The Sphinx's Lair

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Puzzling — BOUNTY!

02:56

Flight Incorporated has just recently posted these advertisements: Buying Fuel for High Prices! Buying fuel for our spaceships Fuel in possession/fuel needed in gallons: $\Delta = 1000/\infty$ Current Bank Balance: $100,000,000,000.00 Required Balance = $\infty$ as fuel required...

riddle

2 hours later…

Sp3000

04:36

@xnor You made the number one community wiki?

(Your answer, I mean)

xnor

04:54

yes, i mean it as an intentional non-answer to demonstrate issues with the question

Sp3000

Ahaha k. Last time I did that I got downvoted, but yours looks like such a reasonable explanation I thought it was the actual answer

xnor

haha, it's hard to tell

Sp3000

I left a comment though

xnor

last time i tried to put an intentional parody answer, i got a comment of praise from the OP for it

Sp3000

... well.

xnor

04:57

your comment is good, probably a more prudent approach than mine

Sp3000

Oh hey, well-written puzzle reopened

But yeah, I just thought amassing more downvotes might be a bad idea :P

xnor

what downvotes do you mean?

Sp3000

I can't remember where the question was, but essentially it was ciphertext that was too short

So I tried coming up with the most convoluted decryption process I could think of

xnor

i think i'd enjoy seeing this, actually

mind finding a link?

Sp3000

Is there a way to find your own deleted answers?

xnor

05:04

i think there's a link in your profile, but they only last a short time

chickened out, i see :-P

Sp3000

Thought it might encourage the wrong type of answers :P

How much rep do you need to view deleted posts?

xnor

2000 i believe

i'm fairly close

Sp3000

pastebin.com/DWrJ5pvt Well I found it

(it was originally less arbitrary until I realised I misspelt my Spanish)

Relevant question: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/5486/crack-the-code-l0ejau

xnor

that's pretty damn good!

i wish i could upvote it

Sp3000

Ahaha well I thought the question was so bad in the end I just ignored it

I mean, using a URL shortening site and calling it a puzzle

2 hours later…

Mew

06:51

Hello

3 hours later…

A E

10:14

@xnor, LOL@ "That's Numberwang!" puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/guess-the-number

Sp3000

@AE Also more feedback: Zero-width chars were the first thing I immediately thought of with the steg question. I'm pretty sure it'd take people a lot of time to get it if they'd never seen it before though :P

A E

10:43

@Sp3000 Yeah, I was intending for that one to be pretty obvious. Just wanting to explain the technique really, rather than actually make a difficult puzzle. Thanks for fb though! :)

Sp3000

Ahaha k, I see :P

3 hours later…

COTO

13:40

Does anyone know why I can't post a bounty for this question? There isn't even the block at the end indicating "You can offer a bounty in X hours." Can I not offer a bounty on a question with an accepted answer?

Geobits

13:57

@COTO They remove the link and "you can set a bounty in X" message if it has an accepted answer and is less than two days old. For reasons: meta.stackexchange.com/a/138428/212780

You should be able to bounty after two days, whether it has an accepted answer or not.

COTO

@Geobits Ah. Thanks for clarifying that.