The Sphinx's Lair

bobble

3:07 PM

Who was the last person to solve a CCCC?

Lukas Rotter

3:19 PM

gareth

oAlt

@Avi This

matt

today's random fact: you can spell "soap" as tswougheppe and it would be consistent with english orthography rules /s

bobble

52

Q: Ghotiy spelling

As some of you likely know, ghoti is an interesting spelling of the word fish. Using: the "gh" from "tough" the "o" from "women", and the "ti" from "nation" This is a rather ghotiy way to spell the word. But in the same spirit, what common phrase is spelled below? ugh theighmolo Please ment...

matt

hm

that was "egg timer"?!

bobble

3:36 PM

yep

matt

question: is "bobblecrown" pronounced /bɑbl.kraun/? want to make a ghoti-type thing out of it

bobble

It's pronounced "bah-bow-crown". I don't know how to read phonetics.

matt

"bow" as in "thing you stick on a Christmas present"? that would be /bou/

bobble

yes, "bow" as in thing in fancy knot

matt

Any reason specifically there's no L sound anywhere? or is it just you wanting it to sound cute? :p

bobble

3:46 PM

Because the word "bobble" (as in bouncing up & down) doesn't have an L sound

matt

really? my local dictionary says it does

but anyway... I'll start ghoti-fying it :)

bobblecrown --> pbaahepbeauexrrhaowesne

Sphinx

5:14 PM

0

Q: Just or hoax - who is he?

In one language just, in another language hoax. Who is he?

knowledge language

Gareth McCaughan

5:31 PM

CCCC God and goddess, having eaten nothing, are hungry (8)

jafe

@GarethMcCaughan ra+ven(o)us

Gareth McCaughan

Yup.

(Didn't expect it to last long, but I liked the fact that I could get "having eaten nothing" into the wordplay.)

I also wondered about "Starving artist ..." exploiting the RA at the beginning.

Avi

speakable, cable, kabal

bobble

???

Avi

cub ball

matt

5:40 PM

??

msh210

@Avi cue ball

John Dvorak

no, no, a cub ball is a spherical bed for young dogs

msh210

@GarethMcCaughan Starving artist molding goddess about core of [some material spelled with an o in the middle; can't think of any off the top of my head]

John Dvorak

ebony

ivory

Avi

Ra was an artist?

msh210

5:49 PM

@JohnDvorak there we go; thanks

@Avi RA is an artist

Gareth McCaughan

an RA is a member of the Royal Academy

an organization for elite British artists

in full the Royal Academy of Arts

msh210

specifically the Royal Academy of the Arts -- there are other royal academies but that one is called RA

Avi

I see

msh210

oh, jinx

Avi

pinch poke something something coke

msh210

5:50 PM

and you're right, it's Arts, not the Arts

(per Google)

Actually, I like around better than about in that one.

Sphinx

6:03 PM

0

Q: Deduce the Hidden Die

This is a dice-rolling deduction game. You have 7 six-sided fair dice. Each die has its sides numbered from 1-7, so that every dice have one unique missing number. To make it clearer, the numbering on each dice are shown below: D1: 2 3 4 5 6 7 D2: 1 3 4 5 6 7 D3: 1 2 4 5 6 7 D4: 1 2 3 5 6 7 D5: 1...

logical-deduction open-ended dice

Anthony Ingram-Westover

6:14 PM

I had the same thought on that one bobble. Could come with a statistically likely amount, but no guarantee that you'd definitely know

bobble

I'm currently cleaning up the [open-ended] tag wiki: it says that the tag is currently being debated on meta, which is not true; they concluded that it was off-topic a while back

Deusovi

sounds good!

bobble

Dear goodness, the user for dice question above admitted they don't know of any answer.

It's Anonymous25 all over again!

(okay that's a bit harsh)

Deusovi

ughhh

the worst part is that this is a question that isn't even possible to answer

there is literally no strategy that can guarantee you a finite number of trials

this is the exact type of question that frustrates me - a "what's the best you can do?" question where the OP hasn't realized that it's trivial/impossible, and that fact is not too hard to figure out with a bit of thought about the question

bobble

Are you going to wait for other people to come along and close, or just modhammer?

Deusovi

6:27 PM

i'll wait for others here, because i'm not sure "open-ended" quite fits

Prince North Læraðr

@bobble Wdym you're cleaning it up?

Deusovi

it's not "answers can be improved indefinitely" -- it's the opposite of that, where no answer even exists

bobble

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I'm updating it to reflect current meta consensus

Prince North Læraðr

@bobble So you're updating the description?

bobble

yes, the tag wiki & excerpt

Prince North Læraðr

6:30 PM

Ah ok

bobble

@Deusovi I think what matters here is that the asker sees it as an open-ended question. The fact that there is no solution is unimportant.

Deusovi

well, the thing is, there is a definite bound on how much you could improve the answers -- that would be "one trial"

John Dvorak

You can still optimize for the expected number of trials

Deusovi

obviously you can't get one trial, but that's a clear upper bound to goodness of answer

bobble

No matter the specific reason it should be closed, though.

Deusovi

6:33 PM

i don't think "there is no upper bound to the goodness of an answer" is the only criterion we should use for open-ended questions, but it was the one that got the most overwhelming support from the community

the other criteria, while they got mostly positive responses, had a few criticisms too

so you voting to close as open-ended seems reasonable enough to me but i wouldn't feel comfortable modhammering since there is some room for doubt

bobble

makes sense

Also, is it "Stack OverFlow"? I though it was "Stack Overflow", but I could be wrong here

Deusovi

i've never seen the camelcase version

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Overflow, no camelcase

bobble

referring to this FTC proposal

Welp, dice question was deleted by poster

Deusovi

seems fine to me

Anthony Ingram-Westover

6:39 PM

Hmmm, I mean, I kinda agree with it, because I've been playing around a lot with trying to come up with good programming puzzles, but at the same time, there's a reason they aren't super prevalent.

Programming is really more art than science, there's never only "one" right answer

bobble

Personally, I haven't though any of their programing puzzles have been good (or terrible, for that matter). Mostly meh.

Anthony Ingram-Westover

And it's a niche field for a puzzle that would really limit the number of people who could possibly solve it

Then again, risky has really irked me on a lot of their posts, so I could be biased

Most of their programming puzzles I have found pretty terrible

But again, I recognize I have a bit of a bias

bobble

They all had multiple solutions, right?

I didn't pay much attention to them

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Right, and on many of them risky was adamant that they didn't and we just weren't getting it

One I finally actually wrote out like 6 different solutions that all worked to prove it

Deusovi

probably best to evaluate the proposal independently from the proposer

Anthony Ingram-Westover

6:42 PM

And it turned out none of the six were what they wanted

Deusovi

but i agree that programming puzzles generally don't work very well

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Right, Definitely

A lot of programming puzzles I feel would either have near infinite viable solutions, or would be a code golf style puzzle, which has it's own SE

Deusovi

agreed

[computer-puzzle] generally refers to puzzles that (may) require programming, not puzzles that are directly about a specific language

and even puzzles requiring programming are often unfun or inaccessible

bobble

Or just knowledge of general programming/computer-science concepts, I think

Deusovi

yeah, those are fine too

matt

6:52 PM

hey bobble! deus! anthony!

bobble

There was a Bad Question which is now gone.

Anthony Ingram-Westover

yello matt!

matt

noöne likes Bad Questions

bobble

Do we like Bass Questions, though?

matt

yes

Anthony Ingram-Westover

6:54 PM

Bass questions yes, bass questions no. All about the pronunciation

John Dvorak

The deep ones, or the fishy ones?

bobble

I think we all like this Bass question

matt

I like your sense of humor :p

bobble

What sense of humor?

matt

y-

yours?

oh hey avi :)

jafe

7:19 PM

CCCC: Bass, Avi, Alconja, Boboquack finally coming up with scheme (6)

Prince North Læraðr

Hehe

So, I'm thinking the parsing has

SIAK for perhaps "finally"

(last letter of bass, avi, alconja, and boboquack)

Though... that's not really a word I can think of

Actually I think the def is "bass", because "with scheme" or the wordplay ending with "with" doesn't seem likely

Actually, "coming up with" could be an entire singular charade component

matt

SIAKYGPHE* = HIS PAY KEG

Deusovi

???

Prince North Læraðr

Um

That's an indirect anagram and not allowed

Deusovi

among other issues

matt

7:28 PM

was just making anagrams for sake of anagram-making

Prince North Læraðr

There's DEVICE, which has vi in AVI hehe

CONJAB? hehe

alCONJA Boboquack

Okay sorry, I'll stop

Avi

did you know

DAVE is backwards in NEVADA

matt

yes

I did know that

John Dvorak

CMC: make a CC out of that

Avi

something something NA esports

Prince North Læraðr

7:33 PM

@Deusovi Can "coming up" be used as a reverse indicator?

sure

ya

yes

usually only in down clues

Prince North Læraðr

Okay, I think I got part of the parsing, KIA+(scheme)

Hm, I don't know how that works though

Oh it's KAI

John Dvorak

7:37 PM

that's a carp, not a bass, is it?

Prince North Læraðr

No I meant it's KAI...

John Dvorak

wait, no, that's koi, not kai

Prince North Læraðr

KAI is IAK back ward

Maybe bass is part of the charades too?

like a word for bass, LOW

Prince North Læraðr

8:00 PM

Can someone pin the C4

hm, coming up with scheme and scheming mean essentially the same thing... interesting

Prince North Læraðr

8:16 PM

Only thing I can come up is with is KAISER

SIAK backwards ("coming up") -ER being a "with" or "connector" (Person or thing connected with) and um a KAISER schemes

#badC4solutions

Prince North Læraðr

8:31 PM

@jafe :P

jafe

i can confirm that that is not the intended answer :)

Prince North Læraðr

Lol

Am I even on the right track?

jafe

(poker face)

Prince North Læraðr

hmph

bobble

8:55 PM

Why am I not included in this scheme? I shall send the bobblies to ~~spy on~~ monitor these suspicious puzzlers.

Prince North Læraðr

I'm so lost on how to solve this

jafe

well you're like 50% included in boboquack so i think that counts as half a point

bobble

Only the first 3 letters match

jafe

in other news, bright minds are needed in the chain puzzle room because i'm drawing a blank on how to proceed :P

exactly, 3/6 letters

bobble

9:18 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr, Deepthinker has renamed themself to "Prince Deepthinker".

Prince North Læraðr

@bobble Why

bobble

I don't know

But they have

Prince North Læraðr

I feel attacked

Lukas Rotter

@bobble Lol. Apparently 'Deepthinker' on itself was too humble

jafe

9:36 PM

Prince South Dæpðinker

Prince North Læraðr

10:08 PM

Gross

merrybot

10:37 PM

@jafe lol

Sphinx

10:56 PM

1

Q: Spider Solitaire - maximum number of cards in a single column

What is the maximum number of cards you can have in a single column of four-suit Spider Solitaire? The diagram below has 11 cards in column 2, more than any other column. Obviously, the correct answer is much bigger than 11. Assume standard rules: start with 54 cards in the tableau with only 10 f...

cards

oAlt

11:27 PM

@bobble bruh

@jafe omg how

nice surface haha

msh210

@jafe _K _A < PLAN

Avi

bass + avi = KAPLAN?

oh, bass Avi

msh210

Kaplan is "bass Avi" (see link above)

Nice clue.

bobble

How did you find that?

Prince North Læraðr

11:43 PM

ah

Darrrnnnn you jafe

bobble

I was about to make a joke interpreting "darn" as "to fix with needle & thread", but I couldn't think of a good one.

msh210

@bobble I saw that the wordplay worked out to Kaplan if the definition was "bass Avi", so I Googled "Avi Kaplan" and discovered that he is was the bass of Pentatonix.

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