The Sphinx's Lair

stacksfiller

1:00 AM

@GarethMcCaughan I can verify answers on that one which I think might help -- or give hints if needed

probably crossed the line on what is actually possible

but you can only learn where a line is by crossing it

:J

i think the idea could have been pulled off well, just if i'd put more thought into it

Sp3000

1:15 AM

In that case, here's the community progress: birefvmr qrceningvba nohggvat rtbgvfgvpny -- unir gb purpx ohg V oryvrir gung'f cnegf guerr gb fvk va beqre

Deusovi

oh, we could link you to the sheet

but yeah, we've stared at parts 1, 2, and 7 for a long time but had no progress

Eric Tressler

I had the sheet open for about a week straight before I finally closed it

Deusovi

ditto

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

Sp3000

I think we were on the right track for 1 at least

stacksfiller

birefvmr naq rtbgvfgvpny ner evtug fhonafjref.
V fnj n(ohgg va)t ba gur furrg naq vgf yvxr gur zbfg nznmvat guvat rire fb v gbgnyyl jvfu vg jrer evtug :|
naljnl arkg tbbq cynprf gb ybbx ner --- orggre pbafgehpgrq chmmyrf --- frira naq zrgn

woops how do i strikethrough

Deusovi

1:19 AM

wait, that wasn't right? that was so good though

Sp3000

Hah, I won't say I told you so Deus, but I did say I hoped there was more of a confirmer :P

ASCII-only

@stacksfiller --- text ---

Eric Tressler

Aha! I'm the one who made the comment that it doesn't fit that well.

Deusovi

sure, i had wanted one too. but it did fit well, both BUTT IN and ABUTTING

Eric Tressler

"ABUTTING" doesn't fit that well with "lust"

I didn't mean that it was a bad answer to the puzzle in isolation

stacksfiller

1:20 AM

not the only thing that fit in well in that puzzle

;)

also I edited my earlier message to have 3 dashes on either side but it still didn't strikethrough

Deusovi

oh, formatting on multiline messages doesn't happen

Sp3000

Might need to ditch the space in between

Or nvm

Deusovi

"abut" means "touch", no? ABUTTING could fit, I think -- not as directly as BUTT IN, but it's cool imo that it worked at all

Sp3000

I think I was a bit iffy about it because the phrasing was "a woman" rather than "a girl", which would have made things a bit more indirect

Eric Tressler

It does, it just doesn't connote desire or anything.

Sp3000

1:23 AM

(But still, otherwise good fit yeah)

Deusovi

@Sp3000 I was also iffy about that part, yeah. but there was nothing that worked with W in that position

hm, I notice that stacks didn't confirm DEPRAVATION. that seemed to be the best option we could find though

Sp3000

I'd actually being trying to insert into synonyms for females rather than AG or AW, but didn't have anything good

Deusovi

I had also tried that

I was iffy about it too, but with BUTT IN being thematically appropriate and making an answer word that was also pretty thematically appropriate, that convinced me

Sp3000

Hmm if we take out ABUTTING first letters could conceivably give ORDERED

Deusovi

first letters could conceivably give a lot of things

considering we only have two answers

ffao

1:31 AM

the suggestion to look at 7 and meta is a bit weird, I thought we needed to solve more parts before those

Deusovi

same

stacksfiller

agh

ya know

i kind of feel like i should change my advice

from looking at those parts to just not looking at this puzzle

Deusovi

:c

stacksfiller

it was a cool concept

but i really didnt think through the execution enough

i was too excited to put it up or something

next puzzle can be better i hope

learning opportunity

Eric Tressler

I like the puzzle. I think we just didn't get to the point of critical mass where we could use answers to confirm other answers.

stacksfiller

1:35 AM

yeah

i tried to give like minimal info, but of course minimal info is even minimaler when you already know the answers

Deusovi

well, I really liked the parts we did solve

Eric Tressler

I'm not totally done; I'm going to look at the lust puzzle a little more now

Deusovi

oh yeah, I'm not done either. I still want to solve this

Sp3000

2:01 AM

@stacksfiller Can I just random guess qvfpbaarpgrq be qvfpbagragrq for 7?

stacksfiller

qvfpbagragrq vf evtug!

Sp3000

Oh, awesome (yeah this type of puzzle works better with an answer box :P)

Random guess ynfpvivbhf for 5

Deusovi

and another random guess, fgvatl for 1

Sp3000

And if that's correct, fcbvyrq for meta??

Deusovi

was just about to say the same

Sp3000

2:11 AM

Nice, now get ready to post your question/wrap-up :P

Deusovi

I'm having trouble deciding between those two and just posting the answer that I apparently already wrote

Sp3000

Posting the question would be a lot of work but more awesome, but makes it hard to actually give the answer. Posting the wrap-up would give the answer and be a bit more creative than posting your existing answer IMO

(But that's just my thoughts)

stacksfiller

2:58 AM

All your subanswers are right now!

Deusovi

including PASSIVE?

Eric Tressler

I originally liked that option more, but "pausing" fits better with the audio theme. It's a far more obscure term, though.

Wait, part of it is used in a later puzzle. We might be able to extrapolate it from 7

ffao

3:15 AM

just write in the wrap-up that you had several options to choose from for this puzzle, but eventually settled on one :P

Deusovi

3:35 AM

0

A: Already Solved Puzzle

Screenshot of the wrapup from your latest puzzle:

2

"answer" posted

Eric Tressler

@Deusovi Looks great

Deusovi

had to turn my monitor to portrait mode to get that screenshot

Sp3000

What do you mean, spreadsheet screenshots look great :P

[/lazy]

ffao

5:13 AM

haha, that Contact line

you didn't mention the message hidden in the clues of part 3, though I imagine it would be hard to amend a screenshot

Deusovi

5:34 AM

no I didn't, and I wasn't quite sure where to put it

(probably wouldn't be too difficult - I had to image-edit in the vote count and bottom part anyway, among other things)

(also, was the joke in part 7 too subtle?)

Eric Tressler

No, I got it. I don't think anyone reading it who wasn't around for the discussion will have any idea, but it would be pretty hard to follow without context anyway.

Deusovi

5:50 AM

hm, I just realized I should make it clearer that the flag mentioned was a gay pride flag

also, I started out making up a bit for part 1, but eventually just kept it mostly to actually-existing stuff. maybe I should change that?

Eric Tressler

Oh, oops; I wasn't looking at part 7, I was looking at the italicized comment at the end. That was the joke that stood out to me

I didn't take anything in part 7 as a joke; I just thought you were providing color commentary.

Deusovi

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

Sid

@Deusovi Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

Deusovi

@Sid Sure, no problem. I'm still trying to work on finishing that testsolving for you (and again, I'm really sorry for the delay - I somehow managed to completely forget D: )

stacksfiller

7:23 AM

:D

also lmao at contact

ASCII-only

8:48 AM

@Sphinx what's with the tags lol. and why would they even post here?

Sphinx

10:18 AM

0

Q: Why nobody contacts the police about the murder?

Brian found himself sitting in a very large room with a solitatry light shining from behind him. He hears a voice say, "don't move." Brian stays still. The voice starts again, "tell me why your here or I'll kill your friend." In front of him, Brian sees a familiar face, and behind her ...

Sphinx

1:48 PM

0

Q: An Incomplete Puzzle

I'm sorry to offload some of my work as the puzzle creator on to you solvers. (No, I'm not.) At least there's only one piece missing, right? Complete the puzzle, and then complete the puzzle. Check mark goes to one who completes the puzzle correctly with a full explanation.

logical-deduction enigmatic-puzzle calculation-puzzle grid-deduction sudoku

Eric Tressler

3:03 PM

@ManyPinkHats I answered your puzzle, but I don't like my solution. Let me know if I've made a mistake

ManyPinkHats

Up until trying to identify the missing clue, it looks good, but I was expecting a different final piece to be added, given the five clues that are already there.

This is my bad, I think; I don't think every region has to have a clue in this sort of puzzle, so in the completed puzzle, the single-cell region is not necessarily a gimme

Eric Tressler

Oh; see, I was assuming every region was labelled (obviously)

ManyPinkHats

Yeah, I think that might be just my experience with these, so I'm going to edit the question to make it more clear

Eric Tressler

so I assume you're looking for an (8+) somewhere that will uniquely determine the final puzzle.

ManyPinkHats

Sorry for sending you on a goose chase

Yeah, that's my intention

Eric Tressler

3:09 PM

I'm kind of worn out from this over the past hour, so I may just leave my solution as-is for now, and let someone else wrap it up. If it's unsolved by tonight, I'll (probably) finish it correctly

Is that alright with you?

ManyPinkHats

Sure, I'm just making the edit to clear things up now

Eric Tressler

oops, and I have an 8+ in the lower right where I meant 6+

Fixed. Oh, actually, I see now that the solution is pretty close to what I already have.

Eric Tressler

3:32 PM

@ManyPinkHats I've added a correct (I think) solution, but I omitted some details related to trying out other 2-cell regions that don't uniquely determine an answer.

Sphinx

0

Q: Finding odd one out from the following sequence

I was trying to find odd one out from the sequence as follows - $−3,9,41,113,262,577$ I took the difference of the consecutive terms - $12,32,72,149,315$ I still could not find any pattern in order to find odd one out. Any other method to find the odd one out?

number-sequence

BAYMAX

Oh hi chat!

And I see the question here :)

Eric Tressler

I think "odd one" is a hint.

@BAYMAX I think you may want to delete your question, because it is slightly trivial (not a good puzzle). But I'm happy to help you here in chat.

Apep

Given that it calls it a sequence and not a set, I assume the answer is not for that reason.

Eric Tressler

You really don't think so? I do; I think it's just not posed very well.

BAYMAX

3:38 PM

is it off topic or opinion based, if it is so I will delete it @EricTressler

Eric Tressler

@BAYMAX I'm not ordering you to delete it, or even downvoting it; I just don't think it's a good puzzle.

ManyPinkHats

more specifically, if you change 262 to 265, then it is a fairly simple sequence

BAYMAX

hmm... I am just interested to see various approaches to this problem

@ManyPinkHats yes i thought too

but I am trying to see other approaches to it

initially changing from 262 to 265 was not much trivial to me

Eric Tressler

Okay, @Apep, it looks like the answer is not intended to be for that reason.

ManyPinkHats

@EricTressler Yeah, that's the answer I was intending. There's actually a pretty short way to prove that that's the only way to add a single 8+ region to make the answer unique, but I think this puzzle wasn't as interesting as I first hoped

Eric Tressler

3:49 PM

Well, the 3s are cloistered up there, so there are only 8 regions even in the realm of possibility (all pairs). The two bottom ones have to have a 4 or a 6, so they're ruled out right away, too.

I can fill in the missing details.

Sphinx

4:07 PM

1

Q: codes in kaleidoscopes

Has anyone ever made or ever heard of making coded messages using repeating patterns or colors in kaleidoscopes? I had the idea for a project and was wondering if anyone had any experience with something like this.

pattern visual puzzle-creation

Eric Tressler

@ManyPinkHats It's not well-written, but it's done

ManyPinkHats

It's pretty much exactly what I was going for; it's great, thanks

Eric Tressler

Thanks for posting it, it was fun. How long did you spend coming up with it?

ManyPinkHats

It came up partially by accident, when I was just messing about with trying to create Mathdoku/KenKen with only one type of clue (I have a couple other ones that are just normal Mathdoku/KenKen)

Since I like to make these sorts of puzzles by 'solving them into existence', I ended up making the puzzle grid given in the process, and I was looking to see where I could put in another 8+ clue to make the answer unique

Whereupon I realized that the place where I could put in another 8+ clue to make the answer unique, was itself unique

Eric Tressler

That makes sense. I rarely do anything like this by hand; I generally write code and look for extrema

ManyPinkHats

4:18 PM

And I thought it might be an interesting puzzle, to complete the puzzle

Eric Tressler

Anyway, I think you should be happy with the puzzle. It's different, and it was fun to solve. These types of things never get much traffic, though.

24+ hour C4 hint: "without" doesn't indicate containment.

ManyPinkHats

Yeah, I've got some ideas for a larger, more collaborative puzzle that I'm working on, as well as a Riley Riddle that I need to work out the kinks from

Sphinx

5:37 PM

0

Q: 6 nails String Art

String art is an arrangement of thread strung between nails to form geometric patterns or representational designs such as a ship's sails, sometimes with other artist material comprising the remainder of the work. Let say we have $4$ nails, and we would like to make as many different shapes as...

logical-deduction geometry combinatorics

Deusovi

6:55 PM

ooh, that puzzle's really nice, ManyPinkHats

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