The Sphinx's Lair - 2020-01-15

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7:20 AM

0

Q: Can you open a safe with a lengthy complicated combination?

Two cousins were talking about their parents' safes. "They said I can keep my comic books in their safe, if I figure out the right combination, and enter it on the keypad correctly on my first attempt," said the first cousin. "I've listed out a lot of combinations but haven't figured out if I h...

logical-deduction computer-puzzle optimization

2 hours later…

9:23 AM

1

Q: My prefix is a type of car, my suffix means you can’t see far

An original riddle: My prefix is a type of car. My suffix means you can’t see far. My infix concerns the outside. Together, I remove the inside. What am I?

riddle word rhyme

1

Q: Memorial mnemonic - January 15

According to Wikipedia a mnemonic is "any learning technique that aids remembering". Here is a mnemonic sentence: Empty City, Green Dwarfs Can you tell what it is about? The answer is a six letter word.

1 hour later…

10:45 AM

0

Q: Building the perfect number 28 with fractions

You are given the fractions $\frac{4}{3}, \frac{7}{3}, \frac{10}{3}, \frac{13}{3}.$ Use any operation of $+, -, *, /, ()$ to build 28 with those four fractions. You must use all four fractions exactly once.

mathematics formation-of-numbers

11:05 AM

0

Q: Buildung the perfect number 28 with fractions - part2

Here is a follow up of Building the perfect number 28 with fractions You are given the fractions $\frac{3}{2}, \frac{5}{2}, \frac{7}{2}, \frac{11}{2}.$ Use any operation of $+, -, *, /, ()$ to build 28 with those four fractions. You must use all four fractions exactly once.

mathematics formation-of-numbers

11:46 AM

0

Q: As a whole I am intense desire

As a whole, I am intense desire. Behead me, and I accommodate children. Behead me again, and I accommodate animals. Restore me, and I become fire. What am I? (An original riddle)

Gareth McCaughan

12:21 PM

CCCC hints: (1) The first letter is M. (2) The third letter is N.

0

Q: There seems to be two types of Braille

This post is not a puzzle. There is nothing puzzly hidden inside it or the self-answer, posted at the same time. Some research shows that there seems to be two types of Braille. Please help me explain it. EDIT: An even further research shows that the difference is largely punctuations.

cipher puzzle-history

1 hour later…

1:45 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Is it MAN(C)IPLES? Apparently MANIPLES are subdivisions of a Roman legion, containing either 120 or 60 men which could be considered as "military companies" (I didn't know this word before).

Gareth McCaughan

@hexomino You got it! Well done.

@GarethMcCaughan Thanks, that was a tricky one. I'll respond with another in a little while.

1 hour later…

2:53 PM

Nose guard tackled another potential source of injury (9) - DANGEROUS*?

awk

can an indicator be in the middle of two applied words?

e.g. AB finally CD for BD

3:07 PM

@Avi IMO, no. sorry :P

for Poor Santa nearly catches cold (5), would it also be valid to say Poor Santa nearly catches a cold (5)?

wherein it's X "caught a" Y

@OmegaKrypton does this also hold for anagrinds?

also looking for verification on the following one:

Snow White's heart about to yearn for a sweetheart (7) - PIG'S + YEN<

3:48 PM

CCCC: Ravens operate large spider (8)

Error dies with final draft (5) - EDI(T)S* (&lit)?

does this work

@hexomino is ravens an anagrind (in general, not in your clue)?

somehow I'm doubting that

(operate+l)* = paletero :o

cry

I can't even try this C4 because googling spiders gives me the creeps

@Avi I have not seen it used in this way.

Ok, good

what about the EDI(T)S one?

PL + UNDERAGE :O

Quiet, let's start underage embezzlement (10)

^what a human trafficker says

4:06 PM

@Avi It almost works for me, the literal interpretation would seem to lead to EDITED rather than EDITS in my mind although others might have a different interpretation.

that's the challenge, I guess

is "roams around in forests" a valid definition for deer?

I'm thinking it fails part of speech test

4:35 PM

0

Q: Why is "arrive" an answer for the crossword clue "like desert terrain"?

I've tried finding any possible link between "desert" and "arrive" and had no success. I need to know.

0

Q: Brute-force solver for Gear Octahedron - flawed method?

I am working on a program to brute-force a LanLan Gear Octahedron I bought second-hand (and scrambled). I have no background in "cubing" and just fancied solving the problem. The structure comprises 8 "Centre" pieces (at the centre of each face); 6 "Corner" pieces; and 12 "Edge" pieces each hold...

geometry rubiks-cube algorithm

4:52 PM

oof

El'Endia Starman resigned

feelsbad

who

El'endia Starman, former moderator on Christianity. Played Codenames often. Good guy.

Oh... rip :(

45

Q: I am stepping down as moderator

Eight years. All the way from September 2011 to today, I never once imagined that I would be writing this resignation notice. I can hardly believe that I am writing this now. Through the whole absolute train wreck of a fiasco that was SE forcibly stripping Monica Cellio of her diamonds and then ...

discussion featured moderation

Why are all these people being fired?

4:54 PM

Shog9 and some other guy were fired without notice

*shrugs* And this time it's not volunteer moderators, it's payed employees.

That's odd

1101

Q: Thank you, Shog9

@Shog9, a longtime Community Manager here at Stack Exchange, has just tweeted that he is no longer working at Stack Overflow: @shog9: Well... I suddenly find myself in need of work. If anyone's hiring: C++, JavaScript, C#, SQL + solid background in social software, community-driven developm...

discussion featured stack-exchange-team thanks community-managers

545

Q: Thank you, Robert Cartaino

The title says it all. Thank You, Robert Cartaino, for everything you did for SE and the community. I don't post much on MSE, but have been a mod for about eight years. There is a lot that can go on behind the scenes, work that the CMs do to help out the site moderators. That is one of the thin...

discussion featured thanks

Yeah I saw the Robert Cartaino one from Puzzling Meta

Reading this meta:

2162

Q: Firing mods and forced relicensing: is Stack Exchange still interested in cooperating with the community?

The last weeks and days have seen some erratic behaviour by Stack Exchange Inc., such as likely illegal changes to the content license and the firing of an upstanding community moderator with no explanation except copy-pasted responses, leaving many to believe it was for no good reason. It woul...

discussion support moderators community

I'm kinda scared

Is Puzzling SE next? I mean mod from Judaism from all SE sites

I mean, I hope not

if deusovi leaves I probably won't use SE anymore

5:03 PM

@Mithical When you say *not volunteer moderators" you're saying SE inc.'s also fired volunteer mods?

@North Well, Monica.

Oh that's what you meant

Just straight up removed mod privileges?

Dang

5:16 PM

0

Q: A Twisty Puzzle my friend barely remembers

I was impressing various students at my school by showing them various twisty puzzles when one of them recalled a puzzle they owned. I thought I might have seen it somewhere, but I may have been thinking about something else. He said it had some sort of gear mechanism, and was a two-by-two cube....

puzzle-identification twisty-puzzles

Gareth McCaughan

5:28 PM

The circumstances around Monica's demodding were rather unusual and I don't know of any reason to think that any current Puzzling mods are in any danger of being demodded. There's lots not to like about recent behaviour of SE management, and in particular if they've let Robert Cartaino go then there's some reason to question their commitment to network sites other than SO itself, but I wouldn't read any of this as meaning imminent doom.

(the "if" there shouldn't be read as implying any doubt about whether they have. They have. Alas.)

5:40 PM

I hope none of y'all get demodded

I like you guys

Who am I gonna kidnap if y'all get demodded? Myself?

you can elope with a tree

wiTH A Tree

it can't BE SToppeD, I'M Seeing hidden wordS EVERywhere!

Dissolve hidden words everywhere (5)

6:18 PM

@Avi Wow, I appreciate the sentiment there. I'm not planning on leaving, and as Gareth said I don't think there's any danger of any of us being demodded.

:)

I'm also not happy with a lot of recent decisions by SE staff, but I'd like to make sure the unfortunate circumstances affect Puzzling as little as possible.

For the most part PSE does seem to be isolated in the sense that members within the community may participate outside in meta/other SEs, but the drama generally doesn't make its way inside PSE itself

yeah, PSE has always been isolated in a lot of different ways

(I have a 17-puzzle series I was planning on sharing soon, but the MIT Mystery Hunt is coming up and I didn't want to pause the uploads while that was going on.)

in any case I'll probably be most involved in trying to make a good cryptic crossword

only problem is that I often get forced into using a word that's not so easy to use

6:23 PM

yep, that happens sometimes - that's when you back up a few words and try a different option

it happens frequently -> my word scrambling skills aren't up to par yet

it can also help to keep multiple possibilities in mind for an entry - like, if you have ???E?A?I?N, you can separately write down ALLEGATION, GENERATION, and MODERATION, so you know that the crossing entry could have L, E, or O in the corresponding position. that gives you more freedom to constrain the other bits of the crossing entry first

I had a potential puzzle where the 2 big entries were INSPIRATIONAL and ENTERTAINMENT or something

then it turned out the grid couldn't be solved

ouch

it wasn't possible at all, no matter how you added blocks? that seems unlikely

Aspirations ended right there

I mean

to get it to work

I had to throw away 80% of my words

so I just quit

6:28 PM

ah makes sense

in any case the surfaces weren't quite good now that I look back on it

case in point:

Execute male's game (7) - HANG + MAN

To put up with one's a perennial genus (9) - TO + FIELD + I + A

Ah, yeah - I'd also avoid splitting words in the "obvious" way like that HANGMAN clue

Tasteless over a drink (6) - BL(A)AND

didn't even know blaand was a drink though

This one was ok though:

Awkwardly, escrow on vehicle is intimidating figure (9) - S(CAR)ECROW*

@Avi Solo agent's game (7)

not sure about the legality of this one:

Code is gift to give again (12) - RED + IS + TRIBUTE

6:31 PM

"code" = RED seems bad to me -- they aren't synonyms

HAN + G-MAN

yeah, see, that split is a lot more interesting

Gareth McCaughan

you want as little as possible overlap in meaning/etymology between the final answer and the elements of the wordplay

Game rejection sent back by top game manual (7)

NAH< + G_ + MAN (abbr.)

this one is actually good I think

this one almost worked out but never quite made it

Diamonds are sent (fulsomely disposed) to avenge injustice (9) - _RE SENT FUL_

unless diamonds worked as a hidden word indicator

no idea what it could be doing otherwise

"disposed to avenge injustice" is the def

I can't believe I did this:

A number (3) - ONE

ddef?

a [number] actually

6:49 PM

@Avi Almost zero! (3)

?!

Although that may have already been used before

how does the wordplay for that work out?

(-n)ONE, and &lit

(-d)ONE?

oh

didn't know that "almost" could subtract first letters too

guess "nearly"/"incomplete" can do that as well?

6:50 PM

Yeah, “Nearly zero!” works too

hmmmm

Thought you’d be a little more impressed cause you’re into &lits :)

It's good I admit

but not mindblowing

i was thinking maybe a surface about "Bad dance nearly traumatizes the audience"

except, indicators are needed

for ENAC(TE)D*

On stage, performed bad dance, nearly...

begetting terrible ends?

nearly isn't necessary :)

On stage, performed bad dance having terrible endings (7)

Actually, wait, the def isn’t right

D:

[On stage, performed]

6:57 PM

Performed bad dance having terrible endings (7)

act out (a role or play) on stage.

I’ve never heard of “enacted” being used that way

neither have I

yet, blame the dictionary

oh, m-w.com has it too :o

they say "act out"

wait a second, that means something totally different

xd

: to express (something, such as an impulse or a fantasy) directly in overt behavior without modification to comply with social norms

: to represent in action
: to translate into action
additionally, ^

so "Do"

Do bad dance having terrible endings (7)

this is why I don't trust the dictionary

every other one lies to me

Or just simply “act out”

at different times for different words

"acted out" seems like an unacceptable def for "enacted"

seeing as it has insignificant Levenshtein distance

technically, performed has dual meaning for "perform on stage" vs "perform an action"

so it's probably the best synonym for enacted

in the sense that it is used

normally laws are enacted

7:06 PM

Executed, practiced could aork

Executed hehe

Bad dance had terrible endings, leading to execution (7)

uhhh

executed D:

@Avi Part of speech mismarch

yup

Execute brazen actor discreetly (5)

_EN ACT_

Bloody wet (6) - B + RAINY

somehow I came up with that

probably I failed to come up with a definition

because it's not &lit for sure

unless being brainy makes you bloody wet

;)

7:13 PM

@hexomino HUNTS+MAN

(with "raven" as a verb meaning "to hunt")

shoots spider

n o t i n m y h o u s e

big spiders are bleh, small spiders are fine

Is "Ravens" acceptable in a published crossword?

Not sure that many would have come across an archaic meaning like that without Google

Inspired by recent sporting events and clues with multiple answers:

Playoff athlete charging, kicking, ending round on top - surprising winner taking the W? (5 or 6)

oh, sports

guess I'm SOL on this one

maybe women's soccer

PACKER (inits) and (-w)NINER*?

@Deusovi Yep, that’s it

7:19 PM

aha

Not quote as elegant as I wanted it to be, but it works

what was that one with 3 answers deusovi made?

1 minute, how

that was amazing (think it was 3 different parts of the ear or something)

@jafe figured it would be "wordplay and definition swap", and then it was easy to see

Nov 2 '19 at 21:33, by Deusovi

CCCC: Bone near the ear canal's start, essentially to be taken in by (maybe) all humans (7 or 5 or 6)

7:21 PM

Now let’s see if I can do one for the Chiefs/Titans

It's not ok to define "egg" as "extremely important to hatchlings", right?

because part of speech?

"Hatchling's treasure" might be better though

that's right, "important" is an adjective but "egg" is a noun

just checking - I managed to wrangle it out in the end, though

I’ve seen definitions that go like “they’re [description of answer]”

I've seen them too and I strongly dislike them

I try to avoid "it [does x] "style of definitions as much as possible

@HTM an attempt in a few minutes:

7:30 PM

I dislike them unless they let an &lit happen

then I'm fine

Large men buff final parts after "ち" (6)

CHI + EFS (ち = "chi"; the final parts of "buff" are two F's - spelled out, "EFS")
TI + TAN + _S (ち = "ti"; to "buff" is to tan)

@Deusovi I guess that kinda works, don’t really like the usage of the hiragana character though

And it’s not about football either

yeah it wasn't supposed to be, because I know zero football

and I've seen Greek and Hebrew characters used in gimmicked clues before, so hiragana aren't too far off

can you imagine

everybody would be SO pissed if somebody used a unicode character as a clue for REGEX

...why would a unicode character clue REGEX

7:34 PM

provided that it got printed, nobody would be able to tell the difference

as part of a clue, not as the whole

@Avi I think SO is already pissed enough by recent events

D;

I was talking about cryptic clue setters/solvers

not SO in general

then why REGEX? I'm not sure what you're going for here

so uh

regex clues may use Unicode characters. so it's self-referential, but in an infuriating way.

generally regexes are ASCII-only, unless they're explicitly trying to detect particular non-ASCII characters

also, I'm not sure what you mean by 'self-referential' here?

7:36 PM

"gotta watch out for those \u, they're invading cryptics now!"

anyways, let's not think about this - giving people bad ideas is a bad idea

Do peculiar looking characters look nice after you character code them, systematically ?

^ not a CC for UNICODE, but close

it's more like UDONICE

I have no idea what you're going for there

don't even think about it

that would be like, attempt 0 for a CC

wherein I usually go through 6 attempts before I get a good surface

Cow handler runs off to get something sneakily (6)

W(-r)ANGLE(-r)

surface could probably use one more iteration

but I'm pretty happy with the wordplay

inspired by the NYT clue: Former privateer runs off to make amends (7)

which was MUCH more clever, I must say

8:07 PM

Pecksniffian, unctuous, pharisaical

my three words for today... now time to let my brain chew on it

8:37 PM

Latest album has a confused militant organization? (5)

not gonna put this in a crossword, too clunky/unfair - (_M + HAS A)* = HAMAS

Amnesiac has a bleeding heart that's ready to be hunted (8) - too long for my crossword, so I'll put it here

reminds me of heart of dankness

@Deusovi Oh!!!!! When is it? What's theme?

I completely forgot about the MIT Puzzle Hunts

Oh wait is Mystery hunt different from the puzzle hunt...? That makes me sad :(

Oh it's galactic puzzle hunt... I don't know why I thought they were the same thing

8:57 PM

there are many different puzzle hunts

MIT Mystery Hunt is probably the biggest, and Galactic has gotten pretty big too

we don't know the MITMH theme until kickoff (Friday at noon EST)

2

Q: My prefix is man, my suffix is sharp

My prefix is man. My suffix is sharp. My infix is man. The whole is hard. What am I?

:(

found it in about 5 seconds, but apparently it's been up for 20 minutes

can "and" be abbreviated to "AN" as well as "N"?

if manglings of pronunciation are allowed

or is it just a "Bread 'n' Breakfast" kind of thing

9:21 PM

@Deusovi I have an odd feeling I've gotten into a discussion about this before

anyways preemptive good luck!

@Avi it's just that

(and I don't like "and" = N)

Confusing stall in the heart of hearts? Talk carelessly (4'1 3 5)

(THA(T"S ALL) FOLKS)*

except not - there's an extra t, e, r, a?

aha! Heart is abbreviated to H, Hearts is not - derp!

France isn't weak (5) - F + AINT

is this valid?

"france" = F?

probably FR iirc

oh, it's F by ITU letter codes, nice

do you expect people to know ITU letter codes?

9:31 PM

No, because I don't know them

then I would avoid them in your clue

all this wordplay is getting to my head

suddenly the sentence that enters is "Friar Joseph put a pickled plum point blank by buttering bread in a bad boiler"

I thought this one was funny:

Creator of emu dirge comes to grief (8) - DEMIURGE*

makes sad emu song

emus sing it for them

Category:Lists of abbreviations

...

bwahaha my power has tripled!

0

Q: A riddle of origins

This is an original riddle. It may require some specific knowledge, but nothing that can't be easily acquired. ma(c + n + s) = ?

riddle word knowledge

9:46 PM

@Deusovi Someday I'll be able to participate in one of those. Someday...

ooooooh! I got a good one

Research dusty ruins (5)

@Avi (STUDY)*

Although I'm not sure if "ruins" properly modifies "dusty"

D:

found a solution

Video game character you ship, mostly (5)

0

Q: Updated the warning messages about quality standards of questions on PSE

I have noticed that when adding a new question on Puzzle Stack Exchange (PSE), one may sometimes see the warning: The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed Similarly, when posting a puzzle that is concise, for example, like this one, one may see the error: ...

feature-request question-quality asking-questions

For the CHIEFS/TITANS thing, I just noticed that "cook" can mean both CHEF and TAN. How to clue the I/IT is beyond me, though

10:06 PM

"maybe T"?

T? in regex language

the ordering is weird though - with CH(I)FS vs T + I + TANS

I'm also trying to vaguely keep a sports-related theme

Trying to sneak "Tight end" = _T somehow

10:37 PM

Got it!

Interior-man beginning to infiltrate, cooks the team that will lose? (6 or 6)

T + I_ + TANS
CH(I_)EFS

Apparently Markdown doesn't like URLs with parentheses in them

Anyway, the first T in TITANS refers to the tackle, a player position that plays in the offensive line a.k.a the interior: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tackle_(gridiron_football_position)

0

Q: I made a crossword for you guys

Here's the crossword: I call it "A Abuse"... You'll find out why. Made with a crossword maker lol

word crosswords

11:26 PM

0

Q: Making the whole set into primes

Lets say you start with a set of sequential numbers starting from 2, (so 2,3, or 2,3,4, or 2,3,4,5 etc). The end goal is to use identical basic math arithmetic (+, -, x, /) to all of these numbers, to have them end up them all being different prime numbers. The end prime numbers they become mus...

mathematics logical-deduction

11:56 PM

@jafe This is correct, well done! Sorry for the delay, busy day.

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Jan '2015

The Sphinx's Lair

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