I didn't say the mods did it

I've flagged 3-4 plagiarised posts in the last week and all of them got deleted

Uh? Why did I just get this as a First Post review?

There are no audits any more! slaps review system

@GentlePurpleRain Needs at least 3, so no dice for me :P

That was their first post, actually

2:49 PM

@Ankoganit But it's days old!

GentlePurpleRain

@Randal'Thor Feel free to make a meta post about this. I would suggest focusing on what we should do going forward.

I assume they had an earlier post which is now deleted.

@GentlePurpleRain Yeah, definitely. I'm not going to propose that you go back and undelete a bunch of old deleted plagiarised questions :-)

3:10 PM

FWIW the Help Wanted puzzle gave some clarification

Wow, lots of games going on nowadays

PSE = PGSE

=CGSE

@thecoder16 never

:P

@Ankoganit Good thing we didn't merge the rooms then ;-)

3:23 PM

True

T̂H̓̽̃ͣͧͪE ̎̀̾ͤ̔̚̚R̔̽̅̾̽͗E͌̓̔V̀̚Oͮ́ͮ͋ͧ͑͊LͫU̿̌͌ͧͨ̊T̓̓ͤİͣͨÕ̽̈ͤͫͫ̉Ǹͨͤ̓̑ͨͫ ̌͂͊̊ͨ͋̓H̓ͮ̊A̍ͯ̌̊̒ͪS ̂̏ͯ̑ͬ̉Bͧ͑͋̀̽E͊̓̈́̈́͛̇G̽ͩ̅̄͌ͦUNͮ̈́͊

7 hours later…

10:18 PM

0

Q: Coordinate yourself!

Task is simple. Get coordinates from the two pictures below. You don't have to know game rules to solve it :) Hint

visual board-games

1 hour later…

11:45 PM

@Randal'Thor Now that you're around-ish again, this and this look like they need an ✔Accept from you — heads up.

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Jun '172

The Sphinx's Lair

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