The Sphinx's Lair

4:06 AM

@Deusovi Anything of that nature was merely due to their being styled to look like cryptic-crossword clues. There's nothing to be done to the clues except find what they clue.

oAlt

I-I just noticed I typed the same thing twice in my message hours ago (and one of them even had a typo). I'm blind.

msh210

@oAlt I'm not seeing it. Which message?

oAlt

"a quick search yields a character from A Take of Two Cities, Sydney Carton from the novel "A Tale of Two Cities"..." I'm giggling at myself

msh210

Oh. Right.

msh210

4:46 AM

Heheheh this interview with Cox and Rathvon: nytimes.com/2019/05/22/crosswords/…

Deusovi

5:09 AM

@msh210 Here's my current progress. I'm still very unsure about a lot of this.

(especially the upper left corner and the near-isolated words on the right)

oAlt

5:29 AM

oh... never knew there would be more than one thing going on in that crossword

(well assuming that that is what was intended)

Deusovi

Well, arguably, the noncrypticness is removing a gimmick instead of adding one. Obviously that means that in total there are 0 gimmicks to the puzzle.

really though, I'm still not fully convinced about all of this - some parts fit together decently well, but some parts I've had to stretch a lot

and a ton of the parts of speech have been broken here - so you definitely shouldn't take my answers as anything more than vaguely plausible guesses

(I also noticed that 8D worked as a cryptic clue by itself, if you take some liberty with "case _". that didn't seem to continue though)

jafe

6:09 AM

oAlt (yours truly) piercing GENDING (made-up word for nearly stationary) makes GOALTENDING, which is a word for perhaps rock or perhaps not

oAlt

6:21 AM

ah yes indeed, gending

Lad gending creating hymn, perhaps (4)

jafe

10:22 AM

SON+G (as in, son with "G ending")?

Sphinx

11:00 AM

1

Q: An insensible hexagon

The puzzle is (almost) self-contained in the grid above. You can "move" from a tile of the grid to another if they share at least a vertex. After the maze is complete six things will clue to the solution which is an English phrase composed of three words of lenght 3,7 and 10 letters.

oAlt

@jafe yeah haha

oAlt

2:36 PM

It's unlikely that I'll be able to stay up late again like yesterday so I'm going to give a 22-hr hint instead of a 24-hr hint

oAlt

2:54 PM

Oh, never mind. It's been actually more than 24 hours.

CCCC hint: The first letter is S.

bobble

Is it SEDIMENTARY? Yours truly -> I piercing SEDMENTARY (nearly stationary), and SEDIMENTARY is a kind of rock

oAlt

Almost correct. The parsing is slightly off.

bobble

Is it the right word, at least?

oAlt

yes it is :0

Sphinx

0

Q: The ferries over Mississippi

Here's an old challenge from an old book (I think it goes like this, if I remember well): There is a place on Mississippi river between Missouri and Kentucky where are two ferry boats: the vintage Old Town and the modern president. One time, exactly at the same time, the Old Town left the Missou...

calculation-puzzle

bobble

3:00 PM

I'm reading it where "is piercing" is an insertion indicator for "Yours truly -> I" into "nearly stationary -> SEDMENTARY" and definition is "rock, perhaps"

all words accounted for...

oAlt

the definition is correct. SEDMENTARY as a valid word does not exist, though...

bobble

oh i though it was

aggh

oh! "I'm" as "Yours truly" piecing "SEDENTARY"

@oAlt?

oAlt

There you go, for the sedentary part

bobble

I'm bad at spelling :)

oAlt

"yours truly" alone isn't enough to clue "i'm", though

bobble

3:05 PM

Is it "Yours truly is", then?

oAlt

Yep :D

bobble

I GOT A CCCC

fireworks popping

oh now I have to make one

oAlt

:DDD

Deusovi

3:23 PM

ah, it's always fun to see a first-time CCCC solver go from celebration to terror as they slowly realize the implications of what they've just done

Sphinx

0

Q: Modifying the puzzle: Cooperative hat-guessing, no mistakes, 3+ colors

Following Guess your hat color, but you don't have to and it's interpretation via Covering codes I tried to create a puzzle with more hat variativity, i.g. 3 types of hats. 4 hats are put on 4 logicians, each hat color is selected randomly: Red, Green or Blue. As usual, every logician doesn't se...

mathematics optimization puzzle-creation hat-guessing

oAlt

@Deusovi AHAHAH

bobble

CCCC: Cats band with Scotsmen, head after iron symbolically (7)

There's an indicator in there that I think I'm using okay, but I'm not entirely sure

Jeremy Dover

@bobble: Is it FELINES? band = LINE + (S)cotsman after FE = iron symbolically. Not certain on band=LINE

bobble

@JeremyDover, that's right :)

band can mean line, as in a band of color

Jeremy Dover

3:31 PM

Figured it was something like that, but it's generic enough that I wasn't positive.

Jeremy Dover

3:43 PM

CCCC: Lease tent cheaply from stingy creature (3,6)

oAlt

@JeremyDover Oh that was quick lol

Jeremy Dover

I've got a backlog of decent-ish things I've used in past practice puzzles. Doesn't usually take much to brush them up.

oAlt

mm

bobble

I had an alternative, likely-unfair cluing: Cat metal band (6), giving FE + LINE

I mention it because I really like the idea of a cat metal band

oAlt

hahah

Deusovi

3:46 PM

not a huge fan of "metal" there, but that surface is hilarious

bobble

That's why the final version uses "iron"

Sphinx

0

Q: Searching for the Covid vaccine

You have 1000 possible Covid vaccine candidates. You need to test them and find out if one works as quickly as possible. The test is to apply a small drop of a vaccine candidate to a sample, and wait to see if the Covid virus is compromised. The tests are very expensive and time-consuming, so...

logical-deduction probability

oAlt

@JeremyDover (SEA NETTLE)*

Jeremy Dover

@oAlt You got it!

oAlt

Quinapalus was good to me this time LOL

CCCC: "I'm on bail": suspect's expression? (8)

Deusovi

3:50 PM

BINOMIAL*

bobble

"suspect" is an anagram indicator?

Deusovi

as in "sketchy" or "uncertain"

bobble

ah

Deusovi

not my favorite but i've definitely seen it a fair bit

oAlt

@Deusovi correct :D I initially used "criminal" but it felt more forced than "suspect"

Deusovi

3:57 PM

CCCC: A couple in Spain adopted kit making marks on a sheet of paper (3-4)

oAlt

4:07 PM

o-only 7 letters..

Zimonze

4:28 PM

@d

I mean

@Deusovi DO(GEAR)S

Deusovi

yep!

Zimonze

now I must make a bad clue

Zimonze

4:41 PM

CCCC: Primary objective: "End state" (5)

(apologies for taking so long, I tried to go for a harder clue but ended up reverting to this one)

msh210

@Zimonze main _e

Zimonze

correct!

Jeremy Dover

Not a bad clue, at all...I couldn't mentally split "primary" from "objective". Props to @msh210

msh210

thanks

msh210

5:07 PM

CCCC: For tea, biblical giant eats beheaded ancient proponent of democracy (6)

Jeremy Dover

@msh210: Is it OOLONG? Biblical giant (OG) eats beheaded ... (-s)OLON?

msh210

5:51 PM

Yep! Nicely found.

I had it without "ancient" but was afraid that'd be too hard. Judging by how quickly it went this way, maybe I was wrong.

Jeremy Dover

Gonna go out on a bit of a limb here, but think I'm OK.

CCCC: So scary I'm thrashing! (11)

Deusovi

NIGHTMARISH*

not a huge fan of that - "so" isn't used in the wordplay

but it's a neat anagram

msh210

@Deusovi Arguably (not that I'm arguing it, myself) "so scary" is the anagram indicator. (Personally, I don't see how even "scary" is one.)

Deusovi

"scary" is on the questionable end for me, but I've seen worse at least

msh210

Scary — I'm thrashing!

Deusovi

6:10 PM

CCCC: No, not one - like, nine (6)

Sphinx

0

Q: Who am I? - Some riddle as a poem

Earth-born out of bloody love, unsure, though, if this is true. Above spans the old and rules the sky in first generation. Lots of children coming after, some from mother, no from other. Four sons were holding him together, fifth taking what had made he man. Who am I? (First try writing a littl...

riddle poetry

msh210

@Deusovi I've added a hint.

Deusovi

Hm. Well, there goes a bunch of my grid.

The other option I had thought of was cells with multiple letters. (Maybe that's why the grid is slightly nonsquare?) But that would give me even more degrees of freedom than I have now.

No idea why--

...oh, "eyes on it", of course.

Ah, and I think I finally see how to satisfy that ending V.

Jeremy Dover

That was, of course, it. I originally had it without the so, but the definition reads better with it, and felt it was at worst neutral. Ah well, sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.

Deusovi

6:33 PM

(progress is being made, finally!)

Deusovi

7:19 PM

well, I think I'm stuck and not likely to get the remainder of these clues

will post answer now

I had a lot of trouble with several of these clues - 4D, 11A, 12A, and 27D were obscure; 17D, 3D, 26A, and 28D were ambiguous. (And those are of the ones I have solved!)

msh210

7:35 PM

@Deusovi One thing I didn't think of -- but probably should've -- is that cryptic crosswords can get away with having every other letter unchecked because the clues point pretty clearly to a single solution. Regular crosswords don't have that, because there are synonyms (or words in the same category as the intended answer), so they really do need more checked squares.

Sorry about that.

Deusovi

I've seen regular crosswords that did have blocked grids like this -- but those have more direct clues. The indirection is making it pretty difficult.

(well, not quite "indirection", but you're certainly not cluing things in the most natural way possible)

msh210

In any event, you're not done. The doubled letters are not random.

Deusovi

oh, I'm fully aware of that

msh210

@Deusovi Right, in order for the clues to seem cryptic.

Deusovi

yes, I understood that

I considered something like US state capitals, because several of these are US state abbreviations. But that broke when I got ET/TO/WS.

msh210

7:47 PM

@Deusovi (Incidentally, that's not why the grid is wider than tall. That really was an accident. A happy one, though, I guess.)

Sphinx

8:36 PM

1

Q: What you gotta do?

You have 10 groups of 4 words: DUO, IRON, LINKS, ROCK ICE, LED, METAL, TIC DRILL, PI, WIN, WOO BRA, IGNITE, LOOM, RUBBISH AIR, DUST, GO, PAT AUDI, AURA, MEOW, SPEW GRIMM, HOOT, MUD, TAIL ASK, BELL, CATER, MEDIC BLITZ, CRUST, PLUS, SQUIRT CHERUB, SEE, SHIN, STEEL And another group of 10 words:...

knowledge enigmatic-puzzle connect-wall connections-puzzle

Gareth McCaughan

9:10 PM

@Deusovi LUGS and LUSTS for the 1s?

Deusovi

ah, sounds plausible enough to me

bobble

I though 3D might be ARCADE based on the letters but couldn't parse the clue to support that

Deusovi

yeah, 3A is something I haven't been able to get a single meaningful parsing of

Gareth McCaughan

I also wondered about ARCADE but don't see how to make it work.

I hope 31a isn't EAST on the grounds that Washington DC is on the US east coast and St Petersburg is in Eastern Europe.

bobble

According to onelook, the letter pattern could also give ACCEDE, which makes even less sense

Deusovi

9:15 PM

I was also looking at EAST, but couldn't get that to work with St. Petersburg, Florida.

It's on the west coast of Florida, which seems wrong.

bobble

(side note: @Deusovi, THANK YOU for pointing me to onelook, such a lifesaver as I construct my Marching Bands)

msh210

@GarethMcCaughan Why not? If it were "Washington and St. Petersburg locus" then that'd be wrong, as they're two loci. But it's "Washington or St. Petersburg locus". EAST seems reasonable to me.

Deusovi

I don't think the issue is with pluralization but with the clue itself

"east" doesn't seem to me to be a particular position

msh210

Well, both those cities are commonly considered to be in "the east".

Sphinx

0

Q: My brilliant attempt at humour!

??&T Who’s On ????? We ??????? the excessive use of force ??? World In Data ???? (online retailer) Apologies for my ?????? attempt at humour! ?????? me Smoking is bad ??? you ?????????? Is Awesome Roger ???? A spelling error ??????? this clue Fiegenbaum ???????? ???????? numbers ????? release ANS...

knowledge wordplay humor

msh210

9:24 PM

^ That chat preview looks like missing Unicode characters. :-)

Gareth McCaughan

I guess 20D is COVID, btw.

It would be cute if the other bigrams could be paired up and a letter of LOVE inserted in each pair to make ... I dunno, another solution to 20d, perhaps.

(You can make MoNET from another pair -- indeed, also from a symmetrically-placed pair like with COvID.)

Sphinx

10:12 PM

-1

Q: Can you crack my cipher?

Here is a cryptic puzzle that I've made. Can you crack my cipher?