The Sphinx's Lair

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oAlt

04:00

Yeah I'm still not seeing what the sequence is

Jafe

someone pointed out that 999 is not divisible by 11 but is divisible by 37... i can't explain why but i hate that fact so much

drawing a complete blank on the c4 too

PolygonPotpourri

04:16

CCCC Metapuzzle Hint: Indeed, the last seven answers are key. These are the only things you need, and you might find something by changing something in them…

@Jafe 99999 is also divisible by 41.

Jafe

@PolygonPotpourri that may be, but it clearly shouldn't

ok so NO DICE, IDLE TIME, BIG GAME, INNER EYES, HIGH-TECH, ACRE-INCH, LOOK UP

juicifer

feels like we're supposed to get one letter from each answer but I can't find a good way to do so

4 hours later…

msh210

08:15

@PolygonPotpourri "find something changing something" was that a typo?

PolygonPotpourri

@msh210 I mean to find something by changing something.

msh210

08:59

ftfy

3 hours later…

msh210

11:57

Each of those phrases can have another word put between the two words that are already there, to make another, also common, phrase. For example, NO DICE can become NO F&$#ING DICE by adding F&$#ING. The seven words to add, one to each phrase, are F&$#ING, F&$#ING, F&$#ING, F&$#ING, F&$#ING, F&$#ING, and F&$#ING.

TakingNotes

IDLE TIME, ACRE-INCH and INNER EYES are the most contrived phrases so it might be worth thinking about what kind of restrictions you might have where those are the best phrases you can come up with

i.e. why would you choose ACRE-INCH if it was a pattern as simple as ???E I???

Jafe

good point

i like the idea of someone measuring the amount of irrigation their farmland needs in acre-f&$#ing-inches

new gladys puzzle's out, btw!

oAlt

Mar 13 at 18:07, by juicifer

@msh210 indubitably

TakingNotes

i think acre-f&$#ing-inches are what brazilians measure their you-know-whats with

oAlt

12:12

"look up" also feels like an outlier since it looks the least similar to the other answers and the K and U are only found there, but that's probably nothing noteworthy

Jafe

look up also the only one where the second word is not 4 letters

Sphinx

Q: Compass and Straightedge

This is part 75 of the puzzle series Around the World in Many Days. Each part is solvable on its own. Dear Puzzling, You’re going to need a compass and straightedge for this one. After filling the crossword, connect every pair of I’s appearing in the same column with a vertical line, and draw a ...

Jafe

@TakingNotes hah, took me a minute

Jafe

12:25

one-letter substitution possibilities: notice, novice, big name, hookup, lockup

an acre-inch is one twelfth of an acre-foot, and if you take one twelfth of the word acre-foot you get two thirds of the first a

will be back later with more helpful tips

oAlt

Monopoly is a big game that you can play in your idle time but you cannot have no dice for it

msh210

well, if you do, your time will surely be idle

Jafe

i can already see it with my inner eyes

msh210

… unless you have a high-tech die substitute

Jafe

"hey siri, roll a die"?

oAlt

12:31

@Jafe ƨ

That feels a bit more than two-thirds, though

PolygonPotpourri

12:44

@Jafe Maybe you could just look up 'random dice' on Google?

Jafe

13:04

sure, i think the voice command might be a more usable option at the monopoly table though

never had that problem though, we have an obscene amount of dice and nobody knows what game which of them is from

msh210

Huh. Here, if I try to use the Monopoly dice for backgammon, they complain. "No! We're only for Monopoly!"

TIL there's a musician named lol creme. lol.

Stiv

Not sure if anything in this, but each of the 7 clues answers is in two parts. If we look at all the first parts together, we have 26 letters in total - and if we do the same for the second parts, we again get 26 letters in total. Significant, perhaps?

Jafe

hmm!

Stiv

Also, am I the only one struggling to come up with a 3-letter word for "Backside, in military lingo" that contains the necessary letter??

oAlt

13:31

@Stiv ok that's quite interesting

msh210

@oAlt very interesting

n o i d l e b i g i n n e r h i g h a c r e l o o k
d i c e t i m e g a m e e y e s t e c h i n c h u p
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
I'm not seeing anything here, but for some reason I suddenly want noodle with ketchup. Does that mean I'm a beginner?

Jafe

13:49

mega-me doing chin-ups, maybe

Sphinx

14:04

Q: A sharp object by guessing letters

Three unknown letters to get to a six letter sharp object. What are those and explain why. Some creative thinking may be needed

word

Stiv

14:34

Ah, well done @juicifer - I could not find SIX for the life of me, and was struggling to confirm 12A too (I spent ages looking for words that meant 'lapse' more literally...) - a deadly pair, unable to confirm either without both.

juicifer

helps to have been raised in a country that regularly glorifies its overpowered military industrial complex, I guess

but yeah I wasn't sure why USE meant that either until I looked up the phrase in the clue, but I had the two crossers so it was the only word that could fit there

5 hours later…

Sphinx

20:00

Q: three stupid words

I'm trying to solve a puzzle on geocaching website. You need to find three words (ONE 9-LETTER, ONE 10-LETTER, ONE 11-LETTER) and the hint is that they roughly mean the same thing, which is 'stupid' (not sure how good a synonym each word is but first two are decent enough). The first one, (the 9-...

word pattern english letters

Sphinx

20:22

Q: The Mathematics of Predicting the Future

I'm predicting the future of a deck of cards. Specifically, I have a deck of $2n$ cards: $n$ are red, and $n$ are black. The deck is shuffled uniformly randomly. I'm dealing out the cards one by one, and trying to predict what color each card will be, before I see it. I don't have any special pow...

mathematics combinatorics probability cards

2 hours later…

GentlePurpleRain

22:26

Probably coincidence?, but if you take the first letter of alternating first/second words (second word of NO DICE, first word of IDLE TIME, etc.) it almost spells "digital" (you just have to stop alternating with LOOK UP).

Also, they all have "inner 'I's" except INNER EYES itself and LOOK UP

I suspect I'm Bible-coding it, here, though.

Sphinx

22:58

Q: A Cryptic Cryptic "Crossword", Redux

This puzzle is a sequel to A Cryptic Cryptic "Crossword". Knowledge of that puzzle is not required to solve this one. Welcome back. I've got 12 more cryptic clues for you; each now is six words, cluing a six-letter word. Unfortunately, once again, the boxes they go into decidedly do not take the ...

word enigmatic-puzzle wordplay cryptic-clues

Stiv

23:16

LOOK UP feels like the most perplexing component to me - it uses letters that aren't prevalent in all the others, putting paid to so many theories I started to run with and had to abandon...

bobble

23:59

That doesn't solve the issue of having multiple independent questions. Same issue as semi-interactive puzzles - the "correct" bits will end up being scattered across answers. Also, some people will only want to work on a subset of the puzzles. Posting individual puzzles allows answers, voting, and acceptance to be focused on a single puzzle. — bobble 2 mins ago

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