The Sphinx's Lair - 2020-10-06 (page 1 of 2)

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12:28 AM

-1

Q: if it's called "homework" What would it be called if you lived in a apartment?

What would be the answer the only one I seem to come up with is apartment-work.

12:54 AM

0

Q: Autobiographical numbers

An autobiographical number is a number that describes its own digits. The first digit (from left) specifies the number of 0s in the number, the next digit specifies the number of 1s in the number and so on. For example 2020 is an autobiographical number, because it contains two 0s, zero 1s, two 2...

1 hour later…

2:03 AM

My parents' voter-information packet arrived, and I'm having great fun reading through it

1 hour later…

3:15 AM

my repl.it can now convert angstroms to barleycorns

does it convert barleycorns to angstroms?

3:51 AM

0

Q: New type of twisty puzzle

Recently, I was fiddling with my Rubik's cube and tried scrambling it only using R and U moves. I then tried to solve it using only R and U moves. No cube rotations are allowed. It was an interesting puzzle and I'd like to design a twisty puzzle that resembled this. I was wondering if this puzzle...

puzzle-creation rubiks-cube twisty-puzzles

5 hours later…

8:30 AM

0

A: Congratulations Gareth! and the end of an era

October 2020 update Turns out I got to enjoy one more year at the top, when a big network-wide reputation recalculation in November 2019 boosted me above both Gareth and Deusovi, who had also overtaken me by then. I knew that posting so many questions would stand me in good stead one day :-P Howe...

^ congratulations @Deusovi :-)

8:56 AM

hi all

@Anush Hi!

9:21 AM

1

Q: Gladys's Letter-Dropping Cryptic

This is part 6 of the puzzle series. Part 1 is here. Dear Puzzling, My today's destination is a bit more of a mainstream tourist spot than some of the other stops on my journey. I'm definitely going to see some of the historic sites dating back to antique times while I'm here. Today I'm simply ...

knowledge geography cryptic-crosswords

4 hours later…

1:34 PM

@bobble not yet — hopefully be there by the end of the week :)

2:01 PM

0

Q: A color mixing puzzle

Thomas is an established artist who is known for creating extremely odd, almost other-worldly pieces of art, but he has a secret. See, Thomas has discovered the secret to traveling to different dimensions, and he is only able to return to our own dimension once he has successfully painted a scene...

enigmatic-puzzle visual story

2:45 PM

@Randal'Thor Thanks! Can't believe it's been so long - I appreciate the kind words.

hey @deus!

hello!

hello!

heheh man, that post was great. The honeypot challenge, that is

Props to Bass

Is Bass human?

2:53 PM

no, they're a bass guitar :P

or a fish?

@Deusovi You're not colorblind, right?

i actually am, why do you ask?

Oh no, you used red and green, so I can't understand the diagram to see why it's impossible! — Deusovi ♦ Dec 21 '17 at 1:27

yep, that was the joke there

2:56 PM

Ah. I didn't know if you were kidding or not

well, I was kidding - the colors they used were distinguishable for me

how much so?

just red-green deficient -- I occasionally have trouble with red/green/brown and blue/purple

so what does e.g. a rainbow look like to you?

it's usually not anything more than a minor inconvenience, but it sometimes means that I have to ask for a color transcription for a puzzle. (I also ask when I don't need it, because it's generally more convenient, even for people with full color vision!)

@matt not sure how I would answer that question - it's not like I have a reference level to compare against

3:01 PM

ah i see

hold on, let me try to find one of those images people have made

@Deusovi Yeah, that was the thing- I was like "If you're color-blind, how did you know that those were green and red?"

well, I could use an image editor as a color picker? plus, even if I can't tell two colors apart, I can still tell they're supposed to be two different colors

color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator

"deuteranomaly" is the type I have - this image makes it look slightly darker than it looks for me, but is otherwise the same

woah

Ah

3:08 PM

like I said, usually it doesn't affect things at all - it's mostly just that some shades of red/green/brown and blue/purple blur together

ah ok

also, any indicator lights that are like "green for on, red for off" are very frustrating

Ah, like stop signs

Or signal lights

stoplights are fine because i know that red is at the top and green at the bottom

and even then those two colors are distinct for me

That's good

3:13 PM

hi @Ankoganit!

the easiest way to make colors more distinguishable:
- more saturated colors are better. the closer a color is to gray, the harder it is to pick out.
- larger regions of color are better. black text on red/green background is *much* easier to tell apart than red/green text on white background.
- when you're unsure, make it distinguishable in grayscale! if it's clearly different when you've changed it all to grayscale, anyone will be able to see the difference. so if you have both red and green, or both blue and purple, make one of them clearly darker

@Deusovi how long did that take to type lol

uh, about a minute or two? i type fast

@matt How else do you think he snipes answers so fast?

oh uh wow

@NorthLæraðr good point lol

3:15 PM

@bobble hey!

hey @BeastlyGerbil!

(didn't notice the ping)

poll: color or colour?

I prefer color because it's one less letter to type

i prefer color because i'm not british :)

3:18 PM

0

Q: A Rich Club Indeed

This puzzle is linked to I am sick and tired of hearing this A Person From a City in Europe Visits a Country Club to offer Computer Related Teaching

riddle wordplay

based on this poll, with N = 2, "color" wins

@bobble Colour, because it looks cool

That's pretty solid evidence

poll already closed

poll: pets?

3:19 PM

i also use "color" (but i use british spellings for other things for some reason? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

@Deusovi you forgot a backslash type \\ i think

I use mostly 'murica spellings, except "travelling". I just like the two "l"s.

ah yeah, i always forget which sites escape underscores and which don't

Come to think of it, I prefer "travelling" too, which tanks the "one less letter to type" justification

Huh

traveling just looks weird

3:22 PM

@NorthLæraðr i was just about to type that

I use "traveled", however

i just always use the double l

@bobble Dannngg weird stuff

anyone wanna see my current fancy converter thingy?

Sure, why not

3:28 PM

unit-convert-length.merrybot.repl.run

like it? don't like it?

Pretty cool!

thanks! I'll add more units when i can :)

is the interface too simple for you? :)

Simple interface is probably a good thing

BTW I think you have some error checking to do

i do?

Like if user puts in wrong stuff, it just straight up exits

I put in "atg" for the second unit and it broken

3:32 PM

if you have a repl.it account would you mind helping? I'm rather a novice Pythoner

I don't have an account :/

aw :( i don't suspect anyone else does?

I think you just need to check if the input is in your list of supported units, and if not, start over or something

I do, and I know python

but I have school starting soon

so you'd have to wait until my schoolday ends

fine with me! :) i assume your replit username is something along the lines of "bobble"?

3:36 PM

I changed my online handle at some point

alright, I've invited you :) repl.it/@merrybot/unit-convert-length#main.py

Another remark: it looks like you're storing conversion factors in some giant array and multiplying by the appropriate factors. This is fine for most cases, but would break if you're converting between, say, Fahrenheit and Celcius

You might wanna have a more general approach

aha! i'll try and do that right quick

(not entirely sure how this would go, tbh. I'd probably store anonymous functions in this conversion array, but idk if that's a good way of doing it, I'm not a programmer or anything)

(ooh, maybe store strings that describe the functions and eval when needed)

(idk just spitballing here)

(also just realized I'm using too many parentheses)

(you are)

3:43 PM

(welp)

(stop it:))

getting an error: can't multiply sequence by non-int of type 'float'

Why are you multiplying a sequence by anything?

i thought this

conversions = {
    "ang": {
        "ang": in1 * 1,
        "aun": in1 * 1e-10 / 149597870700,
        "atm": in1 * 1e-18,
        "bcn": in1 * 1e-10 / 8.4666e-3
    }
}

would work

guess not

Ah no, that's problematic because these things you're storing isn't a legit thing

Like it's not a function, it's just string times a number

3:48 PM

the conversion dict is calculated at compile time

or whatever it's called for python

what if i wrapped all the in1s in float()s?

Idt that'd work

Here's an idea

same problem

Store those as strings, then return eval(conversion [whatever])

Like store these with quotes

Does that make sense?

change the expressions to functions!

as long as all the functions have the same arguments, you can then call them easily

3:51 PM

so do e.g. "atm": "in1 * 1e-18"?

@matt yes, that'd what I meant

@bobble this could work too

and eval() is evil, just saying

hm

Yeah, storing functions is probably more "idiomatic"

@bobble I've seen people say that, why exactly though?

@Ankoganit with your method i get the same error

3:54 PM

If more stuff gets put into eval, it can mess up your system

@matt huh, that's strange

141

Q: Why is using 'eval' a bad practice?

I am using the following class to easily store data of my songs. class Song: """The class to store the details of each song""" attsToStore=('Name', 'Artist', 'Album', 'Genre', 'Location') def __init__(self): for att in self.attsToStore: exec 'self.%s=None'%(att.lo...

@ankoganit try it for yourself here unit-convert-length.merrybot.repl.run see what happens

@bobble ah, makes sense

@matt hm, weird

@bobble storing conversions as functions is exactly the opposite of what the dictionary is supposed to do

any other ideas?

4:00 PM

Can I see what the dict looks like now?

Kinda surprised this throws an error

complete code (i reverted the whole string-delimeters thing):

import time


def resetscreen():
    print('\033[2J\033[1;1H\033[0m', end='')


resetscreen()
print(
    'Welcome to my fancy Python length unit converter!\nMore categories will be added when I have time.\n\nIf you\'re not already there, go to \033[1mhttps://unit-convert-length.merrybot.repl.run\033[0m to run this properly.\nOtherwise the buffer messes up.'
)
time.sleep(5)
resetscreen()
in1 = input("Enter a positive number. ")
resetscreen()
in2 = input("Enter the unit you want to convert from. \nang\tangstrom\n\n")

You didn't put the stuff in code

*in quotes

@matt like this

Oh wait you reverted that

Nvm

@matt why not?

@bobble aren't dictionaries supposed to compactify things? i don't want to have a billion functions

Oh you don't have define and nam every single one of them with def

You'll probably want to do lambda a lot

4:03 PM

@Ankoganit i don't?

anonymous functions/lambdas

i'm unfamiliar with lambda

(I think it's called an implicit function?)

Ah yes anonymous functions

So lambda x: x*2

Is a pure function

If you store this as c[1]

docs.python.org/2/reference/expressions.html#lambda

(the docs on lambda)

Then call c[1](12)

That applies your function on 12

4:05 PM

and returns 144

Umm 24 but you get the idea

(it's just one asterisk)

i read it as x**2 sorry

This is essentially a deity (4)

You'll probably end writing lambda a lot, but there's probably some way around that you can figure out later

so then something like ang2bcn = lambda x: x * 1e-10 / 8.4666e-3?

4:09 PM

@Avi hidden words generally shouldn't be on either end of the string hiding them

@matt yes

Can you explain further? I'm not quite sure I understand

it looks like your clue is meant to be a hidden word ISIS

yes

but you've "hidden" ISIS in THISIS

there should be at least one letter before and after the hidden word, or it's not really hidden

4:10 PM

I see

@Ankoganit then how would i say something like "run a different lambda based on the units entered"?

All lambdas are different lambdas

Say you store "ang":lambda x:X*2

Then call conversion [ang][ang](in1)

ah right i forgot about the dictionary for a sec

That'd double in1 and return that

alright then

thanks for the help!

4:12 PM

Sure, no worries

Deity of Atlantis isn't trapped (4)

yep, that works

@Ankoganit same error.

conversions = {
    "ang": {
        "ang": lambda x: x * 1,
        "aun": lambda x: x * 1e-10 / 149597870700,
        "atm": lambda x: x * 1e-10 / 1e-18,
        "bcn": lambda x: x * 1e-10 / 8.4666e-3
    }
}
ans = conversions[in2][in3](in1)
print("\n\033[1mThe result is " + str(ans))

Ok I'm lost then

Are we sure it's not a cache issue?

1e-10 works in python?

I wouldn't think so

4:16 PM

@bobble wdym?

@bobble Hm, I've never seen it used but it was working in the original version so I just assumed it's a thing

I don't think you can use 1e-10 as a constant

why not?

Seems wrong to me

like you were doing "1e" and subtracting 10

you can do scientific notation that way in python

4:18 PM

really?

cool

so we know that's not the error

umm

what's the specific error message?

TypeError: can't multiply sequence by non-int of type 'float'

print out the type of in1?

<class 'str'>

so i have to convert in1 to a float

4:22 PM

see thats a problem

converty converty

ah ok good it works

phewph

added some fun simulated delays with time.sleep(0.2)

Nice!

1 hour later…

5:40 PM

@GarethMcCaughan The "composed CLUES" and "wanting Exercise first" make me think of CLUS, as in EXCLUSIVE (or maybe EXCLUSORY), which can be clued by "only". But I cannot make any of the other worpdlay work, so I don't think that's correct. But I'm leaving it here in case someone else can.

5:51 PM

0

Q: Where is the pilot flying to? (Third Destination)

After a close call with his first flight, and with the feds still scratching their heads with his second flight, Barry once again received the instructions for his next flight from The Don of the mafia. This time, The Don sent Barry an email with a link to a website. The website itself appeared t...

knowledge enigmatic-puzzle story

someone gave me an upvote, so I no long have three 7s in a row for my rep

Infantry beast swallows heart whole (7) - DRAG(_O_)ON?

@Avi infantry ≠ dragoon, and "heart whole" ≠ O, imo

thanks

np

6:03 PM

what is a dragoon, then

Infantry soldier?

6:16 PM

infantry that travels by horse i think

I've been thinking of back-tagging some Rileys - maybe like 3 a day? Should I?

didn't someone have a script for that? probably not worth it to do by hand

Did someone? Will check the meta post again

The result of a harvest: a bit of light? A bit of evil?! (6)

Someone did (@Glorfindel). They note which chat rooms to ping them from. So.. ping them?

6:31 PM

but obviously not a good surface, rip

that's for sure

naturally it's PICK + L_ + E_

@Avi yes

6:51 PM

One might use it to boil a pickle (3,5)

only occasionally could be OL or NY... surely in the morning must be AM

7:21 PM

@jafe HOT POTZZ

jk

close

someone should make a clue that uses "in a pickle" to mean "insert something into word meaning pickle"

Poker put final musketeer in a pickle (7)

yay!

would you like virtual cookies as a reward?

"I shouldn't have gambled so much" - Aramis

@jafe pel ick* + an rip

god knows why that pelican has an internal temperature of 150 degrees Celsius

7:32 PM

i'd have thought porthos would have been the gambling type

I haven't read the book :(

@jafe what is this one, btw?

GDPR-approved way to ask for cookie consent: "yay, you found our site! would you like virtual cookies as a reward? [yes] [no]"

hot water (double def)

oh noooo

so close, yet so far

hehe

if I put virtual icing on the cookies, does it make them better?

7:39 PM

for virtual humans

@Avi pretty sure this is something that pokes... hmm

something or someone

Do you want me to spoil it

Can somebody type "wars" in chat? Once I star it it will become "* wars"

ohhh i just realized

Warsaw starts with wars

wars

was going to try to clue

WARSAW - WARS = AW + SH(O->U)CKS = AW SHUCKS (def [darn!])

user image

there you go

b(_r)other would fit the wp but i don't see how "poker" can be the def

7:48 PM

p(_r)ickle

like a burr

ah, new word for me

you learn something every day :)

provided you care to

and also forget :P

I forgot what I forgot today so that's 2 things already

👍

i forgot the word "compass" (the thing you use to draw circles) the other day

7:51 PM

en compass

as in, forgot it in my language.. i could still remember it's compass in english

Language used to draw circles all over (9)

had to look it up in the dictionary

though not sure EN counts as a language

looking it up is better than forgetting it in the only language you know :x

EN for "english" could be ok but "language" is probably too indirect

7:53 PM

like when i forget that the stuff in a lake is water

I just point at a lake and stare blankly

lol, that actually happened?

...

yes

:<

that's tough

i mean who really needs to know what's in a lake

"lakestuff"

7:55 PM

exactly

as long as it's not colored like Dr. Seuss lakes

it's probably safe to drink

if no leeches, brain-eating amoeba, etc. inside

probably best evaporating it first

green lakestuff and ham

sounds like a perfectly reasonable restaurant order

8:13 PM

bonjour my j key is acting up

@Avi ah yes, a glowing purple-greenish lake

bonsoir

bin sudrdnr

oh no a stroknh

Guten Abend.

@matt a real keystroke if I've ever seen one

Can't Outrun Viruses If Dead :(

the next PSE race: who gets to the 100k mark next?

let's meet the contestants

8:22 PM

bobble has 2787 rep!

so fast

gareth: 1.9k to go, 13.5 k this year so far

gareth, jafe, tom, hexomino

hexomino: 3k to go, 25k this year so far

out of which tom wins if there are a bunch of random word puzzles

otherwise likely to be gareth/hexomino

there's basically a cap to the rep you get for posting generic puzzles

so even high-effort crosswords like CCs will be out-yielded by low-effort puzzles :/

if the latter is posted more frequently

hence, the only way to get high rep and keep the site clean is to make high effort puzzles

@Avi There's a massive gap below hexomino.

8:26 PM

and do a lot of answers

yeah the top 4 is waaay out in front

And my money is on Stiv overtaking jafe/Tom/Bass in the near-to-mid future.

absolutely

i'd agree with that assessment but I'd put that in the mid future

ok ok i see it

#1 rep will be unpredictable

#2 rep will be predictable

and #3 rep will be funpredictable

Are you not counting mods here or what?

Unpredictable and predictable are only two of the top four.

8:29 PM

all we have to do is convince gareth to change to funpredictable

get hexomino to overtake gareth

and ban Deus?

and implement rererere-captchas

Wait, I thought Rubio was the mod who ran on a "ban me" platform?

I thought #2 is unpredictable and #4 is predictable?

@LukasRotter Currently.

8:30 PM

It's not a ban if you just can't login, because you're a body-stealing cyborg

Is a cyborg sufficiently human to solve captchas?

He captchad those bodies, after all.

3

Only if he has socks on

it's cyperson, people... it's not the 2010s anymore

we're more inclusive now

Does that mean the Borg are now called the Person?

Aaargh we've been assimilated!

apersonated*

anyway if i had to bet i'd say gareth makes it first but it's close

8:37 PM

wah

I need an animation artist

to make an animation of Deus assimilating his socks

oh yeah but seriously I'm not sure whether I've said this before

I think all the mass goes into a singularity at the center of a black hole

appearing to our universe as a singularity in space-time

a tear in the fabric, if you will

but on the other "end" all the mass is compressed into a single point (from various different points in time)

which sounds suspiciously like what our universe was like prior to the Big Bang

my theory is that some black holes, on the other end, will entertain some sort of instability that will create a Big Bang, just with less initial mass

thus creating some weird sort of alter universe on the other end of those black holes

possibly the reason our universe is unreasonably expanding is that on the other end of our universe

some omega-black hole is constantly swallowing some other bigger star

that might be possible to exist in a higher universe, because of different laws of physics

again, I'm no physicist, so this is just speculation

but who knows

maybe this is the basis of a true multiverse

that is very interesting in a crackpot-y way

@Randal'Thor we are the borg, resistance is futile

8:53 PM

34

Q: Resistance is futile

On the sunny morning of April 5th, 2063, an alien spaceship started orbiting the Earth. Among the cries of "It's an alien spaceship!" and "Ohm my god!" from the people, governments noticed that they were beaming down a colorful message: Unfortunately, because of interference from the atmospher...

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Transcript for

Oct '206

The Sphinx's Lair

General discussion for puzzling.stackexchange.com

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