The Sphinx's Lair

Rejected

I have to leave now.

Upon further checking, the post author approved it, which is a binding vote.

Q: Fortnightly Topic Challenge #43: Variety Crossword Grids

Oh nvm they made another edit

geez, they need to STOP

On the same question

@Deusovi Maybe let them know that that's not kosher around here?

Puzzling Meta

1

This is the second installment of the Fortnightly Topic Challenges Rerun described here and the forty-third installment of the FTCs overall, with topics suggested and voted on here. This fortnight's topic is "Variety Crossword Grids" (suggested by bobble) and will span from the 15th of November t...

12:16 AM

Ooh another FTC

And @Ankoganit has his entry as one of the most voted and most viewed :0

What a legendary wall indeed

Lukas Rotter

Btw, the bot still doesn't automatically add new entries of the current FTC. Sorry, didn't have time for it, will hopefully get to it next weekend. In the meantime, let me know if there are any other stats you'd like to see other than most-viewed and highest voted.

12:57 AM

Ooh

@bobble to clarify: a weirdly-shaped grid but with regular entries of words is not allowed as an entry for the FTC?

Q: Form three squares of equal area with 8 sticks

2:49 AM

0

This puzzle comes from a Chinese puzzle book. This is the translation of the puzzle: There are 4 sticks 10 cm long and 4 sticks 5 cm long. How to form three squares of equal area with these sticks? Despite trying my best, I could not figure this out. Any help in this problem is appreciated. Tha...

geometry

3:28 AM

@oAlt yay :D

3:40 AM

@oAlt this is correct, the actual entering of the words has to be "variety" in some way

(also, I'm pretty sure this FTC will have less entries than the last, due to the time for construction)

agreed, making crosswords is hard

Q: Ten close-ups of popular video games

4:29 AM

1

Inspired by Zoom in zoom out. Hello, I put together a gallery of abstract art: Or this just displays what you would see if you were to wear binoculars in front of your X box! Find out what game does each of the ten close-ups belong to.

knowledge visual video-games

4:51 AM

@bobble 10ks for clarifying

10ks = thanks?

i'd imagine so

or alternatively, "ten Q"

Q: Find the interior angles of one polygon given a ratio with another

5:19 AM

0

This question was asked in an exam of mathematics for which I am preparing and I was unable to solve it. The ratio of number of sides of 2 regular polygons is 1:2. If each interior angle of 1st polygon is 120 then each interior angle of 2nd polygon is? I can only think of that angle would be la...

mathematics geometry

5:46 AM

@bobble yup heh

5:59 AM

I got a legal Pentikabe solution... except that one pentomino is doubled and one is left out. Drat.

6:35 AM

Post it and title it "Pentomino Nurikabe: Almost There". Jk

(Also, I'm assuming it's late night there? ~~Go to sleep :P~~ Unless I got my timezone impressions wrong)

Middle of the night is when the best puzzles are created.

Heh

Although don't betatest the puzzles then, that doesn't go as well

Q: Mensa Workout Quiz question - letter series

7:00 AM

0

I took the Mensa Workout Quiz and I wasn't able to do this letter series question: Which letter comes next in this series of letters? B A C B D C E D F ? The options given were: C, D, E and F Despite trying multiple ways, I wasn't able to solve this. Any help in this problem is appreciated. T...

pattern sequence letter-sequence

0

Q: After how many minutes will both hour hand and minute hand lie on one another

The following question was part of my mock test and I was unable to solve it. Assume that A the hour hand and minute hand of the clock move without jerking B The clock shows a time between 8 o'clock and 9 o' clock C The two hands of the clock are one above the another After how many minutes (ne...

mathematics time

matt

7:23 AM

@Mithical hm

Q: Lasers: An easy Puzzle (Level $9$)

1

Previous Level:- Lasers: Double-Sided Mirrors (Level $8$) Rules : There will be lasers that are shaped like an arrow. The arrows pointing in the respective direction shows where the laser goes and the colour shows the colour which it gives out. There will be boxes that are respectively coloured ...

visual physics sliding-blocks

8:16 AM

0

Q: Word list sequence puzzle

I found this list of words by a Scot Morris from an old Omni magazine and I can't find the solution. What is the logic of these words (one for each letter of the alphabet): schwa splat three grist chore flour sceau filch rinse games canoe reach moire beaux queue angst intro aster achoo exist awa...

word-sequence

Stiv

9:03 AM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Late to the party but to add to the discussion - this was frustrating. I approved 1 which clearly contained an error, rejected 2 but skipped the rest. To my mind it is not a useful edit to add a missing comma, and it is WRONG to change a user's UK English to US English or vice versa. This is an English language site - we do not differentiate between the two and nobody should have their choice 'corrected'... (Bugbear, sorry...)

Official SE stance is that tags are US, but body and text are user-preference.

10:21 AM

2

Q: Gladys's Gapped Cryptic

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #43: Variety Crossword Grids This is part 10 of the puzzle series. Part 1 is here. Dear Puzzling, They say there's no place like home, but for people who love nothing more than being on the move and visiting new exciting places, what really counts as home...

cryptic-crosswords

10:45 AM

ooh

10:58 AM

@jafe was it coincidental that your crossword fulfilled the requirements of the FTC? Or did you make it knowing that bobble's FTC idea might come up next

i had a grid for that puzzle since august but it wasn't very good so i rewrote it into a circular grid to fit the FTC theme

11:18 AM

fitting these words in is hard

also, re: extraction: i see someone's discovered ucaoimhu's cryptics

oh wait, order of appearance. that should help

hehe yep

@jafe :0

11:37 AM

wow things get more approachable when you actually read the rules, who would've thought

4

Q: What is the least possible value of number of unattempted questions here

1

The following question is part of my mock test and I am unable to solve it . A student is asking a MCQ paper with 65 questions with marking scheme 1 mark for each correct answer , -1/4 for each wrong answer and -1/8 for each unattempted question. If a student gets 37 marks then what is the leas...

mathematics optimization

2

Q: Foseruzu (Four Cells): An Introduction

This is a Foseruzu (Four Cells) puzzle, an area-dividing puzzle. Rules of Foseruzu: The grid is to be divided along the grid lines into areas containing exactly four cells. A number in a cell indicates how many of its four sides are segments of area boundaries. Note that this also includes the...

logical-deduction grid-deduction

0

Q: Which of the following jumbled word is not a animal

This question was asked in mock test of an exam for which I am preparing. Which of the following jumbled word is not a animal? LATHPEEN TICRECK I have done other 2 options (which were there but I didn't wrote them here as I solved them) but I have no idea about these 2 options. Can you please h...

word-property

@Sphinx does this really count as a puzzle?

i'd say pretty clearly no

same, but I'm having trouble formulating why

12:34 PM

at first when "FTC" was being mentioned here I always got confused as to what it meant. It was really close to "VTC", and so I thought the end was "to close" too, and I got stuck figuring out what the 'F' part meant. (I also realized just now that the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus shares the same initial letters too ahahah)

Flag To Close

also hello, puzzling platypus

-hello

I keep entering, but I leave because I have nothing to say

same, sometimes

which is weird for me

12:36 PM

well then you're not alone hahah

@ThePuzzlingPlatypus nah that's normal

I do that all the time

@Ankoganit IRL, I cannot shut up

also I'm at work monday through friday

Platypodes don't usually have much to say in my experience.

@Ankoganit how could i have missed such a word, beginning with F, relating to moderation :'(

(that's not the actual full form just to be clear)

12:37 PM

I tried to join the contact game on Thursday, but i was tired before anyone actually wanted to play

I also really miss playing codenames

same

@Ankoganit yup that was clear

do we have enough people for a quick contact game?

It's ok if not

I'm doing stuff on another tab, so can't defend

up for attacking, though

that's fine, I could

just remembered the word i was going to use from Thursday

12:47 PM

heh

@oAlt @jafe @Mithical up to attack in contact?

if there's one thing I remember about Mith, it's that they like writing nigh-indecipherable clues

sure. discord?

I was hoping for here, but if you give me the link, sure

oh I can't go into discord rn oops

Q: What is missing number in this block

0

The following question was asked in a mock test for which I am preparing and I was unable to solve it( match one of the answers) What is the missing number? A -19 B -5 C 9 D -9 8/2 =5 ( 1st row= sum in 2nd row/2) and doing it I got -1 as answer but it's not in option and I am unable to see any o...

mathematics missing-digits

12:52 PM

and I don't have the discord link

here's fine then

Contact

For playing the game Contact, where one person tries to "defend"...

@JohnDvorak ^ game happening

why not go to Discord?

discord.gg/N6zbt8GV45

anko's busy

thanks for the link though

i can't play rn sorry

no worries

12:58 PM

it's fine

@oAlt reminds me of AOC, which i always mentally expand as something along the lines of "axiom ocasio- code"

I'm assuming the real interpretation is "axiom of choice"?

that is one possible interpretation

there's also us politician alexandria ocasio-cortez, and the programming competition called advent of code

Oohh didn't know the last one

Ankoganit's Off Codenames

heh

1:14 PM

@ThePuzzlingPlatypus sorry still not interested D: however, I have another alibi, which is that I've got backlogs of requirements in various subjects D:

that's fine

Q: I Am Within, I Am Without. Sometimes Off, Sometimes On

0

To some readers, I bring happiness To some players, I bring sadness Most of you like me as long as I am good I hang out with Mark, in the rain with a coat I can be a point, two lines or a rectangle Sometimes a cross but never a triangle I mix in the background, with a body, with a sound I am wit...

riddle

Q: Sequence with sum of digits

3:25 PM

2

What is the sum of the digits of the numbers $x$ and $y$ in the sequence $335, 333, x, y, 318, 307, 294, ...$? Source: https://tinyurl.com/yycwr79w

number-sequence

Q: Four sequences with similar pattern of beginning

4:16 PM

0

Find the next terms in the sequences $7, 9, 13, 17, ?, 29,... \\ 6, 8, ?, 16, 24, 28,...$ $8, 11, 29, 51, 125, ?, 293,... \\ 9, 11, 30, 51, 126, ?, 294,...$ I apologize for the simultaneous quantity, but I believe that the pairs have a similar pattern of beginning, so that resolving one will solv...

'ello everyone

4:33 PM

your rep?

Someone else who's been doing a bunch of edits. These edits are mostly (all?) going through old IQ test questions, improving the titles a bit, adding a source link, and/or adding the progressive-matrix tag

Which are all helpful, but doing so many means there's a bunch of IQ test questions on the front page.

Those kinds of edits should be spread out over time if you're going to do so many.

matt

hm

I dunno. There's something to be said for getting them all out of the way. (On the other hand, if the user in question is going to move on from making tiny improvements to those questions to making tiny improvements to others, and just never stop because they want all those sweet +2s, that's not so good.)

matt

ah yes, those sweet +2s

5:07 PM

0

Q: Aliens attack apartments?

Difficulty level: fair to middling Pose level: too tempting to resist Attempting to fill in a bureaucratic blank, a friend happened to snap this serendipitous cameraphone picture . . . . . . of what?

visual real

5:40 PM

so i glitched repl.it and now my cursor is in like 20 places at once

feature?

i doubt that

(friendly reminder to not press ctrl+shift+uparrow when in repl.it)

Q: Lasers: Colour-Converters (Level $10$)

5:58 PM

-1

Previous Level:- Lasers: An Easy Puzzle (Level $9$) Rules : Welcome to the $10$th level of my puzzle series, and now we have colour converters ! There will be lasers that are shaped like an arrow. The arrows pointing in the respective direction shows where the laser goes and the colour shows the...

visual sliding-blocks

@Sphinx seriously tempted to implement this in puzzlescript or something, just to make things easier for answerers if this series keeps going

@bobble, the Sphinx just gave us some more unnecessary mathjax

Should I backedit the MathJax out of their titles?

seems like a good thing to do
but it also shows up in the puzzle itself

honestly, i don't think it's worth bumping past questions

6:02 PM

I fixed the current one, and I can do Level 2 as well (since I bumped it recently to edit out the [physics] tag)

sounds good

i also left a comment and edited out all the other mathjax in the post

@Stiv I’m American, but I spell some stuff in the British way- most notably “theatre”

"theatre" and "travelling" are my main British-isms

i've seen some people use "theatre" to distinguish the place you go to see movies and the place you go to see a play

and agreed on "travelling"

"traveling" just seems very wrong, for some reason

6:09 PM

agreed

and I'd rather not talk about "colour"

Yes

Deus, another thing that MathJax in titles does (besides confuse screen readers) is keep the question out of HNQ. Though I doubt the Lasers puzzles would make it anyways.

@Deusovi Movie theater and play theatre

@bobble i think they might make HNQ, but i'd prefer for the mathjax not to be there on general principle

I think we know how British ppl depending on if they write “aluminum” or “aluminium” :P

6:14 PM

and also "colo(u)r"

@merrybot eh that’s not that baf

@PrinceNorthLæraðr It seems there's a missing word in here, or I'm just parsing it completely wrong

i think it's "how british" i.e. "level of british-ness"

wouldn't it have to be "how British people are" then?

right

hm

also [unrelated] why doesn't siri have nonbinary voice options?

6:25 PM

@bobble yes

Mb

@merrybot Uh, how does one have a “non-binary voice”?

Like how would you program that?

people will also interpret voices as gendered no matter what

Gender is how a person views themselves, but sex is the biological aspect, ie male sex have lower voices and female sex generally have higher voices

^ that too

Since non-binary is a gender as opposed to a sex, I’m not sure it’s plausible to have a “non-binary voice” aside from just labeling a Siri voice as “non-binary”

Which isn’t really saying much (no pun intended)

I'm 100% male except for voice, which is non-binary

?

Wut

As in, when I phone, people tend to think I'm female

6:33 PM

Ah

I mean there are the cases where ppl go “are you a male or female” but you know

How do you program that

I think the key pitch is the primary correlate?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr that is a good question

@JohnDvorak maybe. But then you run the risk of offending some ppl

Please write out "people". It is just 3 extra letters.

The trick is to not get offended by other people's mistakes.

6:41 PM

@bobble Does it bother you?

Yes.

@JohnDvorak But what is a “non-binary” voice? I’m not sure it’s just an in between frequency

What else than an in-between frequency?

Because non-binary people are people that are born of either sex (male or female) and therefore will have different ways of speaking

(there aren't only two sexes - intersex people also exist)

6:44 PM

True

humans are complicated!

But biologically speaking fairly rare, no?

so... s/non-binary voice/intersex voice/?

rare, yes

not as rare as you might think - a lot of people are intersex in some way and don't realize it for a long time

huh

6:46 PM

some people have chromosomes that don't "match" what is normally expected for their presumed sex

Maybe it’s just better to program all devices with a non-gendered pitch to begin with and don’t give it a pronoun

and it's not like people have a habit of checking their chromosomes

4

@Deusovi so like I could be born with male organs but have female chromosomes

sure!

Huh, never heard of that before

6:47 PM

it's still not super common

but like, it is a thing that happens

ok wow i'm actually learning about biology right now

I guess that complicates what sex is to begin with

oh absolutely

Is it your genetics or phenotype?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6:48 PM

People with female bodies, female identities, and Y chromosomes were integral to figuring out what part of the Y chromosome is the "male" trigger.

Huh

the definition of 'sex' you should use is whatever happens to be important for your current purposes (e.g. a scientific study may have a certain definition they'd use, depending on what exactly they were studying). and if it isn't important for your current purposes, why does it matter

Good point

(just referenced my genetics history book - it's called "Swyer syndrome")

ah yep, that sounds right - i'm not too familiar with genetics, just knew that it was a thing that happened

6:51 PM

> "Women" born with "Swyer syndrome" were anatomically and physiologically female throughout childhood, but did not achieve female sexual maturity in early adulthood. When their cells were examined, geneticists discovered that these "women" had XY chromosomes in all their cells. Every cell was chromosomally male - yet the person built from these cells was anatomically, physiologically, and psychologically female.

(quote from The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee)

i'd assume if you wanted a "nonbinary voice option" you'd want one that people wouldn't immediately assign a gender to. but that seems very hard to do - probably easier to just provide voices with a decent range of pitches (and maybe a pitch slider of some sort), and give some of them names that are considered gender-neutral. no reason to assign a gender to something that has no subjective experience in the first place

(also neat quote! thanks for sharing)

There is a single trigger of "maleness" called SRY. A working copy orchestrates male physical characteristics. Some people can be physically male but chromosomally female if SRY somehow sneaks onto the X chromosome during the production of sperm.

what does that mean

@bobble Singer?

oopsy

6:58 PM

@merrybot Basically, sex is determined by your chromose paring, XX for female, XY for male. I think Bobble is saying that if the XX pairing could have the "male" portion of the genetic code labelled "SRY" onto the XX pairing

Did I read that correct?

That was really confusingly worded

SRY is a gene, yes. During meiosis chromosomes mix together and exchange genes. SRY isn't supposed to be able to be exchanged with the X chromosome, but it happens sometimes anyhow.

(sorry for confusion, I'm excited to info-dump this)

Okay let me translate that for our poor matt

infodumps are good sometimes

SRY is on the Y chromosome, to be clear

But is not the Y chromose itself

7:01 PM

nope

@merrybot Are you taking biology right now?

yep

AP or regular?

honors

What's SRY do?

7:02 PM

A lot

@JohnDvorak It's the "male" trigger in the Y chromosome, I think is what bobble said

It codes for a hormone which has receptors all over the body

ah...

oh, interesting!

If everything works as intended, then each cell that needs it will get a "maleness" signal and do "male" things

7:02 PM

and the thing it swaps with in the X chromosome?

I'm not sure. It could probably swap with any number of sections of the Y chromosome.

I forgot all my cell reproduction stuff

ah. It isn't supposed to swap after all...

Being transgender, then, might mean that you have SRY but your brain lacks the proper receptor, never gets the "maleness" signal, and carries on being female. Or the other way around - your brain is very sure it got the SRY signal, even though it didn't. Or perhaps something else. The book says the science isn't clear on that point, but it is a few years old.

how many years old?

7:05 PM

2016

I thought the hormone was just testosterone?

@bobble 2016 years old? :p

Nope. Both males and females both have testerone and estrogen

During puberty, males get an increase in testosterone levels, while females get an increase in estrogen level

there are many different hormones involved - testosterone and estrogen balance are one component of some things we associate with gender, but not the only component by any means

ah, thanks

7:07 PM

@bobble What's the percentage on this?

that seems very difficult to calculate

on what?

Oh, I guess people diagnosed with the SRY thing

What I covered there was a theory in the book as to how transgender people can exist even though there is a single, binary sex-determining gene.

Right, I was just curious if there was a statistic

Biology!

7:11 PM

It does note that we actually know of a "transgender" gene in mice - if you alter it in a specific way, you get a chromosomally and anatomically female mouse that acts out male roles.

Very cool stuff

@bobble thats pretty darn cool

whoa that's interesting

oops rats

same thing

So, being transgender could be a biologically traced trait akin to other sorts of things like Idk

7:13 PM

can you tell that I like nerding out over science?

I'm not sure what's a good example

You get what I'm saying though

@bobble yes and it's awesome <3

it's cool!

Q: Chain Puzzle: Tabletop Games #08 - Targui, or not Targui

4

This is the eighth Chain Puzzle in the Tabletop Games series, in which all puzzles are themed around board games, card games, tile games, and the like. The answer to this puzzle is a thematic word or phrase. The solver whose answer is awarded the green checkmark has first refusal on the opportuni...

logical-deduction word grid-deduction board-games reverse-puzzling

It might raise some ethical questions though. For example, if being transgender is traced to a single genome, would people suddenly treat it as it's some kind of defect? What if you identify as transgender, yet you lack the gene component?

(Not saying it's the case, but hypothetically)

7:15 PM

good points

Bobble: Cool science advancements! North: Cool philosophical topics!

being transgender is a statement about how your gender relates to the gender you were assigned at birth, not anything about what physical genes you have

even if it's the case that one genome causes that mismatch very often, that doesn't mean that people without that genome can't be transgender

@PrinceNorthLæraðr matt/merrybot: random trek and linguistics stuff that no one really cares about but i like it anyway!

and it's probably more complicated than we can hope to understand anyhow

that too, gender is very complicated and involves not only your brain and body but how it interacts with society

and sociology is... complicated

7:19 PM

yes, very
my mom had to take it as a prereq for nursing school
(yes, mom is a nurse)

> To enable more profound aspects of gender determination and gender identity, SRY must act on dozens of targets - turning them on and off, activating some genes and repressing others, like a relay race that moves a baton from hand to hand. These genes, in turn, integrate inputs from the self and the environment - from hormones, behaviors, exposures, social performance, cultural role-playing, and memory - to engender gender.

same book

Or, short version: it's complicated.

very short version: ???

More questions of ethics

7:32 PM

hey jafe!

found an old puzzle which uses MathJax for the entire title and misuses the connections-puzzle tag

whyyyyyy

yeah, really not worth editing to bump

@IanMacDonald Yes — so I can write the words without having less than 15 characters. (It is also my favourite choice of font.) — Mr Pie Jul 10 '18 at 14:05

I'm not going to bump, but that's a bad reason to use MathJax

msh210

@oAlt I keep seeing Federal Trade Commission

7:42 PM

PSA: Mathjax is for math

@msh210 Hehe

Any thoughts on the C4

it look hard

partner's final=R?

or _S

(partner's)

much more likely to be R

7:44 PM

i see

S wouldn't work grammatically nearly as well

yet another example of deus's superior puzzle-solving abilities

Eh, that's more of a CC knowledge

Good thing about short C4: there is less wiggle room for finding out the wordplay. Bad thing about short C4: it's really hard to figure out the wordplay

Can "delay" be used as an indicator of a sort?

as someone mentioned before, it could potentially be "lift up" as in "de-lay" -- that seems sneaky but possible

It's 'borg!!!!

7:51 PM

I see we had some cool conversations while I was gone :D

hey mick!!

we I nerded out about genetics

To be fair, the biology of sex and gender is super cool

how is poofy

Poofy is still my office buddy :)

7:53 PM

do you have C4 ideas?

has poofy attacked you at all?

@Deusovi So definition of "lift up"

Like raise?

or a reversal indicator

hmm

Ahhh

I don't know. Seems unlikely though, because at least with my experience with Gareth, he isn't "sneaky" in the sense of having his words questionably used (most of the time)

Are his C4s hard? Yes. Are they sneaky? Sometimes. But de-lay seems like something Gareth wouldn't do

7:56 PM

De-lay does seem unlikely

Especially because he's kind of a stickler for words. I'm sure Gareth would've used a much better word if he wanted a reversal

@Deusovi Does an end extraction have to come directly from the clue like an anagram?

if you mean like "last letter of..." then yes

@Deusovi That's what I meant. Though, are you suggesting where there are cases where that's not the case? (Because you said "if you mean like", so situations where it's "unlike" that)?

not that i can think of off the top of my head

was just clarifying what you meant

Ah okay

I just misread what you wrote

8:01 PM

(well, something like "second half of" could plausibly be a synonym, but a single letter would be considered unfair)

Can partner be an indicator? Like partner's final be "two ends of delAY or both ends like DelaY? Hm actually that probably won't work dramatically would it?

also i just thought of a 'borg pun: "resistance is puzzle"
(not the best, i know)

i don't see a way it could - wouldn't rule it out completely but no cryptic meaning is immediately coming to mind

Yeah

Maybe it's a ddef

Delay partner could be like a synonym of "procrastinate" or something

@PrinceNorthLæraðr gareth has used "effin' ..." to mean "F in ..." before so i wouldn't rule out de-lay :)

8:09 PM

@jafe I think "effin" is fair :P

Anyhow I just don't think de-lay makes sense because of "partner's"

@jafe what c4 exactly?

Nov 24 '19 at 18:23, by Gareth McCaughan

CCCC: Effin' woman who broke up the Beatles with a string of dirty tricks is unimportant (2, 2, 11)

i see

If there was a hyphen, I'd say "flag-waver" but idk

@jafe that was back when mith was just "user58"

8:12 PM

...what

?

Oh, that was when Mithical used to be known as "Mithrandir"

They changed their name though which would explain the whole "user58"

i see

(ahh i say that too often lol)

3 mins ago, by merrybot

i see

<lunch>

If REPRIEVER can mean defeat....

defeat: "prevent (an aim) from being achieved / reject or block (a motion or proposal)"

OBSTRUCT can mean both

yesterday, by Gareth McCaughan

(note: there is one slightly but subtly unsatisfactory thing about this clue, which I will own up to when it's solved; I don't think this will be any impediment to solving it, and I also doubt that this note will make solving it any easier.)

Final defeat---> T?

@GarethMcCaughan Clue, perhaps?

8:41 PM

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. Are you asking whether the answer is OBSTRUCT, or whether my note was more of a hint than I think it was, or whether I'm willing to provide hints now, or what? Sorry to be dim.

@GarethMcCaughan Oh, sorry, I should have been clear. Are you willing to give a 24-hour hint right now?

I know the answer can't be obstruct, that has only 8 letters :P

I can give a hint, sure. I'm not sure I can give much in the way of hints about how the clue works without giving too much away -- it's only four words, after all -- but I can provide letters.

Cool :)

CCCC hint: The first letter is C.