The Sphinx's Lair

5:38 AM

Re Longest wordle, there are 7875 words in the dictionary that do not share any letter with fuzzy; runner up is civic at 7598

6:16 AM

fuzzy has a game of length 8992 without using yellow matches, civic giving only 8676 (which is still 2nd)

A: What is the longest Wordle game?

7:11 AM

It's over 9000! Yes, the maximum achievable score is precisely 9001, using the word list provided by OP (Github Gist). The secret word for this game is fuzzy. You can try the following words in order: (words in the same group can be used in any order) ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ : 7875 words that do not contain any o...

It's absolutely crazy that you can pick 9000+ words from 12972-word dictionary to get a valid "consistent wordle" game

7:25 AM

well 9000 is definitely up from 10 which is the maximum my code found when i left it running overnight

Lol

nevermind, I guess it's not consistent in terms of unusable letters

Re the C4, the V and A is an art gallery (also a pair of key Europeans backing said art gallery), and the van looks good for the first word of a two-word Dutch book title. But that'd mean "not wanting to ponder" would have to clue two letters… and anyway I can't find a Dutch book with such a title… and it's two Euopeans, not one. So this is almost certainly not it. The whole "to ponder Ducth book" is very opaque to me.

"not wanting to ponder" could just be removing a synonym of ponder

but yeah how many dutch books could there be, like 12?

if that

7:38 AM

anne frank's diary and, um...

"not wanting" would mean "not lacking", not "lacking", no?

maybe "ponder" means someone who ponds (dams water)

"ponder Dutch" = dike

maybe it's a book by someone named Dutch

hm, that's a good idea

there are no 3,4 books listed here

nor here

8:08 AM

Regarding the C4, something to do with this?

Apparently a synonym is "lock", which could be the (4) part.

num lock is a 3,4 key

could very well be relevant

NUM LOCK (key) = _N + (MUSEUM (art gallery) - MUSE (ponder)) + LOCK (Dutch book) ?

ohh i bet that's it

8:55 AM

For reference, Dutch book = LOCK

...And I see that's already been said above - never mind! :)

9:12 AM

hehe

@oAlt ^

9:37 AM

@DannyuNDos ah nice find!

and yeah re: earlier, i can sorta see both "wanting" and "not wanting" as removal indicators

9:59 AM

@DannyuNDos That's correct!

Yay!

CCCC: A boss for knights, also the ninth beginning of others (5)

10:15 AM

Richard Nixon was the president of the US, which could be a kind of boss I guess, and Nixon has 2 n's (knights) and IX (the ninth) O (the beginning of others), but there's no containment indicator for this which makes me think this is not it

a knight in chess is N, and IX+O_ inside NN is NIXON, who was a boss... but i doubt that's the answer because "also" doesn't mean "inside"

wow jinx

oh wow hahahaha

No, NIXON isn't it. No containment indicator, indeed.

good to know

1 hour later…

Sphinx

11:42 AM

Q: A Qute Connect Wall

Group all of these words into 4 groups. All the groups have a certain famous individual in CINEMA as their theme. WHITE BLONDE HEAD GENERAL MAMBA MAJOR APACHE SEÑOR PINK MOUTH HUGO MOUNTAIN-SNAKE DAISY OMAR BROWN BEAR

knowledge connect-wall

12:15 PM

what else could "ninth" be doing

Maybe "ninth beginning" = N? or G??

maybe ninth could be I (as in part A, part B etc)

12:32 PM

arthur was a boss for knights... except for those who say ni

@Jafe or ΠΙΙΙΙ

clearly

juicifer

@msh210 the knights who say ΠΙΙΙΙ

1 hour later…

bobble

1:43 PM

@bobble, did you miss the lateral-thinking at the foot of the question? For one, I'm enjoying the creative answers outside the "spirit" of the original. — Toby Speight 7 hours ago

@oAlt ... and here we see that no one agrees with me, again

Even if other people in chat/meta agree on a rule, when it comes time to actually implement it I can end up alone and attacked as an unfair police

2:08 PM

Sadly yeah, since a selection of people in chat/meta may not be a good sample of the whole population of PSE

imo at least

Q: The 7-clue 6x6 Sudoku isn't solvable uniquely: But how to solve it as a Sixy Sudoku?

2:36 PM

somehow that puzzle has 4 close votes with +22 score and 5k views... but then again we famously closed a q with +81 and 13k views so what do i know

it might be a more interesting site if we actually encouraged questions that attract that kind of participation

bobble

It's all HNQ traffic, people having a laugh without any actual knowledge of our site's quality guidelines

Chasing HNQ popularity would mean e.g. Politics SE having constant questions picking a fight over the issue of the day, and then not bothering to quality-control the answers

juicifer

I think this might be a case where having a diamond badge would allow you to throw around more weight

people may very well be looking at you like "oh they're just some user who thinks they know better than everyone else, why do they get to tell me what I can and can't do" whereas they probably wouldn't have that thought if they were dealing with someone specifically marked as a moderator

bobble

2:52 PM

From experience looking at other sites, if I had a diamond it would be cast as an mean moderator abusing their diamond to kill everyone's fun

If people want to break the rules, anyone who tells them that rules exist...

juicifer

I mean yeah that may be true

Sphinx

3:29 PM

A month ago, I posted this question asking if the 7-clue Sudoku that I had found was solvable as a regular Sudoku. The answer was no (in fact there were 281 solutions to it!), however I want to know how to solve it like it was originally intended so. Goal of Sixy Sudoku: Insert the digits 1-6 ju...

logical-deduction grid-deduction sudoku

4:20 PM

The head of the Knights of Columbus is a guy named Kelly. The head of the Order of the Thistle is a guy named Scott. I don't see wordplay for either of them. The currents heads of the orders of Malta, the British Empire, the Bath, and the Garter, and of the Victorian Order, don't have 5-letter names.

4:55 PM

This could well be an answer from the realm of video games - Dannyu is quite partial to those...! Anyone think of a baddie 'boss' who fits some of the letter suggestions flying around?

^ I did think of that too

Ending in O is pretty likely I reckon

e.g. if 'for knights' could be (mis)parsed as WAR, 'the ninth' is I, and we have O_ then we could generate WARIO, who was the boss of Super Mario Land 2.

@Stiv that seems plausible, though I agree with your parenthetical