The Sphinx's Lair

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4:19 AM

Q: Probability of poker hands using 3 suits and extra ranks

Imagine a deck of cards using only 3 suits. Hearts Clubs Spades Within each suit we increase the number cards up to 14 and then add Jack, Queen and King so that each suit has 17 ranks.A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 J Q K With 3 suits this gives a deck of 51 cards With a standard deck of cards t...

2 hours later…

Jafe

5:55 AM

buzz aldrin and pete conrad are both 4,6 moonwalkers

msh210

6:18 AM

@Jafe a Queen vocalist is John Deacon. More likely (because of recent events), a vocalist is Tina Turner. But I can't seem to make any of these (or a few others) work.

Jafe

6:36 AM

seems like however you look at it there's too much stuff for 10 letters unless "keeping jackson alive" clues very few letters

msh210

7:22 AM

@Jafe maybe "keeping" is a containment (is that the word?) indicator for some short word referred to by "Jackson", and "alive guitarist Gibb" is a unit.

Jafe

ah could be

alive guitarist would be a weird attribute though

"our band consists of a singer, drummer, bassist and alive guitarist"

msh210

Maybe everyone else is a ghost.

Jafe

i'd watch that concert

alive could be something like "up"... not sure what the jackson could possibly be doing

if it's the first name of someone named jackson it'd have to be a pretty short name

like there's no way you're going to fit LaToya in those 10 letters

msh210

7:39 AM

A Jackson is a dub.

(Both are slang for a USD20 bill.)

"Moonwalker is concerned" could be STERF< or the like.

Jafe

7:58 AM

ah right, jackson in the $20 bill

i knew that from xkcd.com/1672

1 hour later…

Jafe

9:12 AM

i find it hilarious that the main image of wikipedia's sauli niinistö article is taken in the white house's oval office with the american flag in the background like he's the president of the US

msh210

9:53 AM

Maybe Photoshop in a NATO flag in place of the US one.

Jafe

10:18 AM

[topical]

Jafe

10:33 AM

short vocalist names: sting, bono, adele, cher, usher, enya, sade, beck, lorde

vocalist could also be something like bass but that's probably unlikely since that was the immediately preceding answer

oAlt

10:59 AM

CCCC hint: Only one word in the clue is an indicator.

Jafe

11:19 AM

well i'm more confused now

Jafe

11:54 AM

shirley, it has to be either keeping or shields

msh210

12:10 PM

nah, it's probably Gibb

Jafe

right, you find a word for jackson's alive guitarist and you gibb it shields

msh210

@Jafe My clue wasn't as unfair as that dictionary entry you link to makes it seem. Roding usually is in reference not only to the movement but also to the sound.

Jafe

yeah that's what i figured... new word for me

figured as in assumed it has to mean that based on how the clue works

Jafe

12:32 PM

oh wait it's just shields (fronts) of m_ i_ c_ k_ j_ a_ g_ g_ plus ER for queen!

msh210

oh, nice

Jafe

that's some pretty non-obvious letter selection, especially with the multiple continued themes in there hehe

Sphinx

Q: Is there answer to turning my fan off puzzeler?

I have a ceiling fan with 4 states. The states always go in the order of off, high, medium, low, off. A cord pull will change the state. One pull of a cord to turn the fan to the off state from the low state. Two pulls of a cord to turn the fan to the off state from the medium state. Three pulls...

mathematics logical-deduction calculation-puzzle

oAlt

1:33 PM

@Jafe yep, that's the correct answer :)

Jafe

CCCC: With sense of fashion, needing no leader – radical extremist guy having right to stand by Narrator's side (5,6)

1 hour later…

bobble

2:55 PM

@Sphinx whee, now we're not allowed to edit anything that was first shown to Chat GPT

Jafe

3:05 PM

attribution imo

bobble

What do you mean by "attribution"?

Chat GPT did not create nor solve the puzzle.

Jafe

as in it doesn't sound like a puzzle created by Vandalous1

sounds like he's just trying to find the solution from someone else

6 hours later…

Sphinx

9:13 PM

Q: Three boats problem

Three boats are sailing on the ocean. The three boats form the corners of an equilateral triangle. Boat 1 heads southwards with a constant speed of 10 kn, boat 2 heads westwards with unknown constant speed and boat 3 heads towards northeast also with unknown constant speed. Determine the unique v...

mathematics calculation-puzzle geometry

Rubio

9:45 PM

I'd like to caution us in general to not start close-voting for lack of attribution unless it is pretty clear that a post quotes liberally from an undisclosed source. It's not very welcoming to ask a new poster "Is this your own puzzle?" or to act on the assumption that it is not, without some overt evidence indicating a post is or contains attributable content without that attribution.

Chestnut riddles etc. aren't really attributable (they've usually been around long enough that literally nobody knows where they came from, and someone indicating where they encountered it is technically what we ask for but it wouldn't be meaningful in these cases so there's no need or benefit to insist on it).

The "turning my fan off" puzzle read to me exactly like what it was described as - the sort of verbose prompt one might feed ChatGPT. I don't see a reason to assume the poster didn't write that prompt, and it's not the sort of question I'd expect someone to find somewhere else. (Especially given that the answer seems to be pretty self-evidently that there isn't a solution of the type OP seemed to be seeking.)

@Jafe this has to be (-s)TYLE + R_ + DU(R)DE + N_ (&lit)

Sphinx

10:04 PM

Q: Variant of Abby and Bob and 3 numbers on the blackboard

Abby selects a positive integer $A$, and Bobby selects a positive integer $B$. They then both tell their number secretly to Summy. Summy writes the numbers $5$, $8$, and $15$ on the blackboard, and announces that one of these three numbers is the sum $A+B$. Then the three go through several round...