The Sphinx's Lair - 2021-01-21

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12:02 AM

With any definitions that appear in the clue (and at least one must!), I could construct 2 sentences that both make sense, and the only difference is one contains the clue and the other contains the answer. (The rest of the words in the sentence should remain the same!)

(I hope that made sense)

Anon, we have told you so many times

to please read the rules. It is tiring at this point. Cryptics are not lateral-thinking puzzles, especially the ones here. There are rules. Please read the rules.

(split into two messages because the links are long)

I didn't even have to look beyond Deus for the first set of links, and the second set is entirely people begging you to read the rules

12:32 AM

@Graylocke right - for instance, "dash" could define SPRINT, because you could say "I dashed to the park." / "I sprinted to the park." and both would work, and mean the same thing. but "final moment" could not define CLOSED, because there's no sentence where you could make that replacement

@Anonymus25-ReinstateMonica, please check that your "definitions" fit this rule

I like standard = "code" for the starting C, but "coders" is the only valid 6-letter word it produces and I can't see final/final moment cluing that

I also keep trying to make the score -> 20 leap

score could also be something along the lines of "notch"

ooooh that's a good point

(And to follow on from Deus... "final moment" is a noun, a thing. "closed" is a status, an adjective... which is why they don't fit in the same gap in any sentence... However, Deus's example word "dash" has different meanings that have different parts of speech.)

About this post, should we reopen and re-close as unclear?

12:41 AM

I don't think they'll be happy with anything we do at this point

Also, then a bunch of people wouldn't be able to close-vote, since you can only do that once (right?)

I agree that "unclear" is a better reason than the one currently displayed, though

below standard = "crappy" :P

(only because I'm currently listening to "Happy" lol)

burn that song with fire

I am a wee bit biased

you don't like it @bobble?

@Dmihawk snerks Now I am imagining the song with lyric replacement.

When I was in elementary school, we lost our very good principal and got a new very meh one. To "celebrate" this all the kids were forced to sing and dance "Happy" for the new principal.

Practicing that over and over and over and over?

I don't like the song any more

Not that I did to start with

12:46 AM

oh yeah, that'd drive anyone insane

haha @Graylocke I started doing the same! :P

it just happens to be the second track on our wedding playlist

@bobble Urf

I guess the same happened to me with our first dance song, because shudders I had to learn to dance, so every time it came on, I had PTSD flashbacks

I can dance the man's part in certain ballroom dances

Because my sister got it in her head as a little 'un she wanted to be a Disney Princess so I was conscripted as the prince

the Kiwi does not dance crosses arms sternly

attempts to spin dmi around

12:51 AM

haha I'm just imagining me sitting in a chair with my arms crossed and a grumpy look on my face as you spin me around :P

Dancing is not in my list of skills...

oh god i just got flashbacks to... fourth or fifth grade? when i had to learn ballroom dancing

it was Not a fun time

@Graylocke me neither

ooh, Deus ballroom dancing

ok, so dancing will be forbidden at PSEcon

12:53 AM

add that to my list of funny mental images

@Deusovi did you have to dance with someone?

At least you may use ballroom dancing at a wedding someday. In my day, it was square dancing.

yep

Did they have you choose or assign partners?

@JeremyDover you can use square dancing at a square dance

could've been either - either way, it was not fun

@bobble something something nerd con

12:57 AM

Other than watching the video for Weezer's "Thought I Knew", I have not seen a square dance in the intervening 40 years.

It turns out that the nerds on Puzzling have a low opinion of forced dancing in schools

Who would've guessed?

o/

Yet still some makers of music.

we have music makers here?

Making music is worlds away from dancing to it

Sciborg and North both compose

I have some old, terrible compositions

Unless you mean playing an instrument?

1:01 AM

I did more often in the past, and have spent a large chunk of my life in bands and choirs. :)

North plays at least trumpet and piano, I play flute and very very bad piano

oh neat, guess it's never come up before

some conversations in the Grove, I think

I play bass + piano and used to compose quite a bit

ah, I usually only head over there to resolve Physics debates :P

Deus, did you see the 2021 GM Puzzles sudoku I linked in grid-deduction chat?

I was wondering if you would have free time to help at some point :D

1:06 AM

Apparently I should have made a Physics / Music clue

@bobble ah, no i didn't

not really into sudoku though

@bobble oh hey, same!

aw :(

would it help if I said it had 4 different variations?

been a long time since i've done anything with it, but i tried to make chiptune music a while back

honestly, probably not

okay, that's fine

can take a look, but can't promise to be too involved

1:12 AM

no, it's fine. there's a solution video, i'll watch that

1:30 AM

Argh - a new puzzle idea has lodged itself in my brain and I am meant to be focused on something else...

2:09 AM

haha i know that feeling

2:49 AM

@Deusovi (I don't even know if it's a good idea, cause I can't test it out yet ;p)

3 hours later…

6:17 AM

0

Q: Finding the median of 5 numbers

There are 5 boxes labeled A, B, C, D and E. Each box contains a distinct number, but you don't know what it is. You can select three boxes and the Oracle will tell you which box contains the median* of the three selected numbers. How can you figure out which box contains the median of all 5 numbe...

mathematics logical-deduction

6:42 AM

0

Q: How to solve this 3x3 dots and lines puzzle?

I saw this on a forum and no one knows how to solve it, and it's driving me crazy. Does anyone know what the solution is and why? I tried looking at similarities in the columns, rows, and diagonals. I tried comparing everything to the top left or to the middle but that didn't help either. I tried...

logical-deduction enigmatic-puzzle visual dots-and-boxes

5 hours later…

11:20 AM

0

Q: Hotaru Beam Puzzle: Is it impossible?

I saw this puzzle on Twitter by user @lilva_0419 and I personally feel that it is impossible to solve. Can you prove me wrong (or right)? Source on Twitter Try it online Rules (see Wikipedia): Connect every white circle with lines into a single network. Lines start at black dots and end on whit...

logical-deduction

2 hours later…

Anonymus 25- Reinstate Monica

12:57 PM

Discord quote:
A: I'm bored.
B: Hi bored, I'm dad.
A: You're A DAD?!
B: Virtually.

Lol

1:51 PM

2

Q: Sudoku in Technicolor!

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #47: "Wacky Sudokus" This puzzle consists of three overlapping Sudokus, coloured red, blue and green, so each cell will contain three digits, one of each colour. Taken individually, the digits of each colour will form a Sudoku in the grid. In addition, the...

logical-deduction visual grid-deduction sudoku

Anonymus 25- Reinstate Monica

2:32 PM

This question was downvoted by me due to uncompleteness, but after bobble edited it it became much clearer so I upvoted it to cancell out the downvote. Is that ok?

You downvoted because there was a missing [construction] tag?

regardless of the reason it's perfectly fine to change your vote after an edit

3:18 PM

Also, note that you can remove your downvote without upvoting. Changing a downvote to an upvote is a net of +2 for the question, while simply canceling the downvote is only a net +1

3:58 PM

0

Q: A full cryptic crossword

Eight clues are thematic and are clued by word-play only. Each of these eight clues's word-play has an extra letter which is not part of the answer. These letters cryptically indicate something, which when put together with the theme, one might expect to drink when enjoying the theme. This (th...

cryptic-crosswords

2 hours later…

5:28 PM

@Graylocke According to independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/margareta-pagano/… a "condor moment" is a final moment before entering a fray; and a condor is a four-under-par hole in golf. So that's a sort of ddef. Not sure if it's what you meant, though....

5:40 PM

2

Q: Sudoku with no grid and no numbers!!? - SS#12

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #47: "Wacky Sudokus" Other puzzles in this series Welcome to the twelfth puzzle in this series! For more information about the series, see the first puzzle and the introduction. Enjoy! I got bored of giving you actual clues, so here are so...

logical-deduction grid-deduction sudoku

0

Q: Logic grid puzzle - Carson City Chronicle

I can't figure this one out. Any help would be appreciated.

logical-deduction logic-grid

@BeastlyGerbil linking to an external Google Sheet is fine as a supplement - an additional solver's tool, perhaps helpful because then one doesn't have to copy the problem into a sheet themself. However linking to an external Google Sheet instead of writing out the clues is no long a supplement, it's an essential part of the question. (I'm struggling to read the clues and problem, is a reason I'm saying this)

Oh no I agree, but I read your comment as saying they shouldnt put it into a google sheet at all, when ideally they should do both

I was trying to steer them firmly away from having just the image and a sheet

Because that's how I interpreted their comment

6:00 PM

I would actually prefer smth a bit more useful such as sheets, but I agree they should write it out first for the sake of being self-contained

Yay, they edited!

Should the comments be cleaned up now, you think?

Ah thats much better

Yeah I'll delete mine

Flagged his as obsolete too

Deleted all of mine, flagged several of theirs, and upvoted their "I edited" comment because yay new users who listen!

:D they added a source!

6:18 PM

The perfect learner :P

7:00 PM

I spent all of Physics trying to make this last part of the Pento-Doku work... no dice. Yet.

if you're using dice, wouldn't it need to be a Hexo-Doku? :P

7:24 PM

@bobble You’ll get it eventually! Might be worth backtracking a couple more steps and trying a different ‘route’

If I try enough random things, at least one will lead to nice, elegant logic.

That's basically my strategy at this point

1 hour later…

8:34 PM

@LukasRotter thank you for posting early enough for me not too get too far into the puzzle :P

lol np :P I was so scared I was going to get sniped once I reached a certain point, especially because I spent waaaay too much time.

Yeah I have spent a reasonable amount of time and haven't even filled in that many numbers so that must have taken a while!

I wouldn't say the puzzle is hard as such, but it takes a lot of time spotting the pairs and then removing the relevant candidates

I feel like its the sort of thing a computer could solve in seconds but takes a person hours :P Great puzzle @JeremyDover!

1

Q: A number build with two-digit primes

What is the largest number, which can build as a sequence (from left to right) of different two-digit primes only? For example, 1371731 is valid, 137131 is invalid (containing 13 twice), 139717 is invalid (containing non-prime 39)

mathematics optimization primes

Looking through LukasRotter's solution now. I hope it was enjoyable!

From the little I managed it def was! Once I managed to wrap my head round the constraint at least :P

9:09 PM

I had been trying to make SUBPAR work for this CCCC but I guess the new hint makes certain it doesn't work, hehe.

9:31 PM

0

Q: Men of the past

J.R.R. wrote about the dragon, thinking of these men. Issur performed and challenged the locals to do a crossing, thinking of these men. G.R.R. wrote about the killer of the giant, thinking of these men. Single, splitted in two, first is latin, last is English. Present, not past! Writing about al...

knowledge enigmatic-puzzle

Newly added item to "Worst feelings": Discovering that an old answer of yours contains a MathJax table entirely out of binary strings, and your past self didn't realize your future self would need to fix that.

ok nvm, it's not even that bad if you use regex replacement

nvm, again. didn't realize the table was in a spoiler :)

wow

@LukasRotter Apparently that only works in preview, not when you actually post the question :) How neat

10:33 PM

@msh210 Wow... No. I feel this is a little bit Pillow River :)

Prince North Læraðr

@Graylocke For a position vs time graph, acceleration is area under the slope/curve, right?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Yep seems right (sorry - needed a sec - not enough coffee :) )

@PrinceNorthLæraðr i think that's wrong?

for displacement/time the area has no relevant meaning

not sure how you would get a second derivative by taking the integral of an original

acceleration is the slope of velocity

10:40 PM

I would listen to DMIHawk

I think my brain is lacking caffeine.

Prince North Læraðr

@Graylocke Yes

@Dmihawk Oh

Don't listen to me.

the curvature of a position/time graph is acceleration

Prince North Læraðr

Huh?

Hold on I'll paste the question in here

so gradient is velocity

10:41 PM

curvature is the word my brain was struggling for

if the gradient changes, the velocity is changing i.e. acceleration

Prince North Læraðr

user image

a straight line implies constant velocity, a curved line implies changing velocity

Prince North Læraðr

So here's the position vs time

so the tangent at each point is your velocity

Prince North Læraðr

10:42 PM

Right

as those tangent lines change, that is acceleration

Prince North Læraðr

So the average slope, essentially?

well acceleration is what gives that graph its sinusoidal shape

literally the change in slope.. the faster the slope changes

if it were really steep, that would mean more acceleration

Prince North Læraðr

10:43 PM

confused noises

on the tangent that is

seems like Grove time ;p

let's jump over

Prince North Læraðr

Wait so maximum positive velocity would be in 3, right?

Oh I thought this was the grove

Whooops

Mbmb

Let's hop over indeed

11:30 PM

CCCCClue: Depending on which side of the pond you are on, you may argue about whether I should have an extra something (or an extra nothing, but then you are definitely wrong!). I am picking M-W as my source.

COLOUR?

No :)

CCCCClue can be abbreviated to 5Clue or C5lue (?)

All that was going through my head was "c-c-c-c-c-c-combo!"

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Jan '2121

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