The Sphinx's Lair

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1:18 AM

I have created a miniature chess puzzle that takes advantage of a piece of chess semantics that has some debate to it. This is the puzzle: Construct a legal (meaning that two opposite colored Kings are required) chess position with 7, no more and no less, pieces and pawns hat has a total of...

Rubio

@GarethMcCaughan Thanks for reminding me to post a hint on that puzzle. (Now I just have to decide what to give. hmmm)

Gareth McCaughan

It doesn't matter since your first hint is always useless.

Rubio

True. :)

Gareth McCaughan

(There are a few things in the puzzle that seem like they're obviously intended to be hints, but so far I haven't got anything useful out of them.)

Rubio

There's a few red scaly creatures swimming around. I ... probably shouldn't have used that title, for one, but it sprung so naturally from the final question I couldn't hep it. hehe

Gareth McCaughan

1:30 AM

FWIW I never thought the title was anything more than a joke because of the final question.

Deusovi

me too - I didn't expect the title to be relevant to the actual solution

Rubio

That was the idea. (Also a mild torture reference in the story to sort of tie it in, but equally meaningless flavor)

Gareth McCaughan

To be clear, btw, I don't mean that the hinty-looking things haven't sparked any ideas, only that the ideas they've sparked have so far not been useful to me.

Rubio

Also, my first hints are always useful. Just not in a way you can use until later. :) (I mean, they are level 0 for a reason hehe)

Gareth McCaughan

hmm, something has occurred to me (though I don't know whether it will be useful)

(so far it doesn't look very useful)

Rubio

1:41 AM

annnnnd hints added.

Gareth McCaughan

bleh, as always the hints only tell me things I already knew or suspected

Rubio

oh. well.

Gareth McCaughan

that was the intention, right? :-)

Rubio

I can't connect all the dots that early now can I :)

(If you already suspected hint 1 correctly you have, I think, enough to solve it)

Gareth McCaughan

Obviously I don't know whether I had the right suspicion about hint 1. I could easily be a bit off.

(actually I have two suspicions about the puzzle that kinda match up with hint 1 in two very different ways, neither of which has so far been of any use to me)

2 hours later…

Sphinx

3:40 AM

Q: Create a cube from identical 3D objects

The diagram is the outline of the surface of a 3D object. Several objects, like the one created from this given surface, may be used to create a cube. Let me know if you need more clarifications to solve this one

geometry three-dimensional

7 hours later…

Sphinx

10:44 AM

Q: Professor Roman loves to teach unorthodox Chemistry

His famous phrase in class was “ Elementary Watson”. Given: $IRON$ = $5$ - $4$ $M$ = $6$ - $9$ Find the Missing Element M.

word chemistry

3 hours later…

Sphinx

2:06 PM

Q: Cross-Numbers (not words)!

Can you solve this Crossword (Cross-numbers) with numbers from the given pictures ? ACROSS DOWN

knowledge visual crosswords history

2 hours later…

João Bravo

3:52 PM

hey guys

any clue on the missing "cross-numbers"

was thinking that 2 across could be the ascii code for "e" 101 but that is not exactly the image

also, 12 is about cyber attack but i cannot associate any 5-digit number to it

John Dvorak

That onebox is a spoiler. Please don't post spoilers in chat.

jafe

@Ankoganit i suspect this is UR (primary) + IT* + CAT (woman) + I + ON = URTICATION (provocation)

...but that would leave both "arrested at first" and "verification" unused?

Ankoganit

@jafe It's not URTICATION :(

I guess it might be time for a hint

CCCC hint(s): (1)the definition isn't exactly spot-on (although you'd find the definition given here in Google's synonyms for <answer>); (2)"woman" gives a three letter word that is not CAT.

Sphinx

Q: Stars of the Celestial Bagua

Check this out: Okay, it might be more impressive if I show you what is moving along the arrows: At every vertex in a long word. Flowing in to every vertex are two short words ("inputs"). Anagrammed together, these two short words yield the long word. Flowing out of every vertex are ...

word wordplay no-computers graph-theory

Sid

4:13 PM

Hmm. "Primary Verification" could just be V. Surely, "lost it on" is cluing TION.

Been a while since I did one of these. No wonder I am struggling for ideas. :P

Sphinx

4:27 PM

Q: Primes and Puzzles are my Passion. Combining them here to get Productive Prime Puzzles..Find the Missing Info

$EXAMPLE$: $997$ = $O.$ $T.$.- $T.$ One Thousand - Three $Expand$ on the Full Info of the following Prime clues. A). 2 = F & O. E. P B). 3 = S.P C). 5 = F. On the H. D). 7 = H. of R. E). 11 = F. DD. P. P. F). 13 = C. in a S. G). 23 = L. in A. - T H). 31 = I.C.F. at B....

knowledge

João Bravo

@JohnDvorak AH sorry! how can i remove it?

I auto flagged it

awesome, removed!

Sphinx

5:07 PM

Q: CiSRA Puzzle Hunt Backups?

I found this article describing what makes a good puzzle, and it references several puzzles which, as best as I can tell, were designed for something called the CiSRA Puzzle Hunt. However, the website they link to is down, and I can't seem to find anywhere that's hosting the puzzles. The Wayback ...

reference-request

Rubio

5:33 PM

@JoãoBravo hey Welcome to Puzzling! Just wanted to let you know, as I saw you try a couple times to do this: tag summary and description text need to be original, and in particular should not be borrowed from the relevant Wikipedia entries with some elisions. I had to reject your submitted tag texts for printers devilry because of that, so sorry about that. (Also, edits to old and closed Q&As aren’t all that useful really; if you want to make constructive edits, try more recent posts)

Sphinx

6:09 PM

Q: Can you open the door or die?

You wake up and you found yourself in a very strange room where there is a single door in it. and you found a note on the ground with lots of cards around it: "There are 66 green and 66 blue door cards on the ground, if you put one blue and one green cards into the holes next to the door, the do...

logical-deduction strategy optimization

Rubio

6:36 PM

@Ankoganit can you recheck the clue? i know the solution but cannot for the life of me find a construction. (one iffy one I have comes up short a letter.)

1 hour later…

João Bravo

7:48 PM

@Rubio got it. sorry about that

Rubio

@JoãoBravo No worries, I'm glad you wanted to help actually. Just can't plagiarize from Wikipedia :)

Sphinx

8:09 PM

Q: Savage Road Signs

There is a highway that starts in the city of Savage. You must must place distance marker signs on this highway for the outgoing traffic. According to highway code, there must be a distance marker sign at least every 20 km, and every distance marker sign must be labelled with its distance from ...