The Sphinx's Lair

12:44 AM

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2:23 AM

my kid is learning the letter "ts" and TIL that the word "tsarina" is not an actual russian word for a female monarch but an intermediate loan from german or something

the correct russian word is "tsaritsa"

(sorry for the combo breaker)

3:13 AM

oh look it's a sentient crown

\\o/

have you grown an extra arm or something

it's a waving animation

ahh ok

catching up on the nerd things?

sister insisted on Divergent so we're watching that

four eps into Discovery, though

3:18 AM

how is it so far?

they need to un-tilt the cameras and turn the lights on, and have the Klingons talk in English

but they're

klingons

but it's so slowwwwwww

"t'kuvma whatever"

if you don't like when they speak klingon you're going to hate s2e4

(in which the universal translator is just ... no)

(for like three minutes)

Parcly Taxel

5:18 AM

Gareth: Regarding other books in my home library. My parents both used to work for the aerospace industry, so there are a number of books relating to turbines, metals, histories of Singapore's aviation (civilian and military RSAF), etc.

And of course there are many books in there pertaining to mathematics, including Newton's Principia and textbooks for my university and "popular" maths books. A fair number of these were published by World Scientific, based in Singapore

One of my favourite tidbits from the aviation history books is the SQ117 hijacking in 1991. It ended with all the hijackers killed and nobody else

7:14 AM

@msh210 technically you're correct

hmm yeah, might not include it

i have another question though just to be sure

May 25 '20 at 10:11, by msh210

CCCC: Making a connection (no love) in a movie (7)

May 25 '20 at 11:19, by msh210

I'm sorry! That's an incorrect CCCC. The intended answer was LI(-o)N KING, but the actual movie title has "The" at the start. Let me try again:

do i include this too? for me i feel so, since although the clue was broken the answer was revealed, but idk

doesn't count, i think

ahh

not sure what the people updating the sheet have done previously but i'd include only the clues someone else eventually solved (making them part of a chain)

yeah also makes sense

However I saw that in the past, one broken clue of Gareth, and his replacement clue for that broken one, were both listed. But, well, I mean, in the end, the correct, or in general, as you said, solved clues may be the ones that truly matter for the list

guess I might just do that

(darn that's a lot of commas)

9:04 AM

thinking about the recent c4 where "i've 'eard" indicated a homophone in an accent that drops h's... could "proclaimed in holy book" mean a homophone using biblical language or something like that?

9:16 AM

I'd imagine not lol

also hmmm

Jun 13 '20 at 16:58, by Sid

CCCC: Watch long and hard and utter, "Run" (5)

from what i understood, a run is an element of a stair, so that doesn't mean run = stair, right? or am i missing something

9:41 AM

@oAlt the run is the horizontal part of the stair. Which is sometimes called "stair".

9:58 AM

oh, alright

@Jafe ditto

nice

Jun 17 '20 at 11:33, by oAlt

But that one's gonna be stuck in my laptop for a while longer

re: crossword... i'm really stretching the definition of "a while" here hoho

10:44 AM

@ParclyTaxel Sorry if I'm being dim; this sounds like it's intended to be a continuation of some previous discussion about what books you are, but I don't remember any such discussion and searching hasn't turned one up. My memory is terrible and so is the SE chat search facility, so it's entirely possible I'm just missing it; for the sake of context, can you give me a link? Thanks!

... oh, no, I see, it's because I asked whether one pair of words in your connect-wall was a reference to a particular book. I was indeed being dim.

11:19 AM

not getting anywhere with the c4 so far... i suspect for a word that long the easiest way in might be with an ending as there aren't that many ways 15-letter words tend to end

something like "-ness" or "-ion" or "-ity"?

"holy book" (assuming it's a unit, which seems likely) also doesn't have that many options - bible? quran? talmud? although if you include all the books of the bible there are a lot more options

that said i suspect there are a number of holy books i haven't heard of but gareth has

Same

12:12 PM

CCCC hint: First letter is I.

ha, maybe the "in" in the clue is actually plain text instead of an indicator

"in-" makes a useful prefix for a word meaning "not very (serious/smart/reasonable)", although i'm not sure what to do with "proclaimed" in that case

12:59 PM

Huh. biblehub.com/proverbs/12-23.htm

so that's why i don't shut up ever... mystery solved

To be clear, I commenting not on your having commented (certainly not saying the verse was referring to you), but on the "folly proclaimed" part of the clue.

yea i didn't think you were, just goofing around

okay :-)

text-only media is tough

1:08 PM

I figured you weren't offended, but wanted to be sure.

i wonder if "folly proclaimed in holy book" could be the def and it's a word like ill-something-something (ill = evil)

1:33 PM

I wonder if "Folly" could be the definition with the wordplay being <"(proclaimed in) holy book"> + <"evil"> − <"opposing">. There are probably words for "evil" that include things like "anti", no?

If the definition is "opposing" then some possibilities (all pretty weak) are incommensurable, inconveniencing, insurrectionary, and insurrectionist.

need some pretty long words to make 15 letters with the "opposing" removed

true

but there are some pretty long names of holy books. Like, um, ECCLESIASTICUS and ACTSOFTHEAPOSTLES

"antichrist" is an evil, but it's a bit weird to clue a word like that only to remove the "anti" afterwards

1:50 PM

hmm maybe the holy book is the book of jude, which can be abbreviated to JUD.

@GarethMcCaughan so it's IN + JUD. + (v)ICIOUSNESS without the V (opposing)

@msh210 which is pretty much exactly this structure, in fact :)

@Jafe You have the right answer but not exactly the wordplay I had in mind. (With your parsing of the clue, one word is doing nothing.)

hmm or maybe it's "proclaimed" for partial homophone of "in jude" -> "injud"?

Yup. (Not sure why it's a "partial" homophone, though.)

I'd have much preferred "there's no opposing evil", but I couldn't persuade myself that that was actually valid wordplay-wise. "See no evil" ("v." is sometimes short for Latin "vide", meaning "see", used e.g. for references) and would have been lovely to usef but again, alas, it's in the wrong order.

and I'd have preferred it to be wisdom (JUDICIOUSNESS) rather than folly, but couldn't find a good way to get rid of the "in" in the clue. E.g., you can say "Wisdom, proclaimed holy book: ..." but that's clumsy.

"partial" homophone -> homophone that only yielded part of the final answer, I think

^ yeah that is what i meant

1:59 PM

not sure what's actually partial about that, but OK. My guess had been that you called it partial because the "in" wasn't changed, which I also don't really think makes it a partial homophone in any useful sense. But no matter! Anyway, @jafe, your turn.

CCCC: Title that has always been hereditary, except one time (7)

Wait, so "folly proclaimed" is the definition?

just "folly"

right: "proclaimed" is a homophone indicator

whistles nice surface, Jafe

2:07 PM

thanks!

@Jafe baron + e_ + t, &lit ?

(...assuming baron has always been hereditary, and baronet has always except once. I don't know that either of those is true)

not the intended answer, i'm afraid

I apologize for I am still slightly confused. Two questions come to mind: 1) in what context does V mean opposing, and 2) is that structure of clue (homophone BUT with subtraction) allowed?

I think I got what Jafe meant by "partial homophone": all homophone cryptics I've seen so far only follow the structure "Guess what I'm thinking of– and it sounds exactly the same as the final answer". This one speaks "Guess what I'm thinking of– but subtract a letter from one of the components– and *only then* will it sound the same as the final answer," and I haven't seen any homophone clues like that…

Again, I don't mean to say that the clue was bad; the confusion is fully on me.

1) court cases, sports matches

"oAlt v bobble"

technically "vs." is more correct, but just "v" is written/said often as well

Darn, I completely forgot about that usage

Thx for reminding

2:20 PM

ah, so bobble wins in "oAlt v bobble", I see

woo!

Hehe

@bobble exclusively "v" (never "vs") is used in court case captions in the States

as in Roe v. Wade

@Jafe indeed not, but I think @msh210 was really close

@Jafe cuz that's BAR + ONE + T

hehe yep

@Jafe ooh nice

2:32 PM

thanks! i was wondering whether to disclose that your answer was the correct word but thought it'd get cracked soon regardless

2:51 PM

CCCC: Yummy dish primarily choice and fit (10)

MikeQ

DELECTABLE = D(-ish) ELECT + ABLE

Niceee

Nice

@MikeQ your turn

This one shouldn't be too difficult but I thought it was fun:

CCCC: A militia's primary supply with bullets! (10)

2:57 PM

A + M_ + MUNITION &lit.!

Yep!

Nice one

Ooh that was fast

I was starting to figure out AM and then Jafe sniped the clue from afar

:P

CCCC: Old kingdom's soldier deserted army division (4)

Anonymus 25

2:59 PM

Is division counted as an anagram indicator?

Jan 4 at 15:11, by msh210

@LukasRotter Leur's rule: For every word, there's at least one person who considers it an anagram indicator.

Not sure

@Jafe León = Legion - GI

@msh210 that's right

Q: A brilliant Chemist-- or not

CCCC: I'll organize a collection from left to right, neat (10)

@GarethMcCaughan how the heck did you solve that connect wall (the "security risk" one)? Such disparate words connecting to each topic, and such an arcane (nowadays) overall theme. Kudos

(rhetorical question, not really asking how you did it, just expressing admiration)

Sphinx

3:24 PM

0

"You know my friend Ben Rothersburger, right?", asked Grandpa. "No" I said "He is a brilliant chemist, I think. He told me that he can turn a radioactive metal into a gas!" Grandpa. "No way" "And Ben said he can also turn a couple of gases into a couple of different gases very quickly" Grand...

riddle knowledge

3:47 PM

@msh210 Rhetorical it may have been, but: 1. It may be an arcane overall theme, but it's one I happened to be familar with. 2. Seeing TEAPOT fairly immediately made me think of Utah. So maybe five minutes after first seeing the puzzle I was pretty sure what the overall theme was going to be. Actually finding the details took a bit of work, of course.

I wonder whether that connect-wall should have the [cryptic-crosswords] tag :-).

@GarethMcCaughan hush. If you explain the "how", you lose the audience's sense of wonder.