The Sphinx's Lair

Sphinx

12:06 AM

0

Q: Arsenic-Based Life

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1. Title based on this xkcd.Find the lead actor.

phenomist

12:32 AM

aaah, classic "stuck at cluephrase"

ManyPinkHats

I have a parsing of the cluephrase that I like, but it doesn't work with the implied movie theme of stars/credits/roles + "lead actor"

Deusovi

2:07 AM

I think the movie theme is a distractor. "Lead actor" could simply refer to "most important person who does actions".

Alconja

@phenomist Seems like "Nitrogen as old Argon" => N AS A (Argon is now Ar, but used to be just A)

Deusovi

Felisa Wolfe-Simon might be the answer there, taking N+AS+A as Alconja just sniped me to

Alconja

So, NASA is the "actor" in finding "arsenic life"

:)

Deusovi

the stars/actors could simply be another hint to "AS" as a connector

ManyPinkHats

@Alconja that was my thinking, but I was actually thinking of Alan Shepard as a famous NASA astronaut with A.S. initials

Alconja

2:08 AM

Yeah, could be any of those, but NASA seems sufficient to me.

Deusovi

(I also considered "lead" being the chemical element rather than a synonym of either "star" or "person who leads others".)

stacksfiller

2:25 AM

-___-

you are kidding

phenomist

2:37 AM

let the dupes beginnnn

Sphinx

0

Q: Arsenic Based Life

Part of the Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1 Down 1 Character in mario whose name does not match his species 2 Sebiora 3 Bread for a panini 4 Impolite way to say woman 5 Between non and sine 6 To be human 7 riiiiip in pieces xxxdddd so done 9 Good puzzles hagee them ...

crosswords

stacksfiller

i was trying for no dupes

but already had the fill and everything

hahaha

should have named Steal This Comic ;P

Deusovi

3:13 AM

ooh, I think I've figured out the gimmick

Jesse

Any mods around that could pop over to codenames and start our game up would be much appreciated <3 chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/59120/codenames

Deusovi

your 14A clue is clever, I have to admit

Is the lack of clue for 26D intentional?

Deusovi

3:42 AM

hm, it seems 26D is mislabelled as 28D

Sphinx

12:11 PM

0

Q: My Grandfather's Final Message

As my grandfather reached the end of his long and satisfying life, I sat by his bedside and asked him what advice he could give me to help me in my own. Unable to speak, he pointed to his bedside cabinet where I found this curious puzzle! This made me smile. It was typical of my grandfather wh...

logical-deduction cipher knowledge

Sphinx

12:28 PM

0

Q: Can you tell me, who am I?

This is my first riddle, so please accept that this might be not too good. I think it is to easy, maybe. Let me describe you someone or somewhat If he stands alone, he is one of the biggest arround. Only the guy at first place, is maybe as big as he is. Surrounded by others of his ...

riddle

The Masked Rebel

I added the tag rebus

M Oehm

1:01 PM

@TheMaskedRebel Yes, but why? I don't think that riddle is a rebus.

(And why does the edit show up as Community edit?)

The Masked Rebel

@MOehm We'll see if he accepts or rejects the edit

dcfyj

What puzzle?

M Oehm

Oh, so it's shoot first, ask later? As far as I can see, the edit is already in effect. The OP cannot reject it up front, only roll it back.

Deusovi

M Oehm's right. Also, the OP may not have noticed, and it could have easily been pushed through by the review queue.

dcfyj

@MOehm I can see how it would be a rebus, but rather than just adding the tag I would've asked first

Deusovi

1:10 PM

It looks like a rebus to me, but it might not be one.

dcfyj

true

And yes, I'm alive :P

Deusovi

(welcome back! :D )

dcfyj

I see not much has changed

Deusovi

hm?

dcfyj

The chat rooms and the site all seem about the same to me

M Oehm

1:14 PM

On second thoughts, it's probably a rebus all right. The two eyes are suspicious.

dcfyj

On a side note, people don't seem to play Zendo much haha

Sphinx

0

Q: A challenging Magic Square

Find a 3x3 Magic Square where each row, column and both diagonals result in positive number 9 You are allowed any of the 4 math operations : add, subtract, multiply or divide. NO OTHER OPERATIONS ALLOWED You must use numbers 1 thru 9 (positive integers only, no negative signs within the number ...

logical-deduction no-computers formation-of-numbers magic-square

dcfyj

I never did finish the last puzzle I was working on... Maybe I should do that :P

Ew, as usual my notes are sub par, this'll be fun to figure out lol

M Oehm

You can give your notes a retrograde-analysis tag, then ...

(Or, of course, post your notes as question and have the PSEers figure it out for you.)

dcfyj

lol, no need. I may suck at writing comprehensible notes, but I can usually figure out what I mean.

Wow, I wrote when I started working on this puzzle. feb 27 2017... over a year ago

dcfyj

2:31 PM

I finished it ^^

Finally lol

That puzzle took entirely too long to put together, me and my crazy ideas

Sphinx

2

Q: A Way So Familiar

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1. Bob was mowing is lawn when he saw a white van driving around his neighborhood. Driving the van was a wiry old man. He made stops in front of people houses and took a good look at them. Then he drove out of the neighborhood. Bob ...

lateral-thinking

1

Q: I can make pigs fly

I slip through your fingers as sand in a sieve, A brief moment, an eternity, is when I live. Maybe I'll drown you, or give you flight, Some say I fill you with both terror and delight, Let us not forget, my most memorable feature, Each time you see me, I become a preacher. ...

riddle rhyme

1

Q: The passage of Eternity

This is it! You've finally found it: The Passage of Eternity! You've been looking for this mythical Passage for years, but now you've finally found it. All that's left is to unravel it's long hidden secret. To your surprise it came with a small box that looks like it needs a password. No matter,...

enigmatic-puzzle

dcfyj

There it is :)

I'm expecting it'll get solved rather quickly

Gareth McCaughan

You have a spurious apostrophe ("it's long hidden secret"). Only one thing jumps out at me right now, though I see shadows of others. (I am at work and probably won't actually give this enough effort to solve it.)

(fixed now, I see)

dcfyj

It's been so long since I looked at that part that I forgot I even had that text in the puzzle intro haha

Sid

@dcfyj Welcome Back!

dcfyj

2:44 PM

GAmen :P

Sid

Ah. That one has died down in this year.

dcfyj

I shall revive!

Note: Remind me of this puzzle next time I have a crazy puzzle idea

Sid

@dcfyj maybe look at the new FTC for crazy ideas

My entry for FTC will come soon at last.

dcfyj

It took me over a year to sit down and actually finish this last one, no more insane ideas like this one lol

Also, I don't remember what FTC is

ManyPinkHats

2:59 PM

Fortnightly Topic Challenge (Rerun) puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6339/…

dcfyj

Ah, I was thinking that was the case but I couldn't think of words to fit it.

I saw that they apparently died and came back while I was away

I also thought of changing the title to this puzzle to make it fit this FTC hehe

Sphinx

3:11 PM

4

Q: Back to the Future

I slip through your fingers as sand in a sieve. A brief moment, an eternity, is when I live. I'm nothing at all, yet I contain everything. Time travellers leave me, but I'm always waiting. I'm always moving, yet you're always within me. Held between mighty ones who can never win me. Inspired ...

riddle rhyme

dcfyj

^That's a HNQ

dcfyj

4:10 PM

crickets

Dragonrage

4:21 PM

i think most people who frequent here are at work around now

dcfyj

I'm at work, didn't stop me :P

It used to be fairly busy most of the day in here, but I'm some people left while I was gone.

Dragonrage

i come in and think about the C4 for a bit, and chat if i need a distraction to reset my focus, but i work in an open office, so i cant be on here all the time

dcfyj

ah

Rubio

4:41 PM

@dcfyj I think you accidentally a whole word there.

Dragonrage

@Rubio they are probably testing a new puzzle where you have to find the missing words in sentences

dcfyj

lol, I do one puzzle at a time and mine is posted :P

Rubio

Besides who would do that? That sounds like a idea.

dcfyj

You should go solve my puzzle :P

Dragonrage

or maybe its one of those things you see on facebook like, "if you can raed tihs yuor one in a mliilon"

dcfyj

4:45 PM

lol

Sid

@Dragonrage Yeah. So many people are one in a million.. :P

Dragonrage

@Sid there are lots of millions of people in the world, so i guess it makes sense

Apep

If the post only gets ~7k views, it's technically accurate.

dcfyj

Well... we do have 7 billion people on the planet, so 1 in a million for the earth would be about 7,000?

Dragonrage

@dcfyj that seems like the correct number for the amount of people who can solve those facebook math problems that only require you to know pemdas

Sid

4:48 PM

Can "which" or "in which" act as connector in CCs?

Dragonrage

4 + 8/4 * 7 => 21 or 18. where 90% of people answer 21

Rand al'Thor

5:09 PM

Best way to win the current Topic Challenge: 1) Hack into the XKCD site. 2) Turn one of the existing comics into a puzzle. 3) Post a link to it as a question here. 4) Profit.

Apep

"Which is" should work in either direction, but I don't know if it works without the "is". "In which" could work as <wordplay> in which, <def>.

Sphinx

2

Q: Steal This Comic

Part of the Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1

visual steganography

Dragonrage

@Randal'Thor what about using the image + sternograhpy

Rand al'Thor

Yep, it was that ^^ puzzle which gave me the idea :-D

Batophobia

@Randal'Thor It seemed fiting with the "Steal This Comic" title :P

Dragonrage

5:18 PM

@Batophobia looks like youre a criminal now

Batophobia

@Dragonrage 3rd time this week :D

Dragonrage

i shall have to look at the puzzle when i get home from work, but by then Deus will probably have solved it

Sid

5:39 PM

@Rand I found it amusing when I made that clue actually. :P

Sphinx

1

Q: Baring my Heart

This is an entry into the Fortnightly Topic Challenge: Restricted title 1 Alice has sent a message to Bob. Can you help Bob figure it out? Ordinary vehicle turning all Finished challenged Industrious real king after not so easy win Bent nail bone Unfavourable right with small Energy...

cryptic-clues

Rubio

bleh.

Reviewers: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/66826/a-way-so-familiar seems to fit our custom close reason for "This question may invite speculative answers, as the question is not fully defined. The validity of some answers may be based upon opinion. ..."

(And if there's absolutely any relevance to the title, it escapes me, so why is it a FTC submission?)

Dragonrage

5:54 PM

it seems 89.8% of lateral-thinking questions invite speculative answers

Sid

@Dragonrage No. I think it's something like 22%. Hold on, I might have a link.

this one

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio Ahem. I was the first VTC on that :-)

@Sid @Dragonrage That's been a topic of discussion here since way back in 2014.

Rubio

@Randal'Thor Brownie points for you.

Apep

The title appears to be a reference to the <answer> taking the same route every day, maybe.

Rand al'Thor

But there are still some LT questions which are fine.

Rubio

5:59 PM

Very very few, but yes - some

Rand al'Thor

@Apep Yep, that was my thought.

But I think @QuantumTwinkie actually posted a few FTC entries with ... barely related titles.

I remember another one which I answered.

Dragonrage

what is the keyword to search for questions that were closed as duplicates?

Rand al'Thor

duplicate:1

Sid

@MOehm I am sorry. That prefix-infix thing is broken in my puzzle that you answered.

The idea is correct. I messed up because I didn't google stuff up beforehand..

Dragonrage

@Randal'Thor ty.

Sid

6:01 PM

If you incorporate MPH's idea in your answer, I will accept it.

M Oehm

No worries, @Sid. You've been very prolific lately.

Dragonrage

incidently. 22% is the same percentage of pokemon-go questions that are closed as duplicates atm over on arqade

dcfyj

I forgot how annoying I find making puzzles is lol. I want it solved, but I don't

Sid

@MOehm Lots of free time in vacation. :P

I was either hallucinating or high when I thought Seba is plural of sebum for that puzzle. :/

ManyPinkHats

I remember there being talk here before, during the 'should comments have spoilers rot-13ed?' conversation, where one of the reasons was that copying the text over to something like rot13.com was a pain

pastebin.com/XjGmZd1u

I don't remember where I got the JS from originally, but if you put this JS into your browser as a bookmark, you can highlight text and then click the bookmark to rot-13 the text without refreshing the page

M Oehm

6:08 PM

I chose not to rot13 it, because it was way down the page.

dcfyj

@ManyPinkHats The lazy man's rot13 :P

M Oehm

(The one in Sid's question, I mean.)

dcfyj

I usually rot 47 if I spoiler a comment

Mostly because there are some of us that can read rot13 as normal (@Randal'Thor)

ManyPinkHats

I've seen rot47 a couple times, and this could really easily be modified for rot47; I just haven't seen it often enough to care a huge amount

M Oehm

Rubio's very fond of that one, too. If people train themselves to read rot13, they ask for it.

dcfyj

6:10 PM

Also, for having many pink hats you have a surprisingly low number in your gravitar

M Oehm

You can only wear one hat at a time, no?

ManyPinkHats

For someone with many pink hats, I surprisingly like to keep my visuals less noisy

@MOehm Depends on how dedicated I am to the pink hat(s) I am wearing at the time

dcfyj

@MOehm worthygoods.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/…

ffao

I have a browser extension on my computer, but no easy way to rot13 on mobile

dcfyj

I use the same thing on both, rot13.com

Apep

6:14 PM

Maybe we're the ones that are wearing the pink hats.

dcfyj

If there's a hat on my head it's news to me

Maybe pink hat is a new hacker type? like White, Black and Red?

Dragonrage

@dcfyj pink hat hackers replace your home page with pictures of unicorns

dcfyj

Although listing the hats in that manner made me think of 8-bit theater

@Dragonrage haha that works

M Oehm

@Sid Aha, sebum. I had to look up that one. "Chemical" is probably formally correct, but not something to describe sebum.

ManyPinkHats

6:31 PM

Same JS-bookmark-shortcut as above, but for ROT-47 now: pastebin.com/LT5mp4QH

Rubio

7:07 PM

I've updated my guidance to read:

> Answerers putting their solutions in spoiler tags is of little benefit if people then give the answer away in the comments. Try being more indirect in alluding to the answer instead of saying or referencing it directly, or using ROT-13 encoding or similar if you must, to preserve the mystery for future would-be solvers. :)

using encodings is a hack for when it's impractical to talk about the answer without saying the answer, but ideally you would just be clever about what you say. we are, after all, Puzzling.SE

My personal preference, when encoding something I can't manage to say without saying, is to do it with a link

It's rot47 but it's not all ugly and in your face, it works on mobile, and hovering on it doesn't give it away - a click is required, but no cut-n-paste needed.

and if, alas, that provider went poof, the raw rot47 is still there.

@Rubio Someone who wants to earn some super awesome Rubio Thinks I'm Cool Points™ could grab the last several lines and put them into whatever Meta post we have that talks about spoiler-proofing comments. :)

ManyPinkHats

oh geez not another cryptocurrency, how volatile is this one?

Rubio

They, um ... >.>

They are in very short supply, so volatility is minimal. Yeah!

dcfyj

heh

Rubio

7:24 PM

@Sid Baring my Heart ... very nice. :)

Sid

Thanks. :)

Oh, ffao has completed it. Time to accept.

M Oehm

7:45 PM

@Rubio, wasn't your comment on the "pigs can fly" question a bit harsh? I mean rot13 is a bit of a staple and it's easy to see where the encoded part begins. Not everyon may share your preference to provide a fool-proof link.

dcfyj

@MOehm I don't think that comment was harsh at all. Just asking politely to state when rot13 is being used (which is sensible as it could be interpreted as spam/garbage)

M Oehm

Hm. Maybe harsh isn't the correct word, but it sounded a bit likie "Welcome, stranger. You may not know it yet, but here at PSE Heights, we indicate out rot13s properly." I would find receiving such a comment not very welcoming.

Dragonrage

8:08 PM

just use rot26. problem solved

Rubio

@MOehm They've been around a little while, and while at first had noted rot13 in use, had stopped doing so. unwelcoming would have been firebombing every such comment. As it stands, if you read even your unwelcoming version without the word "properly" and in a neutral inflection, it pretty much says what I wanted to say :)

There's nothing wrong with giving someone a textual aside (which is actually exactly why it's in parens) to say, hey, btw, here we do things thusly.

Dragonrage

i have a great idea for a FTC entry. i think i will have time to finish it before the FTC ends

Rubio

Having said that, I had mistaken them for another newish user who had been doing the same thing, had someone else comment on it, and had responded that they normally do indicate their rot13s but had neglected it recently. I probably could have been a little milder.

Alas, I'm now having an internet outage. I'm tethered to a phone for network access right now - this is "fun". :)

M Oehm

Well, yes. I've done that occasionally, but I thought that particular cmment wasn't very offensive.

Never mind. Ordnung muss sein, I guess.

Rubio

Oh, it wasn't. It just stood completely in isolation, so it stuck out like a sore thumb. I knew I'd seen a number of similar unindicated rot13s lately from that user, so picked that one to scribble on.

@MOehm Interesting phrase. I'm not familiar with it nor how it's used. It feels ... pithily sardonic? hehe

M Oehm

8:24 PM

That would be how it's used today, but it wasn't always like that, of course.

Sid

Should this be tagged as imgur-maze?

Rubio

@Sid Probably, now that that little detail is out

M Oehm

There's a related phrase, Spaß muss sein -- There must be fun. Combine that with the general concept of German humour and you know that there aren't many things that are sadder than that phrase. Thankfully, both phrases have fallen into disuse.

Rubio

@MOehm This inexplicably reminds me of youtube.com/watch?v=ienp4J3pW7U

M Oehm

"Wann ist der nunstück git und slotermeyer?"

We had to learn that in school. :)

Rubio

8:30 PM

hehehe

M Oehm

(So I'm immune now.)

Rubio

9:14 PM

and yay, internet has resumed.

@MOehm translate.google.com/#auto/en/…!

Sphinx

9:26 PM

0

Q: Bring Your Own Device - Zebra Puzzle

if anyone could help me solve this, I would be very grateful. It's for extra credit and I'm not good at all with puzzles. I've left a link to the puzzle below. Link: https://www.brainzilla.com/logic/zebra/bring-your-own-device/

logical-deduction

Sphinx

10:37 PM

1

Q: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The year is 3017. Five of us, part astronauts and part writers for Michelin, paid a visit to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. However, due to recent union strikes ("Workers are demanding 15 flurbos/parsec, can you believe it?"), the restaurant has automated all of its processes. As we...

mathematics logical-deduction strategy

Sphinx

11:09 PM

1

Q: Nine Red Rose Flowers

There are nine perfect red rose flowers that have all a unique number of pedals. One rose in the buqet is dead and one rose has only one pedal. How are there nine perfect red rose flowers when two are not perfect.

riddle cryptic-clues

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