The Sphinx's Lair

Omega Krypton

00:49

@jafe can we use "lollipop" to cue 'Q'? a circle and a stick :P

Rubio

01:36

@OmegaKrypton ew.

Omega Krypton

@Omega Krypton ew. ~ Gem Atop New York

@Rubio @MrPie

Mr Pie

Omega K ~ Ok, game!

Omega Krypton

thanks @MrPie

Gareth McCaughan

Going to bed soon, so even if @msh210 confirms that I solved his C4 clue correctly it'll be a while before there's a replacement.

Omega Krypton

ok @GarethMcCaughan

thanks @MrPie ~ Ark Shipmennt

Mr Pie

01:48

@OmegaKrypton I am so close with this one:

Users OmegaKrypton and Rubio ~ Your PSE moderator kings!

I have "abun" left over

:O @Rubio @OmegaKrypton the evil within you people have spoken!!

Users Omega Krypton and Rubio = You ban super moderator kings!

How dare you!!!

;)

Sphinx

0

Q: Reverse dots and... cubes? - Snowflake edition

A Reverse dots-and-boxes puzzle inspired by @jafe Albert and Robinson are playing a game of reverse dots and boxes. The players take turns adding one plane in one free spot on the grid (marked with light gray contours in the below image). Albert goes first. If a move completes a $1\...

Mr Pie

02:09

@OmegaKrypton @Rubio found it ;)

It is those users, Omega Krypton and Rubio = Genius boys! Our moderators at PSE, I think!

Rubio

02:25

Deusovi, GentlePurpleRain, Gareth McCaughan and Rubio ~ Moderators are a vulgar, pedantic bunch, in huge gun pile

Where do I claim my prize?

Mr Pie

02:43

HAHAHA

Omega Krypton

xdxd

Mr Pie

03:00

@OmegaKrypton that drawing here is really cool

2

Q: Reverse dots and... cubes? - Snowflake edition

A Reverse dots-and-boxes puzzle inspired by @jafe Albert and Robinson are playing a game of reverse dots and boxes. The players take turns adding one plane in one free spot on the grid (marked with light gray contours in the below image). Albert goes first. If a move completes a $1\...

strategy game three-dimensional game-theory dots-and-boxes

Nice snowflake :P

It's not a crude drawing at all!

Omega Krypton

:P

that version was version 3.0

two failures beforehand

Mr Pie

03:15

Oh

Eh well

The beliefs in God = Bet He's doing life!

msh210

@GarethMcCaughan nope, sorry

@GarethMcCaughan I'm thinking maybe it's a The Lion King reference, but I'm really not sure.

@GarethMcCaughan yes!

@GarethMcCaughan oh, oops. I thought souq is the usual spelling. Sorry about that

Glad the clue works well with a slight change.

msh210

03:58

And that you figured it out despite the unusual spelling.

Gareth McCaughan

10:01

@MrPie You do realise OK isn't a moderator?

@msh210 Thanks for the confirmation. Will post a new one soonish.

Mr Pie

@GarethMcCaughan yeah I know, that's why it's funny ;)

Mithrandir

10:46

@GarethMcCaughan If OK isn't a moderator, then does that mean that conversely, a moderator is not OK? Are you alright?

Gareth McCaughan

@msh210 if your "Scar" is a Lion King reference, then the "obvious" way to make the clue work is as a double def where "rising" has the sense of "[aiming at] gaining in power/status/wealth/...". So e.g. AMBITIOUS would kinda-sorta work, though I'm not sure it's close enough to "rising".

@Mithrandir No, only half of me is right.

Mithrandir

That sentence is therefore half wrong, and now we have a paradox on our hands.

Gareth McCaughan

Only on one hand. On the other hand, I think everything's fine.

Mithrandir

...fair enough. I don't have a comeback for that one.

Omega Krypton

@GarethMcCaughan did you single-handedly deal with a paradox? this community does not like moderators that handled situations in that manner

msh210

10:58

@GarethMcCaughan I highly doubt I'd have used a double definition where the same meaning of the answer is used for both parts of the clue. (Hence also no CENT for my clue above.)

Omega Krypton

@Mithrandir assist here

msh210

/me looks on at this mano a mano conflict

Omega Krypton

11:22

@GarethMcCaughan your turn for a c4, thanks

Rubio

11:43

2 hours ago, by Gareth McCaughan

@msh210 Thanks for the confirmation. Will post a new one soonish.

Omega Krypton

oh sorry for my impatience then :P

Gareth McCaughan

CCCC: Translator's mother eaten by monster (8)

@msh210 I hoped you wouldn't, too. But sometimes people do bad things. I tried to be tactful about it :-).

jafe

12:00

@GarethMcCaughan DRAGO(MA)N

Gareth McCaughan

@jafe Right!

Sid

Never heard of that, wow.

I was thinking Gareth would have some actual translator's name as answer

jafe

CCCC: Broadcast follows a very loud incident (6)

msh210

@GarethMcCaughan :-)

M Oehm

@jafe That's A + FF + AIR.

jafe

12:06

@MOehm that's right

M Oehm

CCCC: Giant boar strangles dog from behind (7)

Rubio

12:37

I feel like I should object to that clue somehow. ;)

Omega Krypton

who is the boar @Rubio

Rubio

12:51

Well. I’ve always found certain people rather boring so maybe they’re the boar.

Omega Krypton

@Rubio XD

jafe

hehe

M Oehm

13:07

Well, what do you expect from cryptic clues? All the time, creatures are eaten, have their tails and heads chopped off and their hearts extracted. That inclues dogs, of course.

jafe

is this the day...?!

Omega Krypton

wow!

Rubio

@MOehm huh. GOLIATH is (H(TAIL)OG)< with “dog” as a verb, to pursue (tail)

Omega Krypton

@jafe 92 rep difference

M Oehm

@Rubio Yes! (I knew you would like the clue. :))

jafe

13:09

dog = tail? that's a new one

Rubio

@jafe good lord man. That was fast. Grats :)

jafe

:P

Rubio

Well deserved. Your puzzles are consistently good and - perhaps more importantly - fun

I don’t have a new clue ready so I need a bit.

jafe

thanks <3

Omega Krypton

i should be fair so i upvoted an answer each from both of you :)

Rubio

13:11

Hah :)

Gareth McCaughan

Yeah, @jafe's meteoric rise is well deserved.

("meteoric rise" is a weird phrase; meteors, pretty much by definition, don't tend to rise at all)

Omega Krypton

rocket may be a better word choice?

Gareth McCaughan

13:25

Possibly, but "meteoric" is in fact a standard idiom for this sort of thing, despite not making much sense.

Omega Krypton

ikr :)

Rubio

13:41

CCCC: Lofty first post is without ethical heart still (10)

Sphinx

14:38

3

Q: A pyramid from a square

Given a square piece of paper. Cut it into 4 pieces that could be used to create a pyramid - the 4 pieces are the faces of the pyramid.

geometry three-dimensional construction

GentlePurpleRain

15:07

@Rubio You got me with this one. Totally didn't realize what the URL was, and was very offended. :P

Omega Krypton

:P changed my profile becoz of him (it?)

Rubio

15:23

@GentlePurpleRain Buahahaa

Sid

15:56

@Rubio not going to fall for this ever again. :P

Rubio

Pity :)

Sphinx

16:18

2

Q: Who Can Help Retag This?

Gestures to stop Jacks' paving stones Oh! Tiny reformation chaos at data transmission Occasion (the first) to initiate moderator election Circular execution of queer joshes up with issue Rearrangement of a sodium unit Even thou imp, ... our wit! Encrpytion dev...

enigmatic-puzzle anagram acrostic

Sid

18:02

Man, solving cryptic clues without enumerations or crossing letters are tough..

M Oehm

Are you referring to ^^this? At least you've got a theme.

John Dvorak

You do get the enumeration. And, on occasion, a cross letter.

Sid

@MOehm I guess. It's still not easy. Hard work.

Though, I am sure some of those cryptic clues are iffy.

M Oehm

Well, perhaps not Deusovian, but what I've seen looks okay. But I agree that it's rather hard.

Gareth McCaughan

18:33

There are two I can't figure out so far. (AFK for a bit now, anyway.)

The others all appear to be sound.

jafe

i have 5/9 :O

M Oehm

I'm missing the first four.

Sid

I have 4 unsolved. And probably never going to solve them. Can't even start anywhere on the remaining

jafe

#1 took a while to parse even after having the solution...

#5 looks super straightforward but can't see what fits

M Oehm

I can guess what #1 is, but can't parse it at all.

In #5, the def isn't what you think it is. :)

jafe

18:36

hmmm

aaaa

Sid

@MOehm Ohhhh

Ha! That was a good one.

jafe

i like it

Deusovi

heh, that one's nice

jafe

missing #4 still

nvm found it :P

Sid

18:56

Ah. #4 is that. I was too busy thinking Queer to be Q

Sphinx

0

Q: penguin, parrot and frog

On a Sunday morning while having your morning tea or coffee, you hear a knock on the door. You go to the door, but find no one only 3 boxes. You open the biggest one and find a penguin.You open the next one and see there is a cage with a parrot. When you open the smallest one you find a frog.What...

animals

0

Q: How do you make 66 using three 4s

Rule: allowed operations: +, −, ×,/,^,√, and ! (factorial) example: 4^4+4!=280

formation-of-numbers

jafe

man, there are so many tags i should have been using that i just didn't know existed

Adam

@Sphinx This question has totally been asked before

Stiv

19:13

@jafe Was literally just about to post here when I saw your comment come up just now, intending to query the etiquette of combining answers. Totally didn't spot you guys had a chat going on all this while, sorry!

So what is generally considered the right way to resolve two answers which between them solve all of a list of clues?

Interested in your opinions, thanks :)

msh210

(It's obvious, I think, but I'd like to note for the record that my cccc clues (and pretty much everything else I write online) are my copyright.)

jafe

19:37

@Stiv often the scenario is that one person solved the biggest part... in that case i think it's simples to just put everything in that answer (with proper credit)

if there are a lot of people solving, it might be a better idea to make one wiki answer with everyone's answers instead

Gareth McCaughan

@msh210 The question of copyright hasn't come up before. I don't think anyone is intending to take other people's C4 clues and sell them. However, they are archived in a spreadsheet as well as in the chat archives here, and I think if you aren't comfortable with that then you should probably refrain from playing.

I think the "Subscriber content" section of stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service/public#licensing applies to stuff posted in chat here.

I am not a lawyer and no one should trust my guess at exactly what any of that means, but I'm very sure it means that anything you post here is de facto licensed to Stack Exchange itself, and fairly sure it means that it's available for anyone to use, under the terms of the appropriate Creative Commons licence. (Which does e.g. require suitable attribution, so you aren't giving anyone permission to flat out steal your stuff and pretend it's theirs.)

jafe

which of course is in no way incompatible with "[is] my copyright"

Gareth McCaughan

Correct. But it might be incompatible with some things @msh210 hope that "is my copyright" means in practice.

Sid

Now that those clues are solved, (1) is "by" a good wordplay to wordplay connector? (2) Doesn't FLAGS for "Jacks" require a, "for example" or a question mark?

msh210

@GarethMcCaughan No, that's fine.

Sid

19:47

I have seen "with", and in recent cases, "has" as wordplay to wordplay connectors but "by" used like that isn't very common to my eyes. Of course, maybe I am not solving enough cryptic clues but that looked a bit iffy to me

Deusovi

yeah, I wouldn't use "by", at least

Gareth McCaughan

I wouldn't use any of those.

jafe

turns out a jack is a type of flag... i was only aware of the union jack

msh210

@Sid (1) you mean between parts of the answer? I think 'by' is fine: it means 'next to'

I would not use 'by' between the straight and wordplay parts of a clue, if that's what you meant.

Deusovi

I might use "with" between definition and wordplay if I absolutely had to, but I wouldn't feel good about it. Definitely wouldn't use "by" or "has" there.

jafe

19:59

in the linked puzzle "by" is only used in the sense of "next to", though

which is completely normal

msh210

@Deusovi No. Basically just copulae (is, becomes, turns into, comes from, etc) and conjunctions/prepositions that imply equality (as, for)

Sid

@jafe oh. Okay. That works then

Rubio

20:23

@jafe we have a q&a somewhere in our Meta that says basically exactly this

Rubio

20:35

My stock answer — What answer to accept is entirely at the asker's discretion; usually they pick the "best" answer, using whatever criteria they feel to be best. As I've mentioned previously, some reward the answer that contains the most significant contribution(s), and some choose to reward the answer which is most complete. Ideally, these are the same answer—the person with the greatest contribution also adds the contributions of others, with attribution, to make a single canonical answer

@DanielSchepler For puzzles with multiple pieces like this one, some people award the checkmark to the person who contributed the most correct solutions (and optionally give more weight to harder entries, to help break ties.) It's nice to specify a rule in advance, but not necessary. This reduces the angst in picking which answer to accept. Of course, sometimes the person with the most contributions makes the decision an easy one by consolidating all the solutions (with credit to their posters) into their own answer, which is also fine. As is a community wiki, if someone is ok forgoing rep. — Rubio ♦ Mar 17 '18 at 1:22

Sphinx

0

Q: 1-2-3 Ending Puzzle

$451-662-8w3$ $1601-2062-16x3$ $2551-2282-16y3$ $2551-1112-10z3$ There's only one possible value for $w, x, y$ and $z$, why? Hint

missing-digits

PotatoLatte

21:01

o/

Sphinx

23:38

0

Q: Chess Construction Challenge #1-Read First Please!

I'm starting a new series in which I set a very specific goal with a unique (to be more specifically defined here in a bit) answer in which the solver must construct a chess position, sometimes a game, using given information. My questions are sure to be very defined as to not be close as too bro...

no-computers chess

Rubio

23:53

@OmegaKrypton I hold a tenuous and fading lead over @jafe, now just 32 points.

Transcript for