The Sphinx's Lair - 2020-10-02

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12:13 AM

@msh210 C4 clue?

A puzzle was posted a while ago. I solved it, but the post was deleted... what should I do? Shall I post the puzzle together with my answer?

Gareth McCaughan

If it was deleted, presumably there's a reason why it was deleted...

@bobble "Am I the only one to vote Kanye West for President?" independently asked Tom

12:30 AM

hmm

Gareth McCaughan

12:58 AM

CCCC: Remark about person getting a poor grade for Religious Instruction (11)

I don't know whether anyone's keeping track, but Rand and Deusovi are tied on 106320 rep right now.

(Also, Rand's location is given as "Unpredictable" and hexomino's as "Predictable". I assume one is riffing off the other, but I don't know which way around it is.)

1:31 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Is the CCCC COMMANDMENT? COMMENT = remark about MAN = person getting D = a poor grade -> COM(MAN)(D)MENT

Gareth McCaughan

@JeremyDover Yup!

Nice! For once I actually have one ready. It's not difficult, but I love the surface...

CCCC: Around end of year, even Jeremy Dover is an archetype of gloominess (6)

Gareth McCaughan

I have the answer but I need to go to bed and don't want to have to set another C4 right now so someone else can do it :-). And yes, it's a nice surface.

0

Q: An old favorite game

I came across an old favorite computer game the other day, downloaded it and started playing. Must say I think it still holds and can see why it was a star among the games I played as a teenager. Can you find the name of the game from the, rather elementary, Sudoku below?

enigmatic-puzzle

0

Q: Most intersections with Olympic rings

The Olympic symbol has 5 rings that intersect at 8 points: What is the most number of intersection points can you achieve by moving the rings?

geometry combinatorics

1 hour later…

2:59 AM

@JeremyDover _E_E_Y_O(R_)_E_ [an archetype of gloominess]

so basically even letters of Jeremy Dover around last letter of year

I might not be there so Gareth can pick up if I don't show up

3:48 AM

2

Q: Why is the pavement wet?

Saw this the other day. So I took this picture. There was another nearly identical wet patch 2 spaces away. Why is the pavement wet?

1 hour later…

4:59 AM

I'm making decent progress on my "How to make an Around the Bend" Q+A

Deus is currently ahead, with 106370 rep to Rand's 106350

chat does not like when you try to do two bold sections in the same message

Also, linguistic innovation now has 13 stars

@JeremyDover hah, nice one

how do people feel about the setter's name being used to clue first-person pronouns?

like "Jeremy Dover" could clue I or ME there, or "Jeremy Dover is" could be I'M

5:28 AM

@jafe I like it

5:56 AM

i threw away a couple of clues like that at some point because i thought it would have been more confusing than clever, but my name is probably a bad candidate for that sort of thing anyway

a name like jeremy is better since it could potentially clue other things as well

the best would be if it's a name that makes you think of some other thing first and then you're like aaa wait a minute, [xyz] is the setter's name!

i think ucaoimhu used "kevin" as a self-reference in the cinnabar puzzle that was mentioned here earlier... can't say i'm a big fan of that

because if you don't know their real name there's really no way to solve the clue

at least the setter's pseudonym is usually written somewhere nearby

6:46 AM

0

Q: A Word + Number Puzzle

This is a code: 27 15 68 28 29 16 said that '53 95 62 18 65 92 22 19 7 8 74 102 90 49.' What is the secret behind?

7:33 AM

@Deusovi Hi. I just wanted to see if you have a good answer to this meta question, especially for drawing the puzzle.

8:02 AM

0

Q: Puzzling Word Forms

A mathematician mathematically mathematifies the mathematified mathematics to mathematically mathematice the mathematiced mathematies What are the word forms of the words in the sentence above?

1 hour later…

Gareth McCaughan

9:07 AM

@bobble Really? I'm sure I've done that before without problems, but maybe I'm imagining it or maybe something's changed.

(Nope, seems fine.)

9:44 AM

0

Q: Hollow Cube Cuts

The 4 inches seamless hollow cube with aluminum surfaces can be cut using a box knife. How to cut it into 4 pieces that can be bend to form smaller 1 inch cubes?

geometry dissection

1 hour later…

10:54 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Testing multiple partial-word boldfacing.

Yep, even so.

There's a difference between __intra__word underscores and intraword asterisks though.

2

Q: Can you fold a square into a square of one-third the area

I do not love origami, but Mitsuko gave me an idea for a extremely hard and (not that?) beautiful puzzle. I'm really curious whether anyone here can solve it. So here's the puzzle. You are given a large perfectly square piece of paper with no marks on it. With this square, you have to make a squa...

mathematics geometry paper-folding

(also, multiline messages don't get formatted)

@JohnDvorak Interesting. I wonder why.

too many false positives because of __python_builtins__

(ironically, it doesn't help in this specific case, but single underscores are quite common)

11:25 AM

@Avi That is, of course, correct.

@jafe I think self-references would be fine for "I" or "ME", but it would likely glare if it was the only one in a puzzle. Now, if you did a puzzle with lots of community names in the clues...

@jafe true

@bobble are you drowning in requirements because I am

1 hour later…

12:42 PM

0

Q: Raindrops keep falling on my head

So I wrote two grid logic puzzles, then took my only copies out into the rain, and the ink totally ran together. Rather than give up on all that hard work, I'll just have you figure it out! The two puzzles are a Nurikabe and a Tapa. You'll need to solve them simultaneously in order to untangle th...

1:07 PM

1

Q: Seven sevens cryptarithmetic

This is not my original, but one of the older puzzles I found in an almost-20-years-old puzzle book. It's definitely not the original of the book's author either, so I can't tell the real original source. When I encountered this for the first time, it took me a whole day to solve to the end. Comp...

mathematics logical-deduction

1 hour later…

2:18 PM

@GarethMcCaughan my original message: Deus is currently ahead, with 106370 rep to Rand's 106350

oh it worked this time

now I'm really confused

@oAlt what kind of requirements are you talking about?

academic ones :'( @bobble

actually I'm pretty fine right now

only two homework-giving classes :)

2:33 PM

envy intensifies

Next semester I will have 3, if that makes any difference

I planned an easier fall semester so I would have time for college apps

2:50 PM

hello everyone

3:16 PM

hello!

@Bubbler Bobble covered the main thing I use (Google Sheets), but I can talk about what I use for making puzzle images too.

If you have any extra Sheets tricks, feel free to edit them in

^ fancy borders

That's already in there, but maybe I wasn't clear enough

but in sheets you just cannot get a 2px-thick border

which is quite stupid imo

You can choose from three options of border thickness in the border-style dropdown

3:28 PM

hm i thought there was a border thickness one. must've been thinking of google docs then

also what's a good 2-letter abbreviation of "enter"?

⏎

(little enter arrow)

probably not what you meant

nope, also i managed to solve the dilemma by making my keyboard diagram 1 character wider

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bsp
tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] \
cap a s d f g h j k l ; ’ ent
shft z x c v b n m , . / shft
ctrl alt   space   altgr ctrl

version 2:

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =  bksp
tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] \
caps a s d f g h j k l ; ’ entr
shift z x c v b n m , . / shift
ctrl  alt   space   altgr  ctrl

Gareth McCaughan

3:55 PM

(That's two characters wider.)

i'm making no sense today

Gareth McCaughan

4:16 PM

I read the comment you've now removed and it looks to me like it makes perfectly good sense :-).

Can you read it because you're a moderator or because you're a room owner? Or can you not read it?

Gareth McCaughan

I'm not sure exactly who gets to read deleted chat comments. Probably room owners? (Yes, I can read it. It's not that I read it before it got deleted.)

4:37 PM

people with pet kangaroos, in other words

no wait that's roo owners

@jafe YES

@GarethMcCaughan thanks? i guess?

2 hours later…

6:12 PM

sigh

and now I'm responsible for a CCCC without even having a CC ready D:

You can give it to someone else

Then you can nag them the next time they get a CCCC to give it back

that would require them to get a CCCC

6:29 PM

what exactly is the difference between a cccc and a regular cc posted in the chat?

You have to answer a CCCC correctly

to post the next one

Cryptic clue chat chain(s) = CCCC

whereas, regular CC usually have their answer posted at some point

or get forgotten

oh no, the cc's are lonely

we must save them

@Avi you'll think of something eventually :)

CCCC: "They make folks hate travel from Spartacus," Tom said, regionally. (7)

ooh nice! tom + cccc

yey

I finally did it

6:36 PM

ok lets see

i have terrible cc solving skills so this will definitely be incorrect

uhh

All I can say is I sacrificed a bit of correctness for surface - shame on me :x

6:58 PM

hmm

1 hour later…

8:01 PM

I have now read the first few paragraphs of Fed. 78 three times without taking in a single word

8:13 PM

what is fed 78?

nvm, figured it out

any particular parts you're stuck on?

I managed to get past the difficult parts

2 more paragraphs to go :)

cool

It is the less necessary to recapitulate the considerations there urged as the propriety of the institution in the abstract is not disputed; the only questions which have been raised being relative to the manner of constituting it, and to its extent. To these points, therefore, our observations shall be confined.

^^ was the difficult part

Gareth McCaughan

Perfectly lucid.

8:17 PM

yyyeah

thats so simple /s

Gareth McCaughan

"We don't need to go over the need to have such a thing, since no one disagrees. The only questions are about who's to be in it, and how big it should be. So that's all we'll talk about."

@GarethMcCaughan ??

Gareth McCaughan

paraphrase into informal modern English

how did you!

Gareth is some sort of Ye Olde English translator magician

8:20 PM

if you could do that with my virtual algebra textbook that would be amazing /s

Gareth McCaughan

actually, "its extent" may mean not "how big it is" but "what its scope is"

context is a debate over the federal judiciary

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, I know

hm

I'm going off to read a nice fanfic as a brain break

Gareth McCaughan

8:23 PM

actually, when I looked at it I initially thought it was about what we now call the Supreme Court, but that seems to be wrong.

Enjoy your fanfic!

@bobble what exactly is it a fanfic of?

Long Drarry fanfic. I don't even ship it, but it was an answer to an SF&F identification question and the premise seemed interesting.

(drarry = Draco + Harry)

TIL what ship means in the context of fanfics *can't spell

8:55 PM

@bobble That's not Old English, nor even Early Modern English as Shakespeare used. At a stretch you might be able to say it's like "Victorian English", which anyway isn't much different from modern English except in style. I'd just call it a very formal style of English, nought else withal.

@matt Both Gareth and others such as I or Deus probably know enough maths to help with an algebra textbook, but understanding maths is nowhere near as straightforward as simple "translation" into ordinary English.

My explanations of math usually involve vigorous hand-waving, which I'm not sure how to translate to text.

@GarethMcCaughan I was first :-)

May 31 at 9:56, by Rand al'Thor

@hexomino bahaha I just saw your profile location thing on the users list. We look good flanking Deus and Gareth :-P

@bobble Vigorous handwaving, sure. Rigorous handwaving would be an oxymoron.

I gave my location as "home". Since I joined during the pandemic, it's been mostly true.

Gareth McCaughan

9:17 PM

@Randal'Thor I wondered about making a remark like that, but note that bobble didn't say "Old English" but "Ye Olde English" which is just a slightly flippant way of saying "old English", and since it's on the order of 200 years old I think that's fair enough even though it isn't at all like Old English (= Anglo-Saxon = the language of e.g. Beowulf).

9:36 PM

> [Old English] doesn't seem much like modern English, does it? But it's actually quite recognizably English if you squint: on wintertīde, and sīe fȳr onǣlæd and þīn heall gewyrmed, and hit rīne and snīwe and styrme ūte; cume ān spearwa and hrædlīce þæt hūs þurhflēo is in wintertime, and the fire laid on and the hall warmed, and it rains and snows and storms out; comes a sparrow and readily that house through flies. Every word is hrædlīce mappable to its modern English equivalent.

-- verbose

@Randal'Thor how do you make the quote bar show up in chat?

Same way as in main-site posts.

>

> A quoty quote

3

yay it worked!

1 hour later…

10:52 PM

1

Q: Calculate total score from average score

A class of students have taken $8$ exams. The average scores of the exams are: 1st: $80.12$ 2nd: $74.59$ 3rd: $77.83$ 4th: $77.34$ 5th: $82.07$ 6th: $81.25$ 7th: $78.90$ 8th: $75.44$ What is the total score of all the students in all the $8$ exams? It is known that the number of students is less ...

mathematics logical-deduction real

11:15 PM

We're supposed to annotate a derivation for physics homework, and I can do most of the lines, but I don't know how to explain what happens here:

v <= sqrt(ugR)

4*R*pi^2/T^2 <= ug

I mean, wayyy to many things happened in between those two lines

</rant>

11:31 PM

I'm starting to think people are not solving the CCCCs just so they don't have to make another one

<3

I like making CCCCs. The people who are good at solving them have to make extra, though. That's not me.

11:53 PM

(re: physics rant from earlier - the last step was derived from a step 2 before, instead of 1 before)

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Oct '202

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