The Sphinx's Lair

Q: Simply put, my son's baseball team

2:13 AM

1

...can't figure out what's going on with their home run statistics. In 2018, the team hit more dingers per game when at home than when away; in 2019, their totals waned dramatically but followed that same pattern. Yet combine the two years, to my surprise, and I saw the pattern mar genuinely -...

riddle word

mathematics logical-deduction

4:57 AM

0

Q: Guess the numbers

One day Bob and Alice walk around they were having the following conversation: Bob: Alice go ahead and pick any random number. Alice: Okay, I have one. Bob: Alice multiply the random number by X and sum every single digit(s) until it's Y digit(s) left. Alice: Done. Bob: ...

6:18 AM

2

Q: Let’s take a selfie!

My suffix is innate My prefix is on the coast I capture your expressions And remain the default for most

riddle word wordplay rhyme poetry

6:58 AM

0

Q: When in Tennessee

(1) I am hardened yet hardly am I given a thought; Unmoved, though moving, to give what is sought; But throng be too eager, My gift, it is meager; I'll stop my inertia and render you caught. (2) I'm ripped and I'm lasered - both are quite super; You'll find that you'll need ...

riddle word poetry limerick

8:59 AM

1

Q: Perhaps a TV airing

Across 1. 1970s blockbuster's 1 down villain (4) 3. Original 1 down's candy store emptied between the 1st of November and the 3rd of January (7) 6. Superior to 1 down, among others, is lost on the battlefield (3, abbr.) 7. 1 down actor from space making comeback with energy (5) ...

cryptic-crosswords

msh210

11:24 AM

CCCC hints: 1. "A safety worker" is a unit. 2. "no gin cocktail" does not clue an anagram of "no gin".

11:37 AM

I have (and have had for a little while) a specific conjecture about the no gin cocktail, but haven't been able to find the right other words to make it work.

Q: A filling Vowelburger™ Riddle

1:22 PM

4

I ordered 5 Vowelburgers™ with buns, cheese and meat - help me identify each one from the menu! $$ % custom template - do not reuse \def\S#1#2{\Space{#1}{20px}{#2px}}\def\P#1{\V{#1em}}\def\V#1{\S{#1}{9}} \def\T{\textbf{Cheese}}\def\NT{\textbf{Vowelburger}^{\;\!™}\ }\displaystyle \smash{\lower{2...

word

2:19 PM

aha, I was wondering why I was getting upvotes

:P

Q: My whole completes the reverse

2:43 PM

0

Clip my left to complete Clip my right to reverse Clip both sides to make My whole completes the reverse

riddle word poetry

2:54 PM

@Avi You're famous!

@mbingo congrats on solving the meta puzzle. I'm still amazed how deus made this, and even more shocked how he had the time :P

3:18 PM

@Tom Fix your sacrilege, it's a Vowelburger, not a cheeseburger!!!

except for the weird inconsistency that Cheeseburgers actually have a beef patty as the meat

but, hamburgers have a beef patty as the meat also

who came up with this :(

In any case, the Vowels are the meat for Vowelburgers™

time to fix this by making my own Vowelburger™ riddle

3:36 PM

Pretty sure forms like "beefburger" and "cheeseburger" are backformations from "hamburger" which originally meant "one of those things from Hamburg".

Vowelburger -> one of those things from Vowelburgh

how to name a vowelburger riddle :(

maybe just choose one of the words and attach it, I guess

looking for somebody who can verify my sudoku solutions

i.e., that they've been transcribed correctly

I guess that person is myself

that was an easy search

Q: I Spy a Vowelburger Riddle™

0

You can find the first Vowelburger™ Riddle here I ordered 5 Vowelburgers™ with buns, lettuce, and meat - help me identify each one from the description on the menu! $$ % custom template - do not reuse \def\S#1#2{\Space{#1}{20px}{#2px}}\def\P#1{\V{#1em}}\def\V#1{\S{#1}{9}} \def\T{\textbf{Meat}}\d...

word wordplay

runs around with flaming burger

I worry that these are too easy. By the time they appear here they're already solved...

3:52 PM

Maybe we need to use cryptic clues instead :)

It's better to have non-forcing definitions, though

for example instead of mole -> spy

mole -> blemish works better

and mile -> far works better than mile -> race

it's just that I didn't see any way to describe "male" other than masculine

and clearly, that gives away the game

@GarethMcCaughan oh boy, i hope this isn't another riley riddle fad

I'm like okay with them now, but it was just annoying when the entire active psge was just filled qith them

lack lick luck lock :(

but no leck/lyck I'm aware of

@Avi Ooh this is where scrabble would come in handy

ma, me, mi, mo, mu, my, mm

ma -> Mother returns at morning time (2)

having them as ccs would i think make them both more interesting and difficult

the vowelburgers are pretty creative

3:58 PM

@GarethMcCaughan A Cryptic Vowelburger™ Riddle, please

plus having them as ccs gives them a pretty straightfoward way of deducing, lowering the intuition jump

was thinking back beck bick buck bock

but not many of those exist

idk about bock or bick

When I say "lowering the intuition jump" I should specify and say more of limiting the intution jump? Like everything is within the clue itself rather than some connection

have you considered consonant burgers?

weights | computes expensively | maybe a bad choice for computing expensively | judge | drawback

no those sound gross

@onsonant burgers, making a pun on consonant

except more like dissonant burgers

4:02 PM

a proper consonant burger would need to have 20 or 21 versions, which seems implausible

I don't think there are any word-patterns where a gap can be filled with literally any consonant

well, it's not that bad

you could just say we have 1 word-pattern

ae, be, cee? (see?), dee, ee, fee, gee, he, (eye, ie) jee, key, lee, me, (k)nee, oee, pee, qi (chi), ree, sea(see), tee, ue(yeah idk), vee, whee, xi, ye, zee

where a consonant may be inserted anywhere in the word

my concern is x y z q w

"ee" is the only thing I can plausibly think of

and thats only bc most of the alphabet are "ee" sounds

aiyo

4:05 PM

like even two of our vowels have "ee" sounds, i.e. "a" (a-ee), and "i" "ah-ee"

ehh

actually idk if "I" counts

i'd have to double check with my friend

bill bell bull boll ball

@GarethMcCaughan perhaps every vowel sound in the alphabet

Oh that's what you meant nvm

The annoying thing about english is that consonants can take multiple sounds

"c" is "k" or "s"

@GarethMcCaughan :( I'm defeated

it's the Judge honestly

I can't think of anything else but Judge Judy for some reason

and I've never even watched that

I think fo Game and Watch's side special from SSB, but that's just me

I'll solve it....

The judge is a little unfair, maybe.

4:12 PM

fand fend find fond fund

@Avi For vowelburgers, mass, mess, miss, moss, muss?

fand?

@North god knows

I certainly don't

minas (ancient silver weight; I thought there was a coin of that name but it seems not) | mines (e.g., bitcoin) | (Mac) minis | Minos | minus

aha

@GarethMcCaughan hmm

fand is a word, as stupid as it is

4:13 PM

I was trying to make one up that might not get solved in under a minute, though given the net brainpower of the PSE community I'm not at all sure that mine is good enough.

that's why we need actual cryptic clues

@GarethMcCaughan I'm negative brainpower, so it neutralizes itself

with extra challenge given by the fact that all of the words have N-1 letters in common

eyyy

MASS, MESS, MISS, MOSS, MUSS are all words

now we can't use it ... :(

the tool you want for this sort of thing is Qat

4:15 PM

qat?

Gathering ceremony - MASS (ddef)

quinapalus.com/cgi-bin/qat

@GarethMcCaughan like the brush tree?

enter e.g. AaB;AeB;AiB;AoB;AuB to get a list of vowelburgers

what the hell is this site holy

4:16 PM

enter e.g. AxBC;ABqC and (separately) ABxC;AqBC to verify that there are no consonantburgers

this is ... revolutionary

Ms. Emergency (4) - M + ESS

note: using it for C4 clues is considered bad form until they've been unsolved for a good while

?

Ms. Failure (4) - MISS (ddef)

@GarethMcCaughan why would you want to verify no consonantburgers

4:18 PM

because we were talking about whether there are any

@Avi Nice one

@North It only works well with the previous one

yea I saw that too

You could do MUSS with something to do with Ms. America

Green camouflage breaks some revolution (4) - _S SOM_< [green]

Q: Number sequence 15, 18, 30, 39

0

Given the number sequence 15, 18, 30, 39, 54, 69, 78, 90, 93 can you predict the next two values (or more...?) Note that This number sequence does not appear in the online encyclopaedia of integer sequences If necessary hints will be added in due course.

number-sequence

4:25 PM

America invades Ms. Disorder (4) - M(US)S

hence, iran

Mississippi disorder surrounds America (4)

idk

Disorder in Mississippi spreads all over America (4)

M(US)S

Better

camouf(lage b)roken - I see a BAGEL*!!!

what?

4:29 PM

"camouflage broken" contains (LAGEB), which is an anagram of BAGEL

BA, BE, BI, BO, BY (no BU, unfortunately)

ba be bi bo bu

un burro sabe mas que tu

wut?

that's the latest Spanish insult in my little brother's class

french?

4:34 PM

lol

oh XD

"Ba be bi bo bu A donkey knows more than you"

that's pretty good

I thought it was like a burriot

burriot

interesting

burrito

i don't thnk bu is a word

4:36 PM

Half a burrito breaks up protest gone wild (4)

think*

THANK THENK THINK THONK THUNK

thenk?

THANK THENK

THONK is like idk

"thenks - Urban Dictionarywww.urbandictionary.com › define › term=thenks
Jun 20, 2016 - Saying "thank you" in a more hip, and all around superior way."

THUNK is a computer science thing

THONK sounds like an onomatopoeia which is 100% valid

4:37 PM

TANK TUNK TONK TENK TINK?

TANKER TINKER

TINK is a word, I believe

Idk about TENK

tenki no ko

The only word I know in Japanese is Hikari

Along with

Baka

and

I know "no"

thank you

4:39 PM

it means "of"

hikari are!

uh

what does that mean

"Kiss tree or get out!", energetically? (6) - HICK(-or, +E)Y

slightly non-standard

oh wait, North is a tree

hides

Waitin' or thinkin' with tree (5) - _N OR TH_

Poorly constructed storage hides dangerous animals (5) - GATORSe*

not sure if legal

@GarethMcCaughan looking for legality test

I don't think you can do an anagram and then ask for substring-finding.

4:57 PM

yeah, indirect anagram or something

rip

for the most recent riddle

I believe the first step is rot13

but beyond that I'm not sure

possibly synonyms, after that

very likely has something to do with the introduction as well

"My admittedly sinner of a friend, who coincidentally has a court hearing tomorrow, jaywalked in the middle of a busy street"

but I lost interest, already

Q: Can you solve this grid deduction problem?

2

Each team (A,B,C,D,E,F) plays each other once (on a neutral ground). Maximum number of goals scorable is 4. A team gets $3$ points for a win, $1$ point for a draw and $0$ points for a loss. At the end of the season, the scores are added, and the table is sorted by points, then goal difference, g...

grid-deduction

1

Q: Jaywalking in the middle of the street

My admittedly sinner of a friend, who coincidentally has a court hearing tomorrow, jaywalked in the middle of a busy street to hand me the following message: I Was The One Who Did [ ? ] Up The [ ? ] [ ? ] To [ ? ] That [ ? ] PBA CHER ZNLBE CEBGRPG PNE YNPX FHOFRPG What did my fri...

riddle

Q: Equal distribution of coins to pirates

5:45 PM

3

Ten pirates are sitting around a table. Each of them has an even number of coins. At order of the captain, each pirate passes half of his coins to the neighbor to the right. After that round, each pirate with an odd number of coins gets 1 coin from the captain. Then this procedure is repeated aga...

mathematics lateral-thinking game

6:23 PM

@Avi ?

7:02 PM

@North That's probably illegal BTW

since "WITH" is a containment indicator, not hidden

1

Q: Cheer up with this riddle

My prefix weighs little, but never has mass; My suffix might, for a whole language, pass; But to me append, One more suffix at end; And scramble my innards so I'm longer at last What am I?

riddle poetry limerick

riddle knowledge poetry limerick

7:46 PM

1

Q: My initials are MC

My initials are M.C. and know me please do; I'm related in essence to many a crew; My syllables count four, Same for vowels I'm sure; Now please decide which are false and are true: Indeed, I'm known to run... 1) alongside a shore. 2) alongside a leader. 3) on a liquid. ...

8:12 PM

@North Agreed! It was an awesome meta.

@North and @mbingo: Thank you! Glad you liked it!

uhhhh

I spent a long time just kind of staring. I hate to admit it, but I got the solution first thanks to Nutrimatic, and then tried to deduce the mechanism from that, but couldn't. So I ended up having to solve it properly in the end.

so like, I didn't necessarily like all the riddles

but I did really like the meta one

riddles?

oh

8:16 PM

I joined late and only really saw roughly the last three of the sixteen puzzles.

I do intend to go back and look at them, though (I'm unspoiled on the mechanisms, though obviously I've seen the answers).

@Deusovi Any in particular you're proud of?

A Souvenir, Battleships, and Discolored Squares are my favorites, I think?

(@Avi Which ones didn't you like? I'm happy to listen to any criticism or suggestions. These puzzles definitely aren't perfect.)

I had an instinctive aversion to "On The Subject of Regular Crazy Talk", I believe

Any particular reason? I'm a huge fan of linguistics puzzles, and I thought that one was pretty approachable

Cool—I did see A Souvenir. I liked the supervocalic business.

Some of the clues were tough, but totally understandably so.

Uh, I guess it was lacking a bit of the "aha!"

probably just a personal thing though

8:22 PM

I liked the Crazy Talk one.

Did you solve it? I think there were a few aha moments

I did, eventually

I think the best aha was the leap to the final answer

but other than that it just seemed a bit lacking

I don't really like linguistics puzzles in general, though, so take it with a grain of salt

I think the Odd One Out puzzle was a bit frustrating too

lacking? hm, how so?

just, unexciting, I guess

maybe you needed more explosions (next meta)

again, did you solve it? I think there were a few pretty big aha moments in how the language worked

I don't mean to invalidate your opinion or anything - it's totally fine to not like it

(also, same question for Odd One Out - what was frustrating about it?)

8:29 PM

the fact that you could get most of the patterns

but not make that final step to the answer :(

Like, it's fine

just frustrating to be stuck, I guess

That happens in a lot of puzzles - being "stuck on extraction" is a pretty common thing in puzzle hunts

argh

I must revenge myself by making a grid-deduction the likes of which the world has never seen

but yes there is an aha to be made that's more than just the categories

and if you don't get the aha you won't solve the puzzle - that's how most puzzles work?

... yes

that doesn't mean I have to like it, though

true!

It's totally fine to not like a puzzle for whatever reason, including 'no reason at all' or 'just not my thing'

8:32 PM

yup

Hence, I must make a puzzle

consisting of puzzles into puzzles over puzzles into puzzles

possibly into more puzzles if I can manage it

ooooooh

I can add a word search

I'm just asking because I don't want my puzzles to be unfair or uninteresting, and I want them to be as enjoyable as possible. Don't mean to 'interrogate' you or anything, just like hearing feedback so I can take note of it for future puzzles

no problem - they weren't unfair or uninteresting, except for the odd one out one

which seemed a little insufficiently clued, but otherwise fixed with hints

I did like the rot13(pelcgvp-eryngrq frpgvba), but it just seemed a little layered compared to everything else

People hadn't noticed that each category was used twice - that's one of the intended aha moments.

@Avi You dare to mock trees, make a cc of me, and not do it properly? Judgement shall fall on you in the form of a tree.

Yes, it was layered - I don't think that's necessarily a problem? I wanted a wide range of difficulty here, and I think layered puzzles are good

8:36 PM

hmm

I think it's better to have consistent difficulties

so I guess we agree to differ

if you would

@Deusovi how'd you have tim?

(I wanted them to be generally easier than my usual fare, too, but layered isn't necessarily hard. That step was gotten in testsolving much faster -- it seemed to me that people here just focused on the 'low-hanging fruit' of the categories without thinking about the next step.)

Right - they wanted to procedurally go through the steps

@North I made these puzzles in roughly 8 days? The panic of a deadline helped.

instead of trying to skip ahead?

8:39 PM

not 'trying to skip ahead', just looking for any bigger aha moments

because there is more to the puzzle than the categories

How do you look for "aha" with 8/10ths of the categories?

@Deusovi wow!

@Avi You can see that each category is used twice in the odd ones out?

except 1 of them, apparently

It's not hard to notice with that many categories solved.

or at least, it wasn't for the testsolvers and for other groups who have solved these

8:43 PM

Mayyybe

It could've been that I saw the answer at a time when not too many of the categories had been solved

and thus concluded it was harder to notice than it actually was?

~ this edit: puzzling.stackexchange.com/revisions/93399/6

Q: Playing Collatz with graphs

0

a) Given a set of positive integers, its common divisor graph (CD-graph) is the graph whose vertices are the integers, two of which are joined by an edge if (and only if) they have a common divisor greater than 1. Find a set of four positive integers whose CD-graph is the graph on the left below,...

mathematics number-theory graph-theory

at that point it felt eminently unclear

yes, because people were assuming that the answer was a word in the list, which wouldn't use much of the information in the puzzle

I don't believe that people believed that was the case

Perhaps a few, but not many

after all, what would you do with so many words besides letter selection?

Within the same day as the last category was found, the entire rest of the riddle was deduced

but it took 3 days to figure out the Carbon copy category

8:58 PM

The only answer seemed to say that it was, and I saw no 'pushback' on that.

The only answer was the only answer because people couldn't find the last category

not because it was undisputed

You don't need all the categories to solve the puzzle.

I am of a opposite opinion

Can you explain why? You can assemble the chain perfectly with all but two odd ones out, at least.

considering that nobody solved the puzzle prior to the categories being found

9:01 PM

Nobody here did. But it's perfectly possible to do so.

fair

And if you're missing three, there are only two possible chains.

that's why it was frustrating, I guess

Nobody did assemble the chains until the last category was found, but I think it was fair.

What's going on?

Sorry to interrupt

@Deusovi I liked the Flower one

The Battleship one was really cool too

But I like the Flower one the best because it was the only one I attempted XD

9:05 PM

We are debating the merits of the Odd One Out puzzle

I believe the puzzle was fair

but insufficiently clued to be perfect

hence, frustrating

obviously there's a fine line there for difficulty, so it's very hard to fine-tune based on the different ways people might solve the puzzle

hmm

whereas puzzles like the linguistics one were both fair and sufficiently clued

it's just that I happen to have a personal aversion to linguistics puzzles

@Avi I think it's sufficiently clued in its own way. It makes an intuitive leap by basically encouraging users to not keep on following a rote procedure and look at the puzzle as a whole

Ok, when I make a puzzle that encourages you not to look at a rote procedure, don't complain

1, 2, 3

1, 2, 4

1, 2, 5

1, 2, (riemann zeta function)

what's the next one in the series?

9:30 PM

Why, it's a 1, of course

I'll have you break free from the rote procedure of "solving puzzles" and give an inane, meaningless answer instead, thank you very much.

9:44 PM

I think "Odd One Out" was sufficiently clued.

(I got stuck at the point Avi's complaining about, but the right thing to do was also perfectly reasonable and I feel stupid having now seen what a simple thing it was.)

Avi, your "next one in the series" question is 100% XKCD 169 and you should feel bad.

Also, with "Odd One Out" it was pretty easy to work out what the answer was going to be before figuring out exactly why, and indeed I did.

(So for a puzzle hunt it would have been extra-not-unreasonable, and in its context here there was that extra hint towards working out what was going on.)

Q: An Inappropriate Vowelburger™ Riddle

0

You can find the first Vowelburger™ Riddle here I ordered 5 plain Vowelburgers™ with buns and meat - help me identify each one from the description on the menu! $$ % custom template - do not reuse \def\S#1#2{\Space{#1}{20px}{#2px}}\def\P#1{\V{#1em}}\def\V#1{\S{#1}{9}} \def\T{\textbf{Meat}}\def\N...

word wordplay

once again the vowelburger (1) takes about 20 seconds having seen it and therefore (2) is already done by the time Sphinx tells us about it.

9:58 PM

@Avi It's not "encouraging you to not look at a rote procedure". It's encouraging you to do more than solve the individual clues -- which will be necessary, of course, because you know you have to find a single answer at the end. It seems to me that you're complaining that a puzzle has more to it than "do the obvious thing", which is... kinda the point of a puzzle?

(And yes, as Gareth said, your question is definitely XKCD 169. xkcd.com/169 )

The answer to my puzzle is not "inane [and] meaningless", and I would appreciate if you wouldn't insult it like that.

A: On The Subject Of A Souvenir

@Deusovi, I worked with @mbingo on the meta and really enjoyed piecing together all the steps (REGISTERED OWNER was the break-in for me, though mbingo had the right idea with the assignment). I particularly liked how every part of the puzzle, down to the extraction method, was thematic to that specific module. I'd rate this meta/puzzle series is top 5 on PSE overall

I personally didn't solve any of the sub-puzzles, but I thought Odd One Out was really nice, if not a bit unwieldy

and I had made some partial progress on Rubik's Cube before mbingo swooped in :)

I cant really choose a favorite of the bunch though, they were all really creative, mechanically speaking, and the presentation/clueing was high quality

But I did take particular interest to Blind Alleys, SET, and Regular Crazy Talk (don't think we've ever had a linguistics puzzle on PSE before)

And @Avi, I'd recommend at least doing a bit of research about what you're critiquing before saying anything

Hunt style puzzles are definitely obtuse and require some lateral thinking at times, but that's what makes these kinds of puzzles fun in the first place

I also disagree with the "all categories must be found" complaint about Odd One Out. It's entirely possible for someone to see the chain formed by the phrase categorizations before finding all the categories, making it solvable by deduction

See, e.g., this solution for A Souvenir to an example of this kind of solving technique:

12

(I don't have enough reputation to comment on Alconja's answer, so I'm posting the solution as its own answer, even though they did most of the work. I'm still learning the etiquette around here—sorry if this is improper!) 6 is 11 is Next: This yields ... which yields the solution:

As long as you know how the extraction works, you can deduce the answer without having to do the entire puzzle

10:28 PM

Pretty sure Avi wasn't saying that Deusovi's puzzle was inane or meaningless, he was saying that about his own "next one in the series" puzzle.

Idk, they have a tendency to be pretty cryptic with their remarks

Fitting, cause they make a lot of cryptic clues hehe

@HTM Sorry about that! :D

Guess I should check out Odd One Out, huh.

@mbingo I even got an actual cube and stuck on pieces of tape with the letters!

Now I don't know what to do with it

Haha, I was tempted, but I did it the hard way in a sheet D:

Wow, that's a whole new level of sadism right there

You must be a literal genius to be able to do it though

10:37 PM

I had some experience with similar stuff from MUMS 2019. Doing rotations in a sheet is really just more tedious than it is difficult.

Q: This word describes something we all do many times a day, every day, until we no longer are able to

10:48 PM

0

This word's homonym is something else one does multiple times a day.

word enigmatic-puzzle

11:14 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Sure, but it seemed like the whole point was that his "series" puzzle was an analogue of mine.