The Sphinx's Lair

Rand al'Thor

00:11

New puzzle from me: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42333/…

Areeb

Seems puzzling

Rand al'Thor

:-D

I think (hope) people will like the solution when it's discovered.

I just hope I haven't made it too hard.

Areeb

It was obviously Mad Jason with his anger issues

I always like interesting solutions

Rand al'Thor

I'm still struggling with the twin text-message puzzles from @IAmInPLS and @LukasRotter.

Gareth McCaughan

so are we all...

Rand al'Thor

00:19

What's "the world's most infamous book depository"?

6 letters, so can't be Alexandria.

Gareth McCaughan

damn, that was my first guess. second was the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (not exactly a depository) but that's a bit more than 6 letters too

what's the context for the question?

(is it in the historical sc hunt I haven't looked at yet?)

Deusovi has posted an allegedly nearly done solution in which the answer to that one appears to be DALLAS

I have no idea why

Rand al'Thor

Yep, @Deusovi has put me to shame on that one.

Gareth McCaughan

ah, and the Dallas thing is the JFK assassination

Texas School Book Depository

The Texas School Book Depository, now known as the Dallas County Administration Building, is a seven-floor building facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, United States. The building is most notable for its connection to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. An employee, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot and killed the president from a sixth floor window on the building's southeastern corner. The structure is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. It is located at 411 Elm Street on the northwest corner of Elm and North Houston Streets, at the western end of downtown Dallas. == Earl...

about which I had no idea

Rand al'Thor

Americans have an advantage in that puzzle :-/

Gareth McCaughan

(I still think Alexandria is infamouser, though)

Areeb

00:23

"Library" almost works

Gareth McCaughan

aside from being the wrong length and having nothing specially infamous about it, you mean?

Rand al'Thor

I had to do a bit of Googling to solve "Among presidents, a unique label for Buchanan" too.

Areeb

Haha I'd fudged up my definition of infamous a bit

Rand al'Thor

Heh, at least I caught one thing Deusovi didn't:

3rd clue in the 2nd crossword should be TREATY (as in Naval Treaty). — rand al'thor 30 secs ago

Areeb

Oooh wasn't there a collection of missing books? Thomas Jefferson had lost them and they turned up somewhere

Rand al'Thor

00:27

Damn, trying to remember which Sherlock Holmes story was called "something Bachelor" without looking it up.

Areeb

The one with the Mormons in it?

Rand al'Thor

Noble Bachelor!

And NOBLE fits the 6th clue in the 1st crossword.

Phew.

I wonder if I should just delete my CW answer now?

There's not really much point, now that Deusovi has outdone it so much on his own.

Areeb

Might as well then, save the SE servers a few bytes of storage

Rand al'Thor

Nah, they store deleted answers too :-)

Areeb

Why though? 0.o

Rand al'Thor

00:39

Sometimes deleted posts get undeleted again.

That's the beauty of the SE system: very little is irreversible.

And what is irreversible is only doable by mods, who are generally trusted to be careful with it.

Gareth McCaughan

I'm not understanding why the box full of emperors leads to SAINTS in Deusovi's answer.

Areeb

That's not a bad idea

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Me neither. RULERS seems like a better fit.

Or ROMANS even.

Gareth McCaughan

Whatever it is it has to fit into ALL ____ ______

where the last word seems like it has to be ORDERED or something like that, which is kinda weird

since it's supposed to yield a date unless I'm very confused

Rand al'Thor

A year, I think?

Gareth McCaughan

00:43

perhaps it's ALL ROMANS ORDERED and refers to some census (e.g., the possibly nonexistent one in Luke's gospel)

Rand al'Thor

Maybe it was the year that all Romans did something-or-other.

Gareth McCaughan

but I hope it's a bit more convincing than that

Rand al'Thor

Is there another word that fits better than ORDERED?

Gareth McCaughan

I hope so

but haven't thought of one yet

"we were only following orders" is the usual English rendering. Apparently auf Deutsch it's "Befehl ist Befehl" which is even less helpful.

maybe it's not ROMANS or RULERS but something entirely different that will become obvious when we solve the remaining clue in that box

which I confess has me baffled right now

"A bit of warmth, but praise for Les mixed in Jacobian role". Really Jacobian? I thought that was only for maths (pertaining to Jacobi) versus Jacobean for the historical usage (pertaining to someone called James).

but whether it be Jacobian or Jacobean I can't solve it yet

8-letter emperors: TIBERIUS CALIGULA CLAUDIUS DOMITIAN AURELIUS COMMODUS PERTINAX MACRINUS PUPIENUS BALBINUS (gosh, what a lot of Roman emperors I'd never heard of before) AEMILIAN VALERIAN AURELIAN NUMERIAN MAXIMIAN GALERIUS LICINIUS VETRANIO ARCADIUS HONORIUS MAJORIAN OLYBRIUS and now I'll stop because there are no more 8-letter ones until we're well into the Byzantines who surely don't count

Rand al'Thor

How many Roman emperors can there be with 8-letter names?

Heh, GMTA :-)

Gareth McCaughan

00:52

lots, it turns out

I may have missed some

Rand al'Thor

But we probably need the letters LES (in some order) in there as well. That narrows it down.

Assuming "Les mixed in" is to be interpreted in the usual cryptic-crossword way.

Gareth McCaughan

Probably. But it feels like there's too much in the clue to fit everything in.

If "Les mixed in" means LES is in there, where are the other letters coming from? You'd think "A bit of warmth" would mean W but Ws are in very short supply among Roman emperors, or in fact Roman anything.

Rand al'Thor

I was thinking "A bit of warmth, but praise" might be the literal part.

And we have the letters LES inside something Jacobian.

Gareth McCaughan

and "for" is just syntax? yeah, maybe

though "a bit of warmth but praise" is a funny sort of definition

anyway, I don't think there's a Roman emperor called PARTIALLES DERIVATIVES.

oh, sorry, it says mixed so PARTIALESL DERIVATIVES.

but again we don't know it actually has anything to do with Roman emperors. Maybe there's some other set of which AUGUSTUS, NERO and CAESAR are members. Hmmmmmm.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Ha! :-D

I was looking for anagrams of LES MATRI (minus the X because it's a rare letter), but no joy.

Gareth McCaughan

00:58

on the obvious hypothesis that Jacobian means Jacobean, "Jacobean role" could mean any of the zillions of roles in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and all we have to do is list them all and try combining with the letters of LES. Kill me now.

Rand al'Thor

VTCs needed, btw.

Gareth McCaughan

voted

Rand al'Thor

I also looked for anagrams of LES JAMES, but there aren't many J's in Roman names.

Gareth McCaughan

and JAMES for "Jacobian role" would be kinda feeble anyway

Rand al'Thor

True.

goes back to looking at the twin text-message puzzles

Gareth McCaughan

01:07

ooo, LAUD is praise and found inside CLAUDIUS, and also Claudius is the bad guy in Hamlet.

ahhh

CELSIUS with LAUD instead of ELS (Les mixed)

Rand al'Thor

Aha! Nice one :-)

Gareth McCaughan

the four emperor names in the box happen to be (in a different order) the first four names of Germanicus (member of the same family as the other guys, was never emperor) but I doubt that's in any way relevant.

oh, no, wait, I think I'm confused about that and they're actually the first four names of the emperor Nero, who took inter alia the name Germanicus

yup. anyway, I don't think it helps

Rand al'Thor

Still no attention on my new murder mystery ...

Gareth McCaughan

it's not an easy one to get into, I think

I have a theory about how it works "at top level" but am too lazy to try to figure out details

and am not generally super-keen on (what I take to be) this sort of puzzle
(for the avoidance of doubt, this is not a criticism of the kind of puzzle but a comment on my own mental quirks)

Rand al'Thor

I'm a bit worried that I should have left more clues about the method, but then people around here are pretty damn clever, so maybe (hopefully) it'll be OK anyway.

Gareth McCaughan

01:20

well, you've made it very clear that the dates are important, and it's apparent that there is a place name associated with each date, which seems like it offers some avenues for attack

Rand al'Thor

"a call time for ants" = "faecal lint storm" :-/

Gareth McCaughan

the "obvious" guess is that we turn the dates into letters (e.g. by 1=A..26=Z, but other possibilities exist) and combine them somehow with the place names, and for two of the three people it works "right" and for the third something is wrong indicating that he wasn't really with Dan when he said he was or something of the kind.

turning dates into triples of letters via 1=A..26=Z seems to give mostly common-ish letters rather than lots of QXZ nonsense which is promising, but it's not immediately obvious what to do after that and if my suspicion is that actually 1/3 are "wrong" that makes it a bit harder to attack

note: I am not fishing for hints here

none of the above seems particularly hard to think of, so if any of it is the right sort of thing then there's a good chance someone less lazy than me is already trying specifics and making progress

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan And I'm having to restrain myself from giving any :-)

Gareth McCaughan

as indeed there is if it's all complete bullshit

please continue restraining yourself

I don't think it's likely that I'll try to solve the puzzle but other people may be reading this

Rand al'Thor

It's fun (in an evil sort of way) to watch people struggle with a puzzle you made.

You need to post some questions, so you can experience it too!

Gareth McCaughan

01:26

as for the text messages, yeah, there are lots of silly anagrams to be found but if there's anything useful I failed to find it (though I didn't spend infinitely long about it)

yeahbut I'm crap at inventing puzzles

partly through plain ordinary lack of imagination, partly because I'm super-picky so get discouraged very readily

Rand al'Thor

I wonder if the fact that the friend is a musician is relevant. If so, I probably don't have much chance of solving it.

Gareth McCaughan

I guess having someone called Jason in a puzzle full of dates is kinda provocative, but I'm guessing it's coincidence (still not fishing for hints)

Rand al'Thor

(although, "call time for ants" = "flotsam clarinet" could be relevant?)

Gareth McCaughan

I hope the musician-ness isn't critical. Whether it completely disqualifies me from getting anywhere with the puzzle depends on what sort of musician, but I am utterly hopeless at the sort of question that requires you to know every track on every album released by some obscure 1980s pop group.

Clarinet is nice but flotsam seems so very useless that I doubt it

but who knows? I really don't understand the puzzle

(I'm sure there's some nontrivial thing we need to think of besides "try taking anagrams of the sillier bits of the messages")

Rand al'Thor

And "perform a bro feint truly" has the letters of trumpet in it.

Gareth McCaughan

01:33

hmmmmmm

also tuba

and piano

and trombone

and flute

this seems like too much of a good thing -- I mean, it could be that IAmInPLS has crammed lots of instruments in, but isn't it more likely that you can often find some instruments in a not-too-short fragment of ordinaryish text?

ooh, baritone and baryton too

Rand al'Thor

Maybe the answer is "he's giving you an orchestra for your birthday" :-P

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, that'll be it. or, y'know, not.

IAmInPLS

06:41

Hello everybody!

No answer on my puzzle, good to see you struggling mouahaha

Alright

You do require musical "knowledge"

Though, it is not about instruments

(this is a hint I guess)

"a call time for ants" : there is an anagram in this indeed, but all your guesses are wrong. Maybe remove one or two words...

Finally, I read that somebody gave something good, but I can't remember what ;-)

Rosie F