The Sphinx's Lair

1:11 AM

CCCC 24h Hint: The double question mark is there because one word should be broken along a boundary that isn't standard.

Rubio

1:30 AM

Oh dear.

Eric Tressler

I already tried "a lone 'so'", before that hint

Rubio

I think we'd usually expect the ? to be tagging along with the element that's questionable, not tossed on the end, but maybe that's just me

Deusovi

1:50 AM

I've always seen it on the end, FWIW

Rubio

2:04 AM

Then it's just me :)

Sphinx

3:18 AM

0

Q: Real Programmers

Part of the Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1 Super busy today :$ so here's a riddle My first is nothing at all or maybe everything combined. Adding or subtracting, just depends how it's defined. My second is everything combined or maybe nothing at all. It took us year...

riddle

Alconja

3:35 AM

@stacksfiller, you trying to do every xkcd personally? :)

ffao

based on " Super busy today " I'm guessing he wants to do one for every day of the fortnight

Alconja

Makes sense, and I tip my hat if that's the case. o_O ...I'll be releasing my second soon, then I'm done. Two is already too much for me.

Deusovi

5:18 AM

stacksfiller, that's not what "fortnightly" is supposed to mean, but I'm not complaining :P

Sphinx

0

Q: A cipher was found within this video, what method would be used to solve it?

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this, but in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebCHHCw9rY&feature=youtu.be at 22:53) a cipher had appeared and I haven't the slightest idea how to solve it. It doesn't seem to be random gibberish, but I have no idea what method was us...

cipher

Sphinx

6:11 AM

1

Q: WmK: Oh, Life Relax Please!

"Oh, Life Relax Please!" is the title of a book about yoga that my Grandfather gifted me. This Wordmorph K is inspired by his love of wisdom and knowledge. If you are not familiar with this kind of puzzle, you should read the rules first. Rules: Wordmorph K: An Introduction Start Word: LIFE...

knowledge english language word-ladder

Mithrandir

6:49 AM

@rub puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/49798/joanmart

Sphinx

1

Q: Snakes on a Plane!! 2

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1. Inspired by the title of this xkcd comic, but in no way related or affiliated beyond the shared name. It's a well known fact that any animal without legs finds it quite impossible to jump. In fact, such creatures can't even leave...

visual strategy

Mithrandir

@Sphinx Alconja puzzle!

Sid

7:05 AM

@Sphinx This reminded me of that old nokia game I used to play when I was a kid

ffao

I'm guessing that was the point

and I also played a bunch of that

Sphinx

0

Q: How to create a code ring from a 2 seperate encryptions?

I'm trying to create a cipher ring for a Dungeons & Dragons game. I'm using what is basically a Vigenere cipher, but by doing some math you can solve it using a Caesarian Shift. I want to have a tactile way of solving the code (the code ring). This is how the code works: From an overview, the...

word cipher

phenomist

7:22 AM

finally, a title dupe!

Deusovi

7:34 AM

well, we gotta delete one of them obviously

Sphinx

9:42 AM

1

Q: Tiling rectangles with Hexomino plus rectangle #1

Inspired by https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/5198/polyomino-t-hexomino-and-rectangle-packing-into-rectangle See also series Tiling rectangles with F pentomino plus rectangles Also in this series: ...23 to come... I'll post them one at a time The goal is to tile rectangles as small a...

geometry computer-puzzle tiling polyomino

Sphinx

12:00 PM

0

Q: How many pirates were there, and how much was the booty?

A pirate crew at the end of the day split the booty. The first pirate got 100 gold pieces, and 1/6 of the remaining booty. The second one got 200 gold pieces, and 1/6 of the remaining booty. The third one got 300 gold pieces, and 1/6 of the remaining booty. Ect. The last one only got, what if lef...

logical-deduction

Sphinx

12:33 PM

3

Q: Do I Work with an Orangutan?

This morning I found myself face-down in front of a large building. It was obvious that I had taken a great fall from one of the rooms above me, but now I apparently had amnesia. I went in. I could tell that the building had been built by an American architect, as the ground floor was designated ...

lateral-thinking story knowledge

Sphinx

2:02 PM

2

Q: Moving dots on a grid

Another question from iqtest.com (if this has been posted before, feel free to delete). The two dots that are next to each other seem to be alternating between right and left while moving down (unless this is supposed to be misleading because it is very easy to see) but what is the pattern for...

logical-deduction

1

Q: 1,000 Miles North

This is an entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1. This is the original xkcd's comic: here's an enjoyable song with similar title: A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton and this is a similar comic to xkcd's: I admit it's not really similar, not even funny! So talking ...

enigmatic-puzzle trivia

Rubio

2:27 PM

@TwoBitOperation You know, if you use the image-embed widget in the post editor, it'll post your image to the SE-specific area of imgur and make it much cleaner to view

stacksfiller

2:43 PM

The End is Not for a While

TwoBitOperation

2:57 PM

@Rubio

Rubio

@TwoBitOperation hi

TwoBitOperation

@Rubio Since I originally edited the link into the question itself, I wanted that layer of indirection. But ...now that it's in the answer proper, I will change it to use the imbed widget

Rubio

Using the widget puts an embed-link into the question, one hosted at the SE-specific imgur which looks much cleaner. You can use the link however you want, including stripping it back to a bare link which would have given you what you were looking for (or, indeed, removing the link reference entirely, if the point of your puzzle is for someone to discover the location of the image).

TwoBitOperation

Oh, I never knew that! Thanks. Also, I never knew about this chatroom. Learning a lot today.

Rubio

Learning days are happy days. :)

stacksfiller

3:08 PM

Do I mark the answer right if the real right answer is in the comments?

(For Real Programmers)

Sphinx

0

Q: Break away from the cycle and be made free

Today is pain, and it has always been. Run with passion, there lies our sin. Unless forsaken, miserable we'll be. Taught the path, then freed are we. Here lies the freedom we all seek. What am I?

riddle rhyme

GentlePurpleRain

@stacksfiller I would say no. Post a comment indicating that the correct answer is in the comments, and requesting that it be added to the answer. Don't mark an answer correct that is not correct. Comments should be considered temporary, as they can be deleted without notice.

thecoder16

3:26 PM

@GentlePurpleRain i think he's joking

Rubio

Why would you think that?

GentlePurpleRain

I was just about to ask the same question.

thecoder16

because the comments say "a real programmer would solve this by making a program"

Sid

@thecoder16 Comments to the answer..

(See Deusovi's comments, that is)

thecoder16

oops

Sphinx

4:16 PM

2

Q: Where can you find

A deadly river (but not today) A monarchy ran by animals A giant kitchen appliance

lateral-thinking

Eric Tressler

5:06 PM

@ManyPinkHats Can you please verify that FOR+(L)O(R)N is not the solution?

ManyPinkHats

...not quite parsed like that, but yeah, unfortunately, it is

Eric Tressler

I've had that word cropping up repeatedly in my head for the past 2 days, and I could never quite justify it. "so" -> "for", and then L,R give "either side"

ManyPinkHats

Ah, no, the parsing is so much worse than you're imagining

Eric Tressler

Sorry, I wasn't trying to spoil your cryptic. This was distracting me

ManyPinkHats

should I give the terrible parsing now, or should I wait to see if anyone else can see how I intended FORLORN to be the answer?

Eric Tressler

5:15 PM

I think you could wait for a while. I've tried to justify that word for a long time already, so knowing it's the answer won't help me. Someone else might figure it out.

I should get back to work; I'll check back later to see what's transpired

Deusovi

5:28 PM

oh that's awful

Apep

"ms neighbour" has many possibilities. (degree, title, computer company, document, disease)

Deusovi

...or literally M's neighbour

FOR + (L OR N)

ManyPinkHats

That's the one!

:P I know it's absolutely awful

John Dvorak

... shakes head

Deusovi

allow me to respond with a similarly awful clue

CCCC: Choice of Cher or Eminem's genre? (10)

thecoder16

5:40 PM

i actually quite like that heh

Sid

@Deusovi ...That's awful

M Oehm

6:32 PM

Hm. On its own, the L-o- N thing wasn't awful, but the unintuitive split of forms was one step too many. (I had considered splitting for-ms, but thought that I had to replace MS with SO somehow. I also pondered splitting Al-one, where one=A and the solution would be Alabama or Albania.)

Sphinx

8:08 PM

2

Q: 33 stones into gold transmuter

There is a magic transmuter which turns stones into the gold! But this transmuter works weird. Every time you put a stone or more stones and press a button, it takes that stone into a slot in the machine (there are enough amount of slots in the machine, dont worry), and every time you put some ...

mathematics logical-deduction optimization

Rubio

8:26 PM

mutter.

ManyPinkHats

A little over halfway into the first FTC rerun and we have 34 entries (far surpassing the previous record of 23) and a few more are said to be in the works

Query to those who have seen the FTCs before/Poll for those interested: Should the next FTC take place immediately after this one ends, or should there be a week break between the FTCs (for more votes, suggestions, rest, etc.)?

Mithrandir

Give it a week. The suggestions list is often featured in that time.

Rubio

9:00 PM

@puzzledPig and everyone else who may not be aware - if you edit a post from the review queue, you effectively cast a unilateral "looks ok" vote and remove it from the queue altogether, as well as closing (as helpful) outstanding flags against it. If it's a bad post, and your edit isn't going to make it a good one, please do NOT edit it from the Review queue (and indeed editing it just to fix formatting/spoilers, without remedying its actual flaws, is actually not a good thing in general anyway)

If it's a close/delete-worthy post and your edit isn't going to remedy that, don't make your edit at all.

@ManyPinkHats This should now be fixed.

ManyPinkHats

Yup, looks good now

Rubio

Dragonrage's attempt to give a cut-n-pasteable thingie for that somehow added junk to it.

puzzledPig

9:31 PM

@Rubio ah, did not realize that - thanks for letting me know!

Sphinx

9:56 PM

3

Q: Slightly Odd Sudoku

Someone I find very trustworthy continues to insist that this is a valid Sudoku board. It's been a while since I've played, but surely there's a couple of things off here, right? Alright, so that someone is me. And as it turns out, there are a few things off here. What's the solution to this b...

enigmatic-puzzle chess grid-deduction sudoku

-1

Q: Does this pattern have a name?

I am working through a technical issue whereas we have a huge list of files (over 100,000) and I need to produce a mapping document that links ID to a mapped value. I have manually tested and verified the pattern but need a way to produce some logic to identify all numbers. The patter is such tha...

pattern algorithm

Dragonrage

@Rubio weird, i just copy and pasted the text from the transcript history on the message and put back ticks around it

Rubio

yeah, I even tried to edit your post to fix it - and it didn't fix it

I have no idea what's up with that

Dragonrage

dont know how that got extra stuff in it. i dont even have extensions on this browser to mess up copy and paste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stacksfiller

@Sphinx lmao

dang they took MY puzzle idea

ManyPinkHats

Going to the transcript history for the message, the zero-width character is said to be in the original message. Since I don't think it actually was, I wonder which part of the SE chat framework added it in; perhaps whatever element prepares the transcript history?

Dragonrage

10:03 PM

**CCCC** is ***Cryptic Clue Chat Chains***! Latest clue is ⤴ there! Join the fun! See Deusovi's **[Cryptic Clue Guide](http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45984/cryptic-clue-guide)** and **[GPR](http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/4421/gentlepurplerain)**'s **[Archive & Statistics](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sOR80-CRwBbb7odMLt2QRx_uEIef‌jovIOjFzZ_2VqoY/edit#gid=1924270515)** of past clues.

that might work now?

ManyPinkHats

Nope, it's definitely still in there; I can copy it into a text editor and it notes that there is a zero-width character between the 'f' and the 'j' in the URL

Dragonrage

i manually typed out that url ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ

ManyPinkHats

hm, I wonder if it's the chat window then?

Rubio

it's chat in general

cuz it happens in the transcript too

ManyPinkHats

If you resize the chat window to be able to write the whole URL on a single line, does the space disappear/move?

Rubio

10:07 PM

the likelihood that Dragonrage and I have the same chat window width is about zero

and when I edited the earlier message to try to fix it, it still had the same zero-width space in the same place

Dragonrage

i can pull out a hex value 3f3f from that character

Rubio

Having said that, the actual chat input area may well be the same size for all of us, so there's that

Dragonrage

@ManyPinkHats tried that, still has the same problem

i suppose i could make a bug report over on MSO, but i doubt the problem crops up enough for it to be worthwhile to fix

phenomist

10:47 PM

aw, was hoping to chain off of MPH's clue with a related clue

ManyPinkHats

My clue was awful enough that it'll stick in memory for a bit; if you solve Deus' clue, you're still in the money

Eric Tressler

Me too. I looked at Deus', though, and nothing's working so far

phenomist

i suck at cryptic solving tho

Eric Tressler

I was mostly playing with "___ in MM" and similar things, though I can get a 9 that almost fits: DEATH+C+OR+E is a genre, and "Cake or Death" cements Death as a choice.

Sphinx

0

Q: Nine Pieces of Gold on One Boat

There were four cats and three dogs. A house with no lights and nothing around for miles. There was one road that lead to nowhere. There was one plane that only had one wing. In the house there was two murderers. One with a knife and one with a gun. The two murderers were opposite. One murderer w...