The Sphinx's Lair

« first day (2501 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1155 days later) »

12:55 AM

I found this on the sidewalk in chalk at my local courthouse. "JSMYCTLYCTJCBEXD19" I would like to discover its meaning. I have had trouble identifying the code type as well as the deciphered message. Any and all suggestions/help would be appreciated!

cipher

Sphinx

1:45 AM

Q: Cipher with uncommon letter distribution

I have a cipher that I'm trying to decode. It's quite lengthy, so I started trying do do a simple substitution. I checked the frequency and noticed that every letter in the alphabet was used - and multiple times. B 6.89% X 5.47% L 5.47% U 5.28% Z 5.09% O 4.91% N 4.81% R 4.15% E 3.96% G...

cipher

Sphinx

2:36 AM

Q: When I’m empty I’m full of hope. What am I?

When I’m empty I’m full of hope. What am I? This riddle is about a place.

riddle word

5 hours later…

Sid

7:47 AM

@Stiv SEC + U + R_ + IT +_Y = Ease

Stiv

8:06 AM

@Sid Yep! Your go :)

2 hours later…

humn

10:13 AM

Okay, i changed some punctuation. When i crap a puzzle it is laden with clues. Someone please reopen it. It was road tested.

Q: This ᴀɴᴅ That musical act from the past

Below is a fill-in-the-blanks three-part list of variously-venerable musical acts of the form “________ ᴀɴᴅ ʜɪs/ᴏᴜʀ/ᴛʜᴇ _________.” The example of “Paul Revere ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ Raiders” has been filled in for starters. Completion of blanks is meant to rely purely on knowledge, clues, intuition and luck— p...

no-computers music

It deserves to be solved.

. . .

You should see the ones i don't post.

1 hour later…

Sid

11:39 AM

CCCC - Prayer again after second time (6)

Gareth McCaughan

12:38 PM

@humn It still seems to me that your puzzle is very close to being pure trivia. I see only the following non-trivia components. 1. Alphabetization. (So there are a lot of constraints on the left-hand column.) 2. Bandname-length constraints. (Perhaps the most interesting are four cases where adjacent bandname lengths are equal.) 3. A few connectives are "and his" or "and our" rather than "and the", which doesn't exactly constrain anything but maybe some possible bandnames are [...continues]

... more likely after those. But unless I am missing a lot, it is still the case that basically the only way to have a not-infinitesimal chance of solving this is to know most of the answers.

I don't know whether anyone here does know most of the answers. They might. But a puzzle most of whose difficulty lies in needing to know a large quantity of trivia don't really belong here.

Now, maybe there are a ton of other subtler clues that I completely missed, and maybe these actually make it possible to solve the puzzle without already knowing most of the answers. If so, then maybe the closure was as unjust as you evidently feel it was. But in that case you should at least consider telling us that there's a ton of actually-puzzly stuff we're all missing.

No one is claiming that your puzzle wasn't road-tested, or that the ones you don't post are better. The problem with this one is that -- at least on the face of it -- it's too close to being pure trivia. If that's true, then it doesn't belong here no matter how carefully you tested it, how much work you put into it, how excellent a trivia question it is, how much it objectively deserves to be solved, etc. If it's not true, then probably the closure was a mistake [... continues]

... since the reason for that was "this is a trivia question".

3 hours later…

Sphinx

3:38 PM

Q: Why is the next Sudoku step a 6?

I used a step-by-step Soduku solver for a puzzle in which I was stuck. However I don't understand how the next number (6) was found. Sudoku puzzle where I was stuck: Sudoku puzzle solved by one step forward: The solver says the only candidate for cell (R4, C5) is a 6. Why couldn't it be in cell...

sudoku

2 hours later…

humn

5:59 PM

@GarethMcCaughan , yes. I Load my bullets.

And you are not gunshy.

3 hours later…

Gareth McCaughan

8:53 PM

I've no idea what any of that means, sorry.

Deusovi

9:04 PM

glad to know it's not just me

Sphinx

9:31 PM

Q: The wellerman's lost treasure puzzle

You are hunting for the lost treasure of the weller brothers, hidden in a pirate cave somewhere- when you finally find the treasure however, its locked behind a door at the back of a room in the cave. interestingly, there is a library aboveground nearby with 6 lecterns in it each displaying a cop...