The Sphinx's Lair

This is part 58 of the puzzle series Around the World in Many Days. Each part is solvable on its own. Dear Puzzling, This is a diagramless checkerboard crossword. Empty cells are either blue or white; one of these cell colours only contains vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and the other only consonants (i...

Sphinx

4:33 AM

0

Q: Container without order

You try to see doubly well But I'm not for locations You try to slither in through But I'm not for foreign words Don't worry, I'm here to store You just need a key to find The time admits it's no chore The log; from how I'm designed What am I?

riddle knowledge rhyme poetry

Dannyu NDos

This riddle might render too easy to some people but whatever

Jafe

it's been my experience that some people on PSE are simply irriddlable

bobble

it's rather unclear why I'm still here when my only real contribution to the site is moderation efforts, but oh well I am

I actually stopped active checking of the other SE sites where I had been moderating, because this is the only site I still enjoy checking in on

Jafe

the fact that you still enjoy it might answer why you're still here

bobble

I enjoy moderation. That's not supposed to be the enjoyable part.

Dannyu NDos

4:45 AM

@Jafe What does "irriddlable" mean? I don't find it in my dict.

Jafe

yeah haven't done much moderating here but it seems like a pretty thankless task, i'm glad we have people here who keep up with it

@DannyuNDos "unable to be fooled by riddles"

Dannyu NDos

So... They'll solve every riddle?

Jafe

you won't find it in a dictionary... in fact, google only gives one hit and that's by me

yeah

bobble

It's not a word in common use, as a clarification if you're a non-native English speaker. it takes a base word ("riddle") and add a suffix ("able", for ability/potential) and a prefix ("ir", for not) to make a compound whose meaning could be sussed out by someone with enough familiarity with English

Jafe

right, same structure as words like "irredeemable" (unable to be redeemed)

(which is an existing word in the dictionary)

Dannyu NDos

4:49 AM

That aside... What do you think about the poem?

It's only half rhymed, literally.

bobble

I get people annoyed with me on a semi-regular basis; I've accepted it as the cost of doing business. The very fact that I'm active in moderation means that I'm more harsh than the standard PSE user, who does approximately nothing. I admit that I am on the harsher end of the spectrum of active moderators. However, I make every attempt to accompany my close-votes and flags with comments, so my motivations/reasoning are clear and able to be disagreed with.

Dannyu NDos

7 syllables per line; I dunno that fits the English standards, but it's an effort from a non-native.

bobble

Amusingly the latest person accusing me of being a "dictator" and "bully" for arbitrarily deciding which questions were closed, was a poster of a question which I had not voted to close.

Jafe

"how dare you arbitrarily decide not to close my question!"

bobble

From what I understood of the situation, they directed their anger at me because none of the close-voters commented. I was the only commenter - I posted the standard request for attribution, followed by some clarification questions. I left before I got the last answer. When I came back, I had a message in my inbox accursing me of dictatorship while five other users had VTC'ed.

Sphinx

4:55 AM

0

Q: 75 different integers; each one is squared or cubed. What is the minimum of different results?

There are 75 different integer numbers (belonging to Z set). E. g., they are written down on a blackboard. A person erased all the originals, replacing every single initial number with either its square or its cube. In other words, each original number was either squared or cubed, the choice betw...

formation-of-numbers

bobble

They also accused me of "ruining the sense of community" when they'd only been a user for 2 days. I haven't actually flagged their comment for deletion because I find it so hilarious I keep going back to re-read

Jafe

@DannyuNDos another non-native here... i think english poems usually follow some kind of word-stress pattern, like ba-BAM ba-BAM ba-BAM, or ba-BAM-ba ba-BAM-ba ba-BAM-ba, or similar

Dannyu NDos

I've never been able to care stresses.

Jafe

an example of #1 would be "to be or not to be, that is the question", and an example of #2 "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens"

bobble

Yep, iambic (ba-BAM ba-BAM) is most common

Jafe

5:03 AM

actually maybe a better example of #2 is "there once was a man from nantucket"... my example was missing an unstressed syllable at the start

bobble

I attribute my good sense of rhythm and stress to the sheer quantity of musicals I consumed as a wee one

It is something that comes much easier with practice, sadly for those who wish to pick it up quickly. I learned rhythm much the same way as I learned vocabulary: by accident while I was frantically devouring any words within reach.

anyways, feel free to ping me about my moderation stuff in here; I pop in often enough to be pingable

Jafe

musically speaking though a sense of rhythm is weirdly innate, a lot of people get it right without ever trying to "learn" it and for others it's constant struggle

i was in a garage band in my 20s and we had a singer who could not freaking count to four, no matter how hard we tried to teach him

oAlt

@Sphinx I've never found any promising Native American terms for White people

Jafe

(rechecks dictionary) good, still there

2

oAlt

6:49 AM

I think I got all the words, but I'm struggling with the logical deduction part. I'm trying not to use the assumption that a circle must have a letter in it since it doesn't really state that in the rules...

msh210

It says every blank square must have a letter.

@oAlt

> fill the the grid with the answers

Jafe

7:08 AM

^ yes

oAlt

oh

i was doubting it a bit since it didn't say "fill all of the grid"

anyway thanks for the clarification

msh210

"the the" means "all of the" in Finno-Australian English :-P

(I'm just teasing, Jafe. I've certainly many mistakes of the same sort myself.)

Jafe

no no it's "fill the thé grid", you have to fill it with french tea brands

(thanks for pointing that out, fixing...)

lol it's been 4 hours and now two answers within 30 sec of each other

oAlt

7:33 AM

Oh wow

I'm curious to see what the intended logical path for putting all the answers in was... I wasn't finding it since my process was very slow

(Never had I imagined that you can even fill all of the grid in the first place)

Jafe

PDT's answer has some of the main steps

i'll make a video of it as well but i'ts gonna be a while since i now have a 10-puzzle backlog to catch up...

oAlt

(write-up coming up in a few)

@Jafe yeah that's fine

My process: rot13(V qrqhprq gur cbfvgvbaf bs cnanzn pnany, bcrengvp naq ertrarengr jvgu gur uryc bs jurer urknqrpvzny pbhyq or, nygubhtu vg qbrf abg gryy zr jurer urknqrpvzny vf. V riraghnyyl sbhaq jurer urknqrpvzny jnf ol cebprff bs ryvzvangvba (sbhegu ebj pna'g unir vg orpnhfr gura lbh pna'g cynpr n jbeq gung unf ebj guerr pbyhza bar, naq rvtugu ebj'f abg vg rvgure fvapr gur obggbz svir pryyf va pbyhza gjb zhfg pbagnva n svir yrggre jbeq juvpu vf rvgure phovg be xriva))

Then rot13(V nyfb unq gur yvynprengrq cneg. V sbhaq gung ebj gra pbyhza bar unq gb rkgraq gb ebj gra pbyhza svir be orlbaq ohg gur bayl jbeq fngvfslvat gung jbhyq or yvynp. Gura ebj gra pbyhza frira unf gb or cneg bs n jbeq bs sbhe yrggref be zber, fb vg rvgure unq gb funer yrggref sebz yvynp, va juvpu pnfr ynprengrq unq gb or gurer, be vg qvqa'g funer yrggref, va juvpu pnfr ab jbeq pna or gurer, fb vg unq gb or cneg bs ynprengrq)

But I only got to that part

Oops, I meant gragu rather than rvtugu in the first paragraph

Well, back to the C4 I go I guess...

Dannyu NDos

7:55 AM

Kudos to you; tbh, I gave up about the C4.

oAlt

Lol

I feel like I'm not gonna go anywhere with this clue again though

I'm still searching for Georgian bands

msh210

Why bands specifically and not, say, politicians or actors?

For example, (fearsome) Georgians from the noughties can be OSSETIANS, arguably.

oAlt

Just to exhaust everything in that category

msh210

(But I don't see any wordplay for OSSETIANS.)

Dannyu NDos

Ossetians? Like, South Ossetia?

Jafe

8:00 AM

there's also a north ossetia (a republic part of the russian federation)

msh210

@DannyuNDos yeah

If the definition is "Right wing leader of Armenians" then it must surely end in "yan".

If "right" means "proper/real" (as in "you've made a right mess of it") then "Right wing leader" could be one of these people. (But I highly doubt that's the intent.)

Hm, if HRSHERS meant "fearsome" then the answer could be THRASHERS.

oAlt

8:21 AM

Well, Armen Sarkissian has the KISS (smack) and S (is), but Arian isn't a term for fearsome Georgians from the naughties. And Wikipedia doesn't say that he was right-leaning.

And the enumeration also doesn't match.

msh210

I guess anyone from 1800–1809 Britain was a Georgian (=from the era of King George) from the noughties.

Jafe

the era of noughty business

damn PDT deleted their answer, which was the only one with any steps explained for the diagramless logic, for being 30 sec later than the other one

when will people learn that slow and steady wins the race (within reason)

y'all want a c4 hint already or nah?

(nobody says y'all in australia but "yous" just sounds wrong to me... yes, more wrong than "y'all")

msh210

8:50 AM

@Jafe that's not a nice thing to call him…

(the importance of commas)

@Jafe yes, but that may be just me

oAlt

I second ^

msh210

you agree that it's just me? :-)

Jafe

ha, right... needed a comma there

here goes

CCCC hint: The correct answer has already been mentioned

msh210

… at some point in the history of the world.

oAlt

@Jafe 😳

msh210

8:55 AM

The only 9-letter potential answers I see in the chat are Ossetians and Thrashers. And Thrashers fits the definition better (plus, Jafe often clues American sports teams). But what the heck is the wordplay?

oAlt

@Jafe R ("right" wing) A(rmenians) 'S (is) H (smack, heroin) in THE + (fea)RS(ome) = (Atlanta) Thrashers, as msh210 had found earlier (thanks)

Took me a while to see how smack = H

msh210

thank you for laying that to rest

oAlt

np

msh210

I didn't even consider using THE per se, even though it was staring me in the face.

Jafe

correct

@msh210 maybe if i had doubled it

msh210

9:08 AM

:-D

oAlt

lol

CCCC: Perhaps four-leaf clover could start to cause injury after girl gains a thousand (5 5)

msh210

That would be kinda heavy, yeah.

lucky charm = c_ harm after Lucy gains K

oAlt

@msh210 yup!

msh210

CCCC: Extra vowel for 'boistrous'? (8)

Sphinx

9:28 AM

0

Q: I am obviously not a thief!

Tearing from fearing, Hands nervously interlocking because of the robbing, Since the cheating done in that meeting, So in the center of a dark alley I hide, Like a rudiment my heart pounding at my side! If each of these lines you truly understand, Then you would know exactly what I am! (6)

riddle word rhyme lateral-thinking word-property

oAlt

@msh210 oh I like this, it's overflow = vowelfor*

msh210

yes it is; and thanks

oAlt

CCCC: Transfer data, perform with no loss, urge with no gauge (8)

Jafe

9:50 AM

do + w/ + N + L + (-g)oad

oAlt

@Jafe ye

Jafe

CCCC: Accordin' to Spooner, the usual solution is to adapt 'em to run on another platform after expirin' (10)

oAlt

Lol

Daniel S

10:22 AM

@Jafe POSTMORTEM = "most port 'em"

Nice to start the day with the Rev.

oAlt

nice find

I didn't even think "after" would be the start of the def

Jafe

10:37 AM

@DanielS correcto

Daniel S

Off colour clue warning...

CCCC: Elected representatives are f**king baboons! (8)

Jafe

👀

if baboon can be a verb maybe it's an anagram of are f king

there are all kinds of words for a country's parliament... reichstag, althing, knesset, ...

oh nvm i think i know what this is

oAlt

@DanielS Oh wow

Jafe

congress can mean elected representatives as well as f**king... i bet it's one of those weird collective animal nouns for baboons as well

for a triple def

ACB

@Jafe I will add the logical steps to my answer. Btw, neither the other answer had explanations initially. However I didn't expect that answer to be deleted.

Daniel S

10:46 AM

@Jafe Indeed it is.

Jafe

"a congress of baboons" sounds intentionally funny in itself

Daniel S

One suspects "a coalition of cheetahs" may have been invented by the same person.

Jafe

a parliament of owls doesn't have the same negative ring to it... think owls are supposed to be wise

Stiv

10:59 AM

@bobble Gosh, just seen that comment. I know you're managing to put a comical spin on it but I'm so sorry you received that hate - nobody deserves that and you do an excellent job of moderating as a site user. Don't stop.

5

On a separate note (to revert back to previous conversation), whoever names collective nouns really should make better use of rhyme. A 'platoon of baboons' is surely top choice, yes??

They even use 'troop' - what were they thinking?!

Jafe

Mar 9 at 0:25, by Jafe

after having rhymed for 9 months can you even switch it off anymore

Stiv

Haha! I HAVE A PROBLEM!

2

Jafe

oh man platoon fits the clue i was trying to think of, i have to use it now

Daniel S

I'm a fan of alliteration for collective nouns; there's something satisfying about saying "a wisdom of wombats".

Jafe

(disappears into the study for six hours)

msh210

11:40 AM

@Jafe a brown one?

@DanielS did you mean that as an intensifier or as a verb?

Jafe

11:55 AM

CCCC: Platoon's responsible is following – drive, quick! I continue, under pressure, to give an explorer's greeting (2,11,1,7)

don't look at me, stiv made me do it

Daniel S

@Jafe DR LIVINGSTONE I PRESUME = DR + LIVING + STONE + I + P +RESUME

(drive, quick, Platoon's director, I, pressure, continue)

oAlt

Augh I had just found it lol

Stiv

Ditto!

The enumeration could only be one thing...

Jafe

that's right

Daniel S

CCCC: Platoon's support died an enemy. (5)

oAlt

12:10 PM

@DanielS Willem DAFOE (Platoon's support) = d. a foe

Daniel S

@oAlt Correct!

oAlt

CCCC: Science fiction horror series causes pain: it features forest patroller getting too haughty at the start (8 6)

msh210

st(ranger+th)ings

oAlt

@msh210 yep!

msh210

CCCC: Utopian Pol Pot's citizenry (10)

oAlt

12:15 PM

@msh210 apparently pot can be slang for deterioration, so we have utopianpol* = population

msh210

@oAlt indeed so. (most commonly IME in the phrase "gone to pot")

oAlt

ah

@Jafe CCCC: Car, having stayed by Korean singer's side, has examination after expirin' (7)

Daniel S

@oAlt AUTO + PSY

oAlt

@DanielS you got it

Daniel S

CCCC: Pot's neighbour takes part in mob behaviour, classy! (7, 5)

msh210

12:25 PM

pot's neighbor = KETTLE'S BLACK… now what's the wordplay…

Jafe

@ACB love the animated explanation

msh210

Are we back to dongs again? Phạm Văn Đồng was Pol Pot's neighbor

(in the sense that he ruled a neighboring country)

oAlt

@Jafe Wow, I like that too

It also saves a lot of images and text

Jafe

@msh210 dong (pot's neighbour) bangs (takes part in mob behaviour)... but that doesn't sound classy

(definition 12)

msh210

There are too many u's in this C4… they're confusing me.

Jafe

12:38 PM

also, how did i not remember willem dafoe being in platoon... i'm sure i've seen the film

Daniel S

@msh210 Apologies to SA solvers; I was raised in the K

msh210

you Rightpondians…

oAlt

(Oh it's been a while since the chat log for the day got subdivided. I don't remember when the last time was...)

Jafe

that's because kids these days don't even chat anymore, everyone's too busy staring at their scr... wait

re: the schwa discussion from a couple of days ago, wikipedia seems to claim that much of north american english has [ɜ] as the expression of the "jump" vowel

which is a central vowel so it actually kinda makes sense to denote it as /ə/ rather than /ʌ/

i thought the other day that i may have actually been aware of the distinction on some level

like if i say "steph curry", the vowel in curry sounds different than in "chicken curry", because i've only heard his name pronounced the american way, even though i know the word curry

Sphinx

2

Q: Data is plural?

The three overlapping ellipses form seven curved regions. Your task is to place exactly one tile per region, so that the four tiles in any one ellipse can solve the corresponding clue!

knowledge wordplay lateral-thinking

msh210

12:53 PM

data *are plural

juicifer

@Jafe wait how do y'all say curry

msh210

I have never heard or said the name, as far as I recall, but the word (the food) I pronounce to rhyme with hurry but not with furry.

juicifer

see in my dialect those are the same vowel

msh210

oh, for me hurry and curry rhyme with Murray, but furry rhymes with blurry

(and none of those rhymes with bury)

juicifer

1:09 PM

yeah bury sounds like berry and barry

msh210

for me it sounds like berry but not like Barry

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

> Most North American English dialects merge the lax vowels with the tense vowels before /r/ and so "marry" and "merry" have the same vowel as "mare", "mirror" has the same vowel as "mere", "forest" has the same vowel as the stressed form of "for", and "hurry" has the same vowel as "stir" as well as that found in the second syllable of "letter".

My dialect is not one of "most North American English dialects". I have none of the listed mergers.

juicifer

ah those voice recordings definitely helped

Jafe

see this is what i'm talking about, it's chaos and madness and i love it

how prescriptive linguists ever cope with english existing i'll never know

i assume there's a lot of closing eyes and ears and going la la la

@juicifer to me the food is closer to car than cur, and how i hear steph pronounced is closer to cur

juicifer

gotcha

msh210

"Murray and Barry ate curry in a hurry. It was hot, so their tongues got furry, their vision got blurry, and we had to bury them." voca.ro/14aD6mX5VqXX

oAlt

1:28 PM

@juicifer I pronounce them the same as well

Hah time to prepare another voice line (I'll do it later)

If the definition is pot then it could be a slang term for the "marijuana" pot, and there are quite many of those...

Incidentally, one of them is "green paint", which would probably make the latter statement here untrue now. (Well, depending on how popular the term actually is...)

juicifer

interestingly m-w has a definition for green paint that is related to neither crosswords or marijuana: merriam-webster.com/dictionary/green%20paint

oAlt

1:44 PM

ooh TIL

bobble

@Stiv you're kind :)

Oh! This is the only community I'm in where I haven't bragged yet: I'll be starting a PhD program in the fall. I'm very excited, but I still have to graduate the last term of my bachelor's degree first.

Jafe

wow that does sound exciting

Daniel S

@bobble Congratulation and all the best for that last term.

juicifer

@bobble very cool! what field?

bobble

Bioinformatics

juicifer

1:59 PM

ooh, that's awesome

Stiv

2:12 PM

@bobble An excellent choice ;-)

oAlt

2:30 PM

@bobble Ooh interesting, congratulations and good luck :))

Out of curiosity, and this shows my lack of awareness about the outside world, isn't there a master's between the bachelor's and the PhD?

@msh210 voca.ro/16cOWwRNXNrQ hopefully this is good enough

b_jonas

@oAlt In normal places yes; the US education is weird though.

oAlt

Ahhh

Ankoganit

2:55 PM

@bobble congrats!

bobble

In the US, a master's isn't assumed as a PhD pre-requisite, but people will still do one if they 1) have poor bachelor's grades/went to a bad university, and want to prove they are actually good at the subject, 2) want to switch to a different field, 3) want more research experience so they know whether a PhD is the right path, 4) weren't planning on the PhD initially, etc.

I had the option do so; it would have entailed an extra year at the same university (we have a combined bachelor's-master's program that lets you overlap the last bachelor's year with the first master's), but that would have cost quite some tuition (the money saved for me to go to college ran out my second year) and I already had a decent academic & research profile, plus I have a strong idea of what field I want to study in the PhD. Thus the master's wasn't necessary for me

Ankoganit

3:14 PM

This is one the few things I actually like about the US education system honestly

A lot of highly motivated people with a bachelor's degree are already ready for research

msh210

@bobble best of luck!

@bobble IIRC, whether a master's is required before joining a Ph.D. program in the U.S. depends on the field

@oAlt cool

Ankoganit

@msh210 That makes sense, maybe it depends on the specific school+program too?

msh210

it may well

bobble

Basically anything you can say about academia differs based on the field, but it's certainly quite common to admit bachelor's-only students across many fields

msh210

@bobble fair enough

bobble

3:17 PM

32

Q: PhD in the US compared to Europe

I start my master studies this fall in quantitative finance/economics in Europe. Since this will just take 3-4 semesters I want to take a look ahead and obviously PhD is one option to do. So I am wondering if it makes sense to go to the US for PhD, since I will have already a master's degree in...

phd united-states europe switzerland

Sphinx

3:54 PM

0

Q: Coding and decoding - ISSUE and DATES

The question goes as: If the word $\text{ISSUE}$ is written as $341145$, how is $\text{DATES}$ written as? The answer is: In the case of ISSUE, I get the logic as - the product of the place values of all the letters gives us the final number. $\text{ISSUE}=9\times19\times19\times21\times5=3411...

letter-sequence word-sequence

Stiv

The CCCC has all the necessary charades in place to form RAINBOW RIOTS (pot [of gold]'s neighbour being a rainbow, riots being 'takes part in mob behaviour'). If only it meant 'classy'...

Ankoganit

"non-profit organisation that creates arts and cultural projects to advocate for human rights for LGBTQ people around the world" sounds pretty classy to me

juicifer

4:34 PM

is this anything?

oAlt

5:21 PM

@bobble Ahhh TIL

@Ankoganit Ohh

msh210

9:47 PM

@Ankoganit note that American Ph.D. programs that continue from the baccalaureate begin with coursework

Ankoganit

@msh210 true! (I'm in one of them at present :) ) but schools differ on exactly how much you're expected to prioritize the coursework, so I feel it's good to have the freedom to jump straight into research, at least in schools who don't make the coursework requirements too bad

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