The Sphinx's Lair

12:20 AM

@bobble THanks :)

12:42 AM

wait, rubio is tom hanks?

wait, tom hanks is a dog??

turner & hooch suddenly makes a lot more sense

1:23 AM

hmm maybe the c4 is simply BACK+FIRE, which apparently can be a noun?

oh oh even better is CAMP+FIRE

a camp is a retreat, to send a salvo is to fire, and a campfire is a hot spot

2:25 AM

oh that's probably it

I'd be surprised if it's not

somebody should probably ping tom hanks

2:42 AM

@rubio ping

@Jafe it is indeed CAMPFIRE.

that's nicely put together

CCCC: Where the first covid patient may have got the disease initially? (3,3,3)

@Jafe off the bat ddef :P

ah nice

2:57 AM

that's right

Q: Monthly Topic Challenge #11: Now in 3D

CCCC: Up-and-comer owned by Greta Thunberg? (4)

Puzzling Meta

3:09 AM

This is the eleventh installment of the Monthly Topic Challenges with topics suggested and voted on here. This month's topic is "Now in 3D" (suggested by Jafe) and will span from the 1st of June to the 30th of June. During this period, we will compile the list of relevant questions and post it as...

3:33 AM

@juicifer _T ate_ < &lit

@msh210 yup!

for those of you blissfully unaware of what happens on twitter dot com

attention is one hell of a drug

3:51 AM

@juicifer I was unaware, myself. I found the story by Googling thunberg pwned

that probably brings out an entire list of people

He was top of the list. :-)

CCCC: USVI Governor Mike Tanner (8)

@juicifer Hah nice, I didn't know it was possible to make an &lit out of that

1 hour later…

5:07 AM

governors named mike include parsons from missouri and dewine from ohio... the US virgin islands have not had a governor named mike

@Jafe Or have they?

(No, you're right, they haven't.)

surprise governor!

a solarium is a tanner, and mike can be the letter M... hmm

Somehow Gov. Solariu sounds like he'd be from Romania rather than the USVI.

hah i was just about to say it sounds like a romanian name

1 hour later…

6:47 AM

@msh210 is this sixpence (tanner) = six ("US VI", i.e. the equivalent of "VI" in the US) + Pence (Governor Mike, former governor of Indiana (and former vice president of the US))?

7:11 AM

@oAlt precisely so

7:32 AM

CCCC: Surrealist art, Joker's Gin (unfinished), depicts City of Stone (11)

2 hours later…

9:09 AM

argh i'm 89% sure i know how this works but i still can't find anything

knowledge enigmatic-puzzle visual

9:36 AM

Can "surrealist" indicate changing b to d, W to M, etc.? :-)

1 hour later…

Sphinx

10:59 AM

Q: A slippery puzzle

Replace the question mark with a fitting image.

1 hour later…

12:11 PM

@msh210 fair enough lol

@oAlt yeah I was thinking about that whole thing again and realized that her name contained his name in reverse and the clue basically wrote itself lmao

1:00 PM

@oAlt well I had to look it up but I don't think anybody was gonna come up with gjirokaster(-n)* without looking it up

@juicifer correct :) out of curiosity did you find the answer there as well or somewhere else first?

or I guess, to rephrase the question, what was your "in"? Did you search for cities which were called "City of Stone", or did an anagram server happen to be more helpful than Qat?

fwiw i went to a whole bunch of cities "of stone" without coming across that one

1:17 PM

same. and anagram servers utterly failed me also. kudos on finding that mouthful :)

^ yeah

@oAlt I plugged it into nutrimatic

Ahhh

it sounds like a type of wizard who can conjure up spinning things

lmao

1:20 PM

Lol

CCCC: Improvised solo finally cracks Billboard Hot 100 (2 3)

_O cracks AD H C = ad hoc (improvised)

ah nice

@Jafe right on

1:36 PM

CCCC: Slept in ground, baked bread (5,8)

the enumeration gave it away hehe

@Jafe pound sterling (bread, slang for money) = baked "slept in ground" (hat tip to Qat)

that's right

ah nice

lowkey thought that was gonna be a ddef somehow

thought "bake bread" would be enough of a natural unit to conceal the indicator... apparently not so much

CCCC: Back in the last part of March, I had a schedule with someone denying fundamental things (8)

1:50 PM

not-C4: Stripped, baked bread (5)

@Rubio bared* :)

hehe

heheh

@oAlt IN< + _H + I + LIST (schedule) -> NIHILIST (someone denying fundamental things)

@Rubio yep :)

1:56 PM

CCCC: Mythical creature turned and snatched first weapon in local challenge (9)

Mithical

@Rubio Give me your shoe.

You appear to be assuming I wear them.

Mithical

Ah, right, yeah, paws.

I don't think you can snatch my paw, very sorry.

The tone of conversation in this room is much more amenable to my nature than ... that other room we're in.

so don't go riling up the natives with your challenge :)

2:11 PM

I'm convinced that the c4 is cheezroll somehow

Chris Cudmore

2:52 PM

If "first weapon" is not W, then recall that Cain killed Abel with a stone.

doesn't mean that was necessarily the first thing he tried

1 hour later…

4:06 PM

do we need to tidy up some older posts again here? -
https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/monthly-topic-challenges-topic-suggestions

4:17 PM

@ChrisCudmore did he? It doesn't say that in Genesis.

Chris Cudmore

Wikipedia.

Stiv

5:07 PM

@Rubio Yes please! I started that yesterday but can't delete any of them myself - any chance you could delete Game/Quiz Shows and the Mobius strip one, please? (Thanks)

@Stiv Done :)

Stiv

Ace, thanks for doing that :)

Lukas Rotter

5:33 PM

Damn, initially I was thrown off by the new design of the voting buttons, and after catching up a bit on meta.se it feels like the whole SE network is at war O_O

6:22 PM

another day in the life.

Gareth McCaughan

@msh210 Following CC's suggestion to look in Wikipedia, it seems that there are some Islamic traditions about Cain and Abel that specify that a stone was used. Make of that what you will.