The Sphinx's Lair

Rubio

12:12 AM

Anyone for Codenames?

paramesis

12:26 AM

I would, but I have to get started on my FTC puzzles.

Ankoganit

2:32 AM

@Sp3000 WIN+KING

I like that one :)

Gareth McCaughan

oh, that is indeed clever

but I'm sure when I saw the clue before it had a different (not-winking) smiley face

Ankoganit

Something to do with browsers probably

In my Chrome, it doesn't show up at all

So I had to google that character

Sp3000

2:56 AM

Yeah it's meant to be the WINKING FACE Unicode char - I was going to do ;) but thought some might argue that's "wink" not "winking" :P

xnor

3:14 AM

For the C4, i want CONTINUE to work meaning "carry on", with "untie" somehow gaining +"con" and anagramming indicated by untie, but it's not coming together

i guess that would be an indirect anagram anyway

ffao

Gareth already said it's not CONTINUE

xnor

oh, ok

Sphinx

8:14 AM

0

Q: What is an EEEEE 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 an EEEEE Word™. Use the examples below to find the rule. $$ % set Title text. (spaces around the text ARE important; do not remo...

Sphinx

9:05 AM

-3

Q: Can you unlock the MechBox?

Mechanical Box is a set of puzzles. Imagine a steel cube that you twist in your hands, trying to find secret buttons and understand how the hell are you supposed to open it. That's what the MechBox looks like. It is a high-tech device created with only one purpose: to store and protect an unkno...

pattern visual number-sequence english puzzle-creation

Mithrandir

^spam

cc @Rubio spammer: puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/37726/andrey-sklyarov

Rubio

Hm

Why does delete not have a spam reason anyway

Mithrandir

@Rubio it's in destroy, if you mean the user.

Can someone please ping me with an apostrophe in the beginning of the ping for a test?

Wen1now

'@Mithrandir

boboquack

@'Mithrandir

Wen1now

9:18 AM

^Like that?

Rubio

Yeah - that just seems ... harsh.

Mithrandir

@Wen1now not like that

like this: @bobo I've decided to give you a ping

Sphinx

0

Q: Who get the biggest piece?

This is a puzzle by the famous mathematician Pythagoras, who is widely known for his theorem on triangles. Here is a Puzzle: A huge pie is divided among 100 guests. The first guest gets 1% of the pie. The second guest gets 2% of the remaining part. The third guest gets 3% of the rest, etc. The l...

mathematics puzzle-theory

Rubio

@Mithrandir (see TL)

@Mithrandir 'like this?

@Mithrandir I'm sorry - or like this?

boboquack

@Mithrandir I got that

Wen1now

9:22 AM

I don't got that, what are we talking about now?

Mithrandir

I was trying to reproduce a bug.

Locutus of Borg

@Mithrandir Ping, you buggy wizard. I've got nothing better to do than ping you all day long, apparently.

Then again, @Mithrandir, I'm actually a sock, so I'll excuse you for taking up my time.

Then again, @Mithrandir, I'm actually a sock, so I'll excuse you for ta'

Rubio

9:37 AM

Good night all.

Locutus of Borg

@Rubio Good night!

Mithrandir

Here's why I needed that.

boboquack

So normal messages work fine?'

@boboquack but not pings?'

Mithrandir

They don't show up in the inbox, soo...

boboquack

@boboquack but actually not pings?'

Self-pings seem alright

Wen1now

9:52 AM

@wen1now '

Mithrandir

you can't ping yourself without replies or superpings.

Wen1now

Superpings?

Mithrandir

Another mod superpower

It can take up to 3 @ symbols to summon a user.

boboquack

@@<site-userid>@<sitename>.stackexchange.com

or

@@<chat-id>

is a superping

32

Q: What is a 'superping'?

I've seen the word 'superping' be used across SE meta sites. What does it mean? Is it just a synonym of the word 'ping' (ie. using @ followed by a user's name to give them a notification in their inbox).

support chat super-ping

Mithrandir

I could ping you with: 1.) @wen1now 2.) @@254945 3.) @@32642@puzzling.stackexchange.com

boboquack

10:01 AM

4.) :message_sent_by_wen1now

Mithrandir

That's a reply, not a ping ;)

Wen1now

Wait... so only mods can superping others, but you can superping yourself?

yep

heads to sandbox

@Mithrandir ping

10:05 AM

@Wen1now you can reply to yourself too

Wen1now

Yep

Yeah, I was also wondering if that would work

Mithrandir

→ 1 message moved to Sandbox

Gareth McCaughan

10:56 AM

@Randal'Thor (sorry for very late response) yeah, sabbath=Sunday is a thing in Scotland and probably actually elsewhere too (consider e.g. the old "Monday's child is fair of face ..." rhyme, which ends "But the child who is born on the Sabbath day / Is bonny and blithe and good and gay" and seems to come from Devonshire).

I still say it's wrong, even if it's a venerable error. (Well. Actually I think words mean what they are used and understood to mean, and if lots of people somewhere think "sabbath" means Sunday then in that community "sabbath" does mean Sunday. But I wish they didn't :-).)

Rand al'Thor

12:06 PM

Well, it's been a while since I've made one of my customary calls for delete votes ...

@Beastly @Tech @ffao Can we delete this exact duplicate (so that we can then vote to delete this rather crappy riddle)?

Also, damn these high-rep users going and getting themselves elected so I can't ping them for delete votes any more :-P

n_palum

I'm coming for that 3K don't you worry

Sp3000

Delete is 10k I believe

n_palum

Okay well maybe not deletes

Gareth McCaughan

The poster of the original (yes, rather crappy) has been inactive here for more than a year. The poster of the exact duplicate posted it (again, >1y ago) and since then has done nothing else. I personally would not feel very guilty about deleting the exact dupe without waiting for "enough" non-mods to vote for it. I'm more on the fence about the original, which is bad but kinda harmless.

(I think the original wants hitting with downvotes rather than deleting, on the whole.)

Rand al'Thor

Hmm. Wonder who voted to undelete this?

@GarethMcCaughan Do the two OPs seem to be the same person? If not, is the riddle plagiarised from somewhere?

It's weird that they're so similar to each other.

Gareth McCaughan

12:15 PM

I can't think why anyone would bother posting the exact same thing again with a sock, but I'll take a look.

Jan Dvorak

to avoid self-dup closure?

Rand al'Thor

If you post the same question twice with the same account, you'll get told off. If you use different accounts, it seems like an innocent dupe.

n_palum

Side note - I got my first gold badge and I will begin my process of transforming into a puzzle piece

Rand al'Thor

@n_palum Congrats :-)

Fanatic?

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, I understand that if you've decided to repost the same crappy riddle a week after you posted it the first time you might choose to do it via a sockpuppet. I just don't understand why you'd want to do it at all.

Congratulations @n_palum

n_palum

12:20 PM

Lol yeah just fanatic

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan I've seen plenty of people doing that kind of thing. It almost makes sense if you really don't know the SE system. "Oh, something happened to my puzzle and now people can't post answers to it. Dunno what went wrong there - I'll try again."

Sid

@GarethMcCaughan any specific reason as to why you pinged me to tell about the answer of Rubio's father's day puzzle?

Gareth McCaughan

@Sid Because you'd asked a question along the lines of "what exactly do people do on Father's Day?".

Rand al'Thor

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is ... pretty much what programmers do, right? Or turning the whole thing off and on again, as a special case.

Sid

...so, they make puzzles with the answer "FATHER" On Father's Day?

Gareth McCaughan

12:22 PM

There is no obvious-to-me evidence that poster #2 is the same person as (or working on behalf of) poster #1.

@Sid Well, at least one of them does :-).

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Then I wonder what their common source for the puzzle is.

Gareth McCaughan

Poster #1 had in fact already posted a few (better received) puzzles on PSE before the crappy riddle, so it's not like he was a complete newbie. Anyway, I don't think there's anything much we'd do about it even if there were suspicion that poster #2 is a sock.

Oh, I'm sure poster #2's source was poster #1's puzzle. Don't you think?

Rand al'Thor

Or maybe #2 plagiarised directly from #1. Though it seems weird to do that with a closed riddle ... there must be better things to copy from.

Sid

I was asking about more... Normal people.

Sp3000

Y'all should probably discuss your secret mod plans in your secret mod room :P

Gareth McCaughan

12:25 PM

Nah, nothing secret going on here. Nor, for that matter, any plans.

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Then you're in the wrong place :-)