The Sphinx's Lair - 2017-08-29 (page 1 of 3)

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12:47 AM

0

Q: Paper Picture Puzzle

Here is a puzzle I drew Your final answer will be what you need to know to solve this puzzle (You'll know it when you have the final answer) Notes: I did a couple dumbs. One is the space planning. Anywhere with awkwardly written or squeezed in numbers is just that and so you don't have to read...

enigmatic-puzzle

1:47 AM

@MikeQ I like a mix. But courses that offer the ability to be creative, while being informative (where I can learn a lot) are my favorite

2:01 AM

0

Q: What is the 7th line?

.0 <,1,< ^0^.0^0.^ >1>1>1>,1>1>1>1,> v2v2v2v2v2v2v2v.2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2.v <1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<,1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1<1,< What comes next?

2:15 AM

^ what comes next? a headache. :)

1 hour later…

3:38 AM

Assuming godman was correct:

CCCC: Remade replica signs for town down under (5, 7)

(with apologies to Sid if it wasn't)

sees town down under (5, 7)

oh this is easy :P

ALICE SPRINGS = (REPLICA SIGNS)*

Indeed 't is

never heard of it

^

> down under

3:40 AM

It's right in the middle somewhat near Uluru, geography lessons!

It's the capital of central australia

I don't think many people would :P

:P

I'm geographically clueless

@boboquack So Uluru would be the Statue of Liberty of central australia?

3:41 AM

@ASCII-only yep

and central australia is the 3rd territory

What would Kata Tjuta be then

@boboquack not the 8th?

@ASCII-only there's states and territories :P

No, there are 7 territories

States and territories of Australia

Australia (officially known as the Commonwealth of Australia) is a federation of six states, together with ten federal territories. The Australian mainland consists of five of the six federated states and three of the federal territories (the "internal" territories). The state of Tasmania is an island about 200 kilometres (120 mi) south of the mainland. The remaining seven territories are classified for some purposes as "external" territories. Aside from the Australian Antarctic Territory, which is Australia's claim to part of Antarctica, Australia is the world's sixth-largest country by total...

nvm. there are 10???

I won't be able to do a CCCC for like 2 hours sorry

That's fine. We can wait.

3 hours later…

6:25 AM

@boboquack I thought you were kidding, but oh my, I didn't realise Central Australia used to be a thing.

6:38 AM

New South Wales has shrunk significantly during its lifetime.

6:58 AM

@Sp3000 bit of Aussie history for you then

Most people haven't heard of it

@Sp3000 yes, Godman was correct

I'm not sure if it was the third territory that wasn't also a state, but anyway it was the third internal territory that wasn't also a state

By my watch, more than 2 hours have passed...

@Wen1now sorry hang on

Don't worry, I'm just being pedantic

7:12 AM

(Also, @n_palum I wasn't actually aware "saddhu" was a valid English word)

Well, at least it would be pedantic if you'd said 'in a sec'

And Deus=God was something I found out only a couple of days back. And was, of course, amused by that

@Wen1now :P it's fine, I actually almost forgot

@Sid I think I mentioned that at some point

Yeah, I realised that too when ~~studying latin~~ I noticed deus used somewhere

7:20 AM

God of eggs

9

Aug 7 at 2:01, by Mithrandir

Apparently 'Deus' in Latin means 'god'.

I thought roots were something you were required to study in English - for example deity (god) <- deus (god, latin) and theotes (divinity, greek)

Ah. I must have missed that.

Our curriculum is so weird. For some reason we don't learn what everybody else does

Lol... What.

7:23 AM

@Wen1now huh?

Hi @Sp3000!

Okay, story time:

(hurries to schedule weekly event - Wen1now story time)

(Heya)

Hey

Nice story

7:25 AM

@Wen1now But... isn't boboquack Australian too

Once upon a time there was a wild beast called Wen1now. It said, 'Hey!' and ran away, and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.

@ASCII-only Curriculums are state/territory based, mainly

10/10 nice story

(though there is a national curriculum, it's rather basic, it lets the states/territories decide mostly afaik)

Yeah in Queensland we don't study etymology at all

Once upon a time there was a school which taught on a curriculum that was entirely unique. For example, instead of offering a wide variety of classes like literature and english and english language and I forget what else normal people do, they just had 'english'. And instead of accelerated 'streams' or whatever (@boboquack when we talked about this I just nodded and pretended I understood what you guys were talking about) we just have normal subjects, ...

7:27 AM

@boboquack "the happily ever after" thing is the biggest scam of the millennia. :P

@Wen1now O_o weirdest school ever

@Wen1now normal subjects? And what is accelerated streams?

... where you get to choose how much attention you pay in class. For example, I don't pay any attention in any of the subjects I actually find interesting because everybody else is covering the basics. Anyway, another example of us not doing anything is when everybody else is talking about learning 'calculus' and stuff and hardly anybody in my grade has even attempted to learn calculus

Normal subjects as in what everybody else seems to be doing. I have no clue what acclerated streams are

I think you get to do more work in less time to make time for the subjects that you actually need to try in.

So like, do 4 years worth of maths in 3 or whatever

Isn't accelerated stream what happens when you squeeze Niagara falls through a drinking straw?

The end

Hey, is setting up a 'xkcd fan club' a bit outside the scope of PSE?

7:31 AM

no

Is anybody interested in an 'xkcd fan club'?

Everyone is a fan of xkcd. :P

This is either the worst CCCC ever, or in the bottom 10% :P

CCCC: Utter without distorted bassdrop underground (6)

This CCCC seems to be a perfect sphere

the least amount of surface possible

there are no indirect anagrams in this CCCC, right?

7:37 AM

@ffao indirect?

@JohnDvorak definitely lol trying not to delay any further

As in "mad mod= Devious from Deusovi

for example, if I say "crazy cat" for ACT, this is direct; but if I write "crazy feline" this is indirect because the word "CAT" is not in the clue

Oh right, there aren't any direct anagrams then, idk if it's a bad idea

Lack of direct anagrams is fine. Presence of indirect anagrams is bad.

Well crap

7:40 AM

Abort! Abort!

Well, at least we learned something

yeah :P

well, at least we know it's there, so let's go with it

I guess having a rainstorm would be a good idea

O_o

Since when is a rainstorm a good idea

7:42 AM

I'm wondering if indirect anagrams are fine as subtrahends. Thoughts?

Also, bassdrop is a word?

dammit did I miss trashtalking the queensland curriculum

define "word"

Oops forgot a space

@as4s4hetic not really

a word is something without a space

7:45 AM

As in you didn't actually miss any trash talk

@Wen1now nice story btw :P

I have no idea about the 4c

your definition includes "ocihsue" as a word

Clearly it's a word

^yeah, that seems to be the case. At least, that's how it was defined in our maths class. Did I mention how we learn everything in a ... different way to everybody else?

(note to self: keyboard mashes on a Dvorak keyboard resemble words more than they do on Qwerty keyboards)

7:47 AM

lolwhat

I agree with that

I thought words were the unit of data used by a processor

Except for the . that appear in the middle of words sometimes

@Wen1now why are you trying to learn language study in maths

@Wen1now ?????????????

. in the middle of words are pretty normal in Lojban

7:48 AM

hey I spent the whole of maths today learning russian

@JohnDvorak YOU'RE A LOJBAN SPEAKER??

...what?

What about hyphens and apostrophes

I ... read through a tutorial once

@ASCII-only Sometimes, when you keyboard mash on a DVORAK keyboard, you end up with . in the middle of a word

Stay on the home row, then.

7:49 AM

What did I spend maths today doing? Codenames.

Day well spent.

Help how to find time to learn a language

learn esperanto

I want to learn a language but don't have the time/motivation

TIL learning Esperanto grants time manipulation powers

7:50 AM

I am trying to learn Python. It is also a language after all. :P

I probably have enough time but not enough motivation

same sid :>

@as4s4hetic What language do you recommmend?

Ruby

@Wen1now me too but I spend all my free time working on Charcoal

7:51 AM

ESPERANTO

Emrak and Doorknob speak Lojban

step 1: learn Python

step 2: import russian

I know doorknob does

He also inspired me to learn toki pona

Learn Spanish, it's the second most common language spoken in the world

after Chinese and English

7:52 AM

English is third

^wut

Do you mean as primary language?

Well at least I think it was overtaken by Spanish quite a while ago

oh native language

I thought English ^ and Spanish v

7:53 AM

that makes sense

@JohnDvorak probably? Didn't bother reading further, just saw it somewhere

"native language" != "language spoken" though

^

I speak daily in a language that is not my native language

yeah I consider my native language to be Mandarin

so today my friend jokingly asked me to learn klingon

7:55 AM

already starting with mandarin feels almost like cheating

and now it's second on my languages to learn list?

@ffao wait what, you speak mandarin?

Great idea I should learn conlangs first

nope, nor do I think I ever will

Yeah: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/101265/…

so hard -.-

I only committed to a proposal for a programming challenges stack exchange that got unilaterally shot down

not a big believer in area 51 since then

7:58 AM

I've committed to the conlang one and weapons I think

Sounds like a dupe of PPCG, no?

I mean, the kinds of questions you would see in a programming contest

they are offtopic in PPCG, and in SO where they are theoretically ontopic they either get closed as homework or get terrible answers

still a dupe

"theoretically ontopic" doesn't mean much if you can't ask the question without getting at least -2

That would seem like a good idea... actually, those would perhaps just be accepted on PSE, no?

8:00 AM

@as4s4hetic yeah. It is hard

@as4s4hetic I wonder how tank engineers and halberd experts are going to get along on Weapons

Damnit Lojban and Klingon are still in beta on Duolingo

Is duolingo any good?

I LOVE DUOLINGO

I tried duolingo a few years ago and it was really bad

8:01 AM

YES WHO DOESN'T

I tried it again a few weeks back and it got a lot better

ok but if you really want to learn a new language I think slavic languages are really cool

^ (ironic bc is learning russian out of all)

also at IOL all the people who spoke slavic languages got together and played a game

the first time I tried Duolingo, it taught me "hello" in a language, then in the exercise "Translate this word: <hello in the language>"

I type "hello" and Duolingo says I should have used "hi" instead

Learn Greek so you can pretend to be good at math, or Latin to pretend to be good at biology

someone would say something in a language, and people who had the same word in their language would get excited

8:03 AM

the hell, you just taught me this word as hello!

hAh nah it's gotten significantly better

@ASCII-only learning biology would be easier than learning Latin methinks

Okay. So which language?

grabs popcorn to watch the fight

@ASCII-only alternatively learn Klingon if you want people to think you're a giant nerd

@Sid I'd say no

@as4s4hetic it's not on duolingo

8:04 AM

I should delete that, what if :) decides to lurk in this chat

@as4s4hetic also no way not nerdy enough

we all think doorknob is a giant nerd, including doorknob

I'm trying to learn a bit of Elvish.

@Mithrandir ooh

@as4s4hetic Quenya or Sindarin at least

8:05 AM

Why not stick with english?

Damnit ninja'd

0

Q: How many moves are at least needed to change the order of cubes to a random order?

We have some distinct cubes that are ordered like below: How many moves are at least needed to change the order of cubes to a random order? valied moves: in every step we can take a cube and put it on another cube or on the desk. 1.$11$ 2.$14$ 3.$17$ 4.$23$ 5.$25$ M...

I already know one and a half languages, why not move onto a third? :D

That

@Wen1now why stop learning

8:06 AM

Counting half languages, I know 2 languages...

It's like programming

literally me with Japanese

@sphinx thanks for the remainder.

That questions seems rather silly to me

I speak English, and my Hebrew isn't bad (seeing as I live in a Hebrew-speaking country it's kind of necessary).

8:06 AM

@as4s4hetic ???

@as4s4hetic is this you admitting to sockpuppetry?

Does anyone know which is a good tutorial to learn to solve Rubik's Cube?

So I learnt enough japanese to be able to survive on my own for half a month in japan with no translator

@Sid rubiks-cube ;P

but all I did was just replace all the nouns I didn't know with english words and say them in a japanese kind of way

and I'd still constantly screw up verb conjugation

8:08 AM

Well, I know 3 languages but I can't survive In a non-English speaking country, I think

I don't think I could survive anywhere

It really isn't that hard, you just need to know how to buy food, how to buy train/bus tickets and how to ask where the nearest restroom is and you should be good

oh and ofc: "I don't speak x, can you speak English please?"

I'm a fake xD

Actually, I think the limiting factor for me would be where I'd get money from

I'd end up starving to death because I forgot to bring money

@Wen1now not even America?

I don't think I've ever asked where the nearest restroom is, just follow the signs with a man drawing or hug the left wall

8:15 AM

@ffao that is...so apt. :P

Probably not even America. So, should I learn American-english

Yes. Practice it here :P

america seems scary

(And someone pin the new C4)

see, when you're as shy as I am, you learn how to do everything without speaking at all

you'd be surprised at how much you can do

8:16 AM

That reminds me of our trip

Story time:

(I don't think I can survive even inside my own country. :P)

We were asking for the pool cues, but didn't actually know how to say it, so somebody decided to mime playing pool.

@ffao when your moon is a maths tutor you learn that to I think

EOS

Pretty sure it's how I learnt problem solving :P

8:18 AM

Anyway, what language should I learn?

Should I set up a/an xkcd fan club?

@Wen1now please don't end on a cliffhanger

where were you that they had pool cues but didn't know what "pool cue" meant?

@Wen1now no there are already too many lol

@ffao Brazil

@Wen1now depends, do you want easy or interesting

8:19 AM

both, if that's possible

you could have gone on the internet and asked for instant translation in PSE chat :P

@Wen1now you should have simply pointed to the pool cues

Yeah. ffao never sleeps. :P

@Sid Now that I think about it, I think we were asking for pool balls, not cues

@Wen1now For easy + interesting I'd probably go esperanto/lojban then?

Okay, easy+interesting+practical then

practicality would be useful

8:20 AM

Practical how

babbel.com/en/magazine/…

> The relative ease with which English can be picked up

who wrote this O_o

If you want practical as in a lot of people speaking it, I'd go Spanish/Portugese/Russian/Japanese then I guess

I'm going to start Korean once the duolingo course comes out :P

Spanish/portuguese/russian/japanese... which one is the most interesting/easy?

Anyway, we have an unfair C4 and I have literally no idea what's going on in that clue(apart from knowing we have to anagram something)

why unfair?

Indirect anagram. Our resident expert of Cryptic clues hates it

8:27 AM

@Wen1now Unless you want to learn Chinese characters again then definitely not Japanese :p

@Wen1now Russian has a different alphabet (like Japanese just slightly less bad) so I'd say it's not that easy either

(Also, I found out recently that my college does online treasure hunts.)

I've got a handle on a few of the borrowed Chinese characters. Actually, not jap since the kanji always messes with my head (since I always try to read them in mandarin)

@ASCII-only I LOVE the cyrillic alphabet

Spanish is easier than Portuguese, but less interesting (not an opinion but a fact) (actually an opinion)

@Wen1now おはようございます。ぼくの名えはアスキーオンリーです。

8:32 AM

Russians told me Russian is not hard, I'm not sure how trustworthy that is

Okay, russian sounds promising

I don't understand what that says

crap almost forgot to put the kanji in

@Wen1now you should ~~learn japanese to figure out what it says~~ wait don't, it's hard :P

well really if you just use hiragana then Japanese isn't that hard either

0

Q: Find the next cube in this sequence

What Is the next cube ? It was extracted from an IQ test of Mensa. There is no trap except I don't know if it can be solved.

0

Q: Getting all same side pairs

The goal is to get same side pairs of the 6 tiles, , to fit into a $2\times 3$ grid, so that all touching sides match like so (excluding the red part), for example:

mathematics logical-deduction grid-deduction

@ASCII-only おはよう。ぼくはエフエフアオです。

how does everybody know so many languages?

8:36 AM

אנחנו מכל העולם

XKCD fan club

Fan club for xkcd fans.

what

わたしはエイエスフォルです。よろしくおねがいします ^-^

What does that say?

I'm as4, nice to meet you :P

idk everyone else was introducing themselves

8:41 AM

I feel bad now that I forgot to say nice to meet you in my introduction

even though I'm not actually meeting anyone

I can hardly type in another language

yoroshiku means more like "please take care of me"

^that sounds weird in english but there's an equivalent in mandarin and korean (and other languages I don't know) I think

I think most people think of it as a set expression anyway

"this is what I say when I meet someone"

yep

Woah, now that I put effort into reading it I can read the jap

8:43 AM

@Wen1now you've learnt japanese?

:o

learnt - past tense

Like, the most basic phrases

@ffao I thought it would be more like エフエフエイオー?

<- did japanese

then dropped out in like grade 10

missed half a year + wasn't paying attention lol

I dropped out in grade 9 :)

yeah, same

Actually I think it was grade 8

8:46 AM

um, true, it should have been エフィエフィアオ maybe

there, that looks reasonable

But I actually paid attention, so it kind of cancels out

The coolest part about learning Japanese from cartoons is that I didn't learn how to ask where the restroom is, but I did learn how to say "I don't want to die"

useful phrases

@ffao I've always pronounced your username as like /ffaʊ/

everyone pronounces it differently

the way I say it is close to that katakana, but you can say whatever sounds best

(I would give you an IPA, if I knew it)

I just thought f-f-a-o

8:51 AM

@Wen1now guess what? I did too, while simultaneously coding

Same here! Although my code doesn't work

I pronounce it eff-eff-ah-oh

fufow?

my brain can't handle that many syllables

it morphed from fuhfow to just fffow

@Wen1now yes it was pool balls wen

8:57 AM

ball is just "bola", that's easy

pool... that gets more complicated

I pronounce it siks-tee-fighv-thow-sand-for-hun-dred-and-for-tee

Easy peasy when you know absolutely nothing else

My brain cannot yet support hexidecimal

@boboquack xD

@ASCII-only SUBWAY (underground) = WUB* (bass drop, as in dubstep) in SAY (utter)

9:04 AM

wub haha

I was wondering what bassdrop could be

Darn.. when you have subway on the list of possible candidates but forget about the c4

Didn't know it about the wub wub, but S***AY was rather obvious.

In hindsight, I may have had a tiny chance with this one

Never heard of wub

@Wen1now SLAM! That was the window of opportunity. :)

9:07 AM

Does anybody want to play anything? First link wins

ouch

Spyfall

For playing the game Spyfall. Play using spyfall.adrianocola.com...

now M Oehm has to post an opening onomatopoeia when the next C4 comes

Wub! Wub! Wub!

user image

9:18 AM

0

Q: How to solve this Morse code like puzzle

I am trying to solve this Puzzle based Geocache. It is simply this string on dots and dashes --.-..-....-.---...--.--.---..-..--..-..---.--.--..--..--.---..-..---.-..--..-..--..---.-..---..--.--..-.---..---.--.---.--.--..--..---.-...--.-..---..--.--.--..--..--..-.---..--.---..-..-..--..---....

puzzle-identification

@as4s4hetic is that LOJBAN?

It doesn't look like it to me

no it's birdpersonese xD

(only reason why I know is because me is something like mi or something)

(or maybe that's I, in which case I'm imagining things)

(it's a joke)

9:30 AM

(well I guess I'm imagining things then)

I'm away now for two hours or so, so I won't wait for @ASCII-only's confirmation.

@MOehm yes

:P

CCCC: Satan images half broken in Devil's home (8)

Posted a split second too early. :) Anyway, Yuo'll know this one when you have it, it's easy.

@boboquack :/ you should upgrade to Intel sometime

9:33 AM

But then he wouldn't be able to do exact floating point division

I really feel like devil's home is hell

so is hehalfll or hahellfl = Satan images?

Shame that pentagram is 9

^?

Okay, now that I think about it I really don't think devil's home is hell

9:55 AM

Clearly the Devil's home is "the details" :P

i was going to say ASTAROTH maybe

but ROTH is probably not an anagram of half broken

It's more likely an anagram of SATANIMA or SATANGES imo

@as4s4hetic Is that really birdpersonese

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