The Sphinx's Lair

1:51 AM

So I have an idea for the reverse-puzzling fortnightly challenge, but I'm worried that it's (largely) style over substance... Do I make/post it anyway?

@Alconja Sure, I don't see why not. Worst case scenario, it's a beautifully presented easy puzzle.

That's what I was leaning towards... just worried that people might perceive it as rep grabbing, since it'll probably get upvoted for it's presentation over it's puzzle

I don't see why that wouldn't deserve upvotes. Sure, pure style and no substance would be bad, but a good presentation can often improve a puzzle.

I can totally agree with that, and I think there's still puzzle to it, just proportionally less.. (if a puzzle is normally 70% puzzle 30% presentation, this will probably be the opposite)

I'm sure we've had puzzles like that before.

As long as the puzzle itself is decent, then it'd be fine IMO.

1:57 AM

I guess you're right. If I removed all (but the minimal) presentation, it would still be a valid and "good" (if a little easy/dull) puzzle. So therefore adding loads of presentation just makes it more enjoyable

Yeah, I don't have any qualms about any of your puzzles being bad. With other users, I may advise them to stay away from making a puzzle too presentation-heavy, but your puzzles are always high-quality.

Maybe that's part of my concern. This one is "just" a fortnightly challenge one, so it probably isn't up to my usual (self-imposed) quality levels. But the presentation may make it appear as though it's better than it is (leaving people feeling disappointed if they dig in, or when they read the solution)

Ah, you're worried it's not "up to par".

I still think it'll be fine. I doubt it'd be a bad puzzle.

Well it's fundamentally not up to par with some of my better received ones, but may appear that it is initially. But I think i'll just post it anyway (assuming I find time to put it together - the other downside of over-presentation).

I guess the point is, if it were the bare puzzle with all presentation stripped down, it would be "ok". Something that would fit in fine quality-wise with the majority of content here, but maybe not something I'd post it myself (like the piles of other unfinished notes I have). However, I have a visual presentation that is now stuck in my head and I really want to do that part, so this puzzle is getting dragged along for the ride. :)

Well, sounds like fun! I'd love to see it.

If you're really worried, you could probably find some way to pair it up with something else.

2:11 AM

Yeah, that's the niggling voice in my head, that says I should just save the presentation idea for a better puzzle and let it stew for another 6 months.

I'm still trying to finalise my next "proper" puzzle too, which I'll hopefully get out next week... Might get it done first and then see how i feel.

4:06 AM

Aw, Alconja, if you happen to see this, you're a prisoner of your own success.

Time to create an alias so you can enjoy carefree posting again once in a while.

You could just try out a part of the cool presentation idea.

signed -- my carefree alias

(oh, hi Deusovi, you're the one who helped my carefree alias become me when you greeted Pangloss that one time)

Hm?

It was that story i've put you on the spot about a couple of times, about how encouraging you are to newcomers

I don't get the "alias" thing though.

But I always like to encourage people! The more puzzlers, the better.

yeah, others are following your example!

I've noticed :D

4:18 AM

in any case, and my statements above aren't serious advice, it did help me to try some experimental posts under an alias

cipher story visual steganography history

Aw, now I'm curious.

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

9

Q: A Letter from the Past

It has been quite a while since your first assignment as a P.U.Z.Z.L.E. agent. Most of your tasks weren't even half that exciting and since your boss is currently on vacation, your most important task right now is to beat the ceiling dart high score. Just as you prepare your final throw, your bo...

i didn't understand (do now) why my zen crossword got closed

Oh yeah, that.

Well, that wasn't really an alias (unless "humn" is your alias? Are you secretly Emrakul?)

my alias got absorbed, now i'm both, was for a month or too also:

and that one was a philosophical optimist, where i had entered as an optimistic philosopher

didn't take too long to find out how to combine the approaches better, and to get used to a broader variety of stumbles

4:27 AM

Oh, you had a different persona there too? Hm, interesting.

it was question_asker who really got me engaged to the point where any actual personality showed

Oh wow, just realized nobody's solved your [N]ONEderland puzzle[s] yet.

i think q_a brought out a lot of enthusiasm in a lot of us

Yeah, I miss q_a.

Like I said before - he was a cantankerous asshole, but he was our cantankerous asshole.

so much (about the missing)

4:30 AM

He hasn't been on in ten days.

i've been hoping that q_a has taken on an alias but nobody yet seems to match my (virtual) profiling software

every now and then someone has q_a's flair for language

Maybe I'm q_a...

the truth comes out!

And maybe I'm also GPR and Emrakul!

we'll have to apply a Turing test

are you me too?!

4:34 AM

Yes.

if so, ~~you're~~ we're becoming manshu!

The Turing test would only help distinguish between me and manshu, not anyone else

now we've evoked the m name, soon all three of us will be here

You mean all three of me

Or all three of you. Either way.

i know what i mean, which means i all do

and, yeah, i'm __dering what to do about the ___derland puzzles

4:39 AM

I'm really curious to see the answer, but I have no idea where to start

the math behind them is very neat and simple

only i've had is to pare down the community worksheets to eliminate anything that could be a red herring

incidentally, you and another person here have the upper hand with them because the idea came from a chat once

That doesn't help me at all. Like I keep saying, I have a horrible memory.

but you've only had a handful of chats (that's a memory test)

I visit this room nearly every day.

you pass the memory test

can't resist trying a hint: i was talking about how numbers can internally act like mazes or checkerboards

4:44 AM

I don't remember that at all.

:P

it was about 3 whole sentences at the time

i mentioned an example i came across and you instantly recognized it by name (doesn't narrow it down much)

...Nope.

doesn't ring a bell

thanks for reminding me in any case

no problem, always happy to help :D

but yeah, enigmatic-puzzle is almost too easy a cop-out when clues are hard to think up

long live that tag, though!

if i can indulge the ___derland subject for another second, i'd like to get across

that the digits behave almost mechanically, which is cool when an actual number is like that

4:51 AM

hm, interesting

i have no idea what that could mean

so if you know one number that's correct, the digits cascade to become the others

by aligning the numbers in certain ways, the chain reactions become clear

but the rules are different in each part of the puzzle, related along a completely fundamental theme

yyyeah i'm clueless

what if i mention that all the numbers are the same number? or maybe that was clear already

you're trying to say something and i'm not quite sure what it is because i don't know how the puzzle works

thanks for the focus, though

(while there's a break in the action i'll get some numbers to line up and plop them here just for effect)

     1o111111ooooo
      1o11111ooooo
       1o1111ooooo
        1o111ooooo
         1o11ooooo
          1o1ooooo
          11o1oooo
          111o1ooo
          1111o1oo
          11111o1o
          111111o1

those are all the same number

5:03 AM

hm, interesting

so all that matters seems to be the number of strings of consecutive ones

position matters a lot too, in onederland, where these came from

much less is nonederland, but in itself that's not much of a clue

well that made everything worse

in chat that time you recognized a numbering system where many (all?) numbers can be represented many ways

hm

i can only think of one, and that doesn't seem to work with this (at least, i don't think so)

run with it!

5:06 AM

base φ is the one i can think of

(guessing that you're writing up the solution right now)

(not quite, first trying to figure out what's going on)

you're on the threshhold, in any case

i've never used base phi before

just vaguely aware of it

no transcendental numbers involved

5:12 AM

welp, no idea what else it could be

you said "run with base φ"

remember how base phi creates variations of a number? you did that other time, it was what i was calling checkers jumps

where .011 can jump itself to become .100

...nope, i don't remember that

remember? terrible memory

also, that doesn't seem to be what's happening there

in the vertical list 010 =101

while in phi 100 = 011

so... you're in base ³√(-1) ???

(is that a cube root? can't tell on my screen)

5:18 AM

(yeah)

WAIT AM I ACTUALLY RIGHT

that i asked was huge reinforcement (i really couldn't tell and it makes a difference)

1111 in base ³√(-1) is 3 in base 10

and it first appears in #3

111 in base ³√(-1) is 2 in base 10

and it first appears in #2

it's very cool how other bases do unary better than unary does unary

in fact i think "unary" is not done correctly in the first place

wait a minute, i calculated them wrong

never mind

i think i did, at least

in other words i'm becoming Jonathan Allan and rambling when the pan gets too hot

like that time someone put out a puzzle whose solution copied a previous unsolved puzzle of JA

5:23 AM

Wait, really?

so JA solved the new one and tried to keep as low a profile as possible

i don't remember that

he succeeded with the low profile

ok, so i wasn't right about it being ³√(-1)

(off to find that one in a further attempt to distract you from ___derland)

5:24 AM

(i need to go to sleep soon anyway - by the time i get up, someone else'll have seen this chat and solved it)

pattern calculation-puzzle number-sequence

i know...

in any case, this was JA's puzzle:

17

Q: Logically linked numbers

The left and right numbers are linked. What should the last number on the right be, and why? \begin{align} 135759&: 1 \\ 151364&: 4 \\ 255075&: 9 \\ 279422&: 36 \\ 292620&: 91 \\ 348777&: 135 \\ 398067&: 147 \\ 417894&: 265 \\ 459431&: 279 \\ 478926&: 307 \\ 609941&: 363 \\ 689245&: 435 \\ 814576&...

and this was JA's solution to the later puzzle while the above was still unsolved:

15

A: Really, really, really hard sequence

The next numbers are: Because

@Deusovi If ω=³√(-1)=(1+√-3)/2, ω²=(-1+√-3)/2, and in base ω, 111=20.

(never mind, you might both be right, but i was wrong for sure)

2000_ω = 1 ?

back to the story of diversion, here's JA pretending that his answer above didn't give away the solution to his own puzzle:

in Puzzles Etc., Jun 4 at 20:21, by Jonathan Allan

what post?

thanks again for the indulgence, see you in ___derland perhaps

[scurrying back up the rabbit hole]

6:06 AM

@humn unfortunately (or fortunately?) it's one of those all or nothing ideas... And I have thought about a secondary account to remove pressure from myself, but I think instead, I'm going to just get over it and post what I feel like, when I feel like it.

6:20 AM

The best (and rest) of all @Alconja s in one!

7:39 AM

@MOehm about the Heiress puzzle my guess is 71821 because "a father should lay foundations for his child". Above the Leo sign in the grid are the letters GRU and their numerical representation is 71821

@MariaDeleva: Hmm. I don't know. That yould mean that finding all the other signs in the word search would have been pointless. And it could already work before finding out the rot6 thing, because the father is FYI.

@MOehm hm... you are right. Then it could easily be 11215 as well. But it could be that the other signs are just to fill it out... Or perhaps we need to rearrange the leftover letters?

7:54 AM

The typical way to get something from a word search is to use the leftover letters, but that doesn' get me anywhere. The letters of Virgo are there, even if they don't form a word. Virgo has five letters, so that yould fit in nicely with finding five digits. I don't think that there is an anagram involved, because that woul mean that the order of the digits is arbitrary.

Ah! "Count on your lucky star!" How could I miss that?

Q: What riddle answer to choose? The earliest or the most complete?

I couldn't see Spica anywhere and there is no C in the leftover letters.

Or perhaps we should work with the original leftover letters?

Puzzling Meta

0

I posted this riddle and the first answer (temporal order) with lots of votes is 90% accurate, the second answer is 95% accurate, and this answer is really the best matching 100% my intentions, but was the last to arrive. Clearly one can say that the best answer could have been reached after bei...

discussion accepted-answer

@MariaDeleva: The lucky start is really a lucky constallation.

Ah, ok. :)

You are very good at solving puzzles :)

8:16 AM

It was a well-designed and well-clued puzzle. It's a bit sad that it doesn't get much attention (or many upvotes). The previous puzzle with the Zodiac coins was also underappreciated in my opinion.

I agree.

8:30 AM

@MariaDeleva: Oh, and thanks for the barn-door broad hint on the strange lady puzzle.

@MOehm someone asked for a hint and I obliged. :) And you were somehow confused by the other one. :) And it is practically the same.

Now only the connection is left

@MOehm Great work on the zodiac puzzle...

@MariaDeleva: Oh, but I've added that to the CW. They are all used for payment as a replacement for money. (I think the cowrie shells made the penny drop.)

@Sid: Thanks.

And You should probably remove the CW answer. You solved almost all...

@MOehm Ah, yes, I saw it now.

We would need a moderator to reverse the CW back to you.

after that I will accept the answer :)

8:52 AM

That CW didn't work as I hoped. I thought by making it a CW people would just add their findings to the answer, but they kept answering in comments.

Well, you did most of the job anyway, so it is only fair if the ownership (and rep and everything) is returned to you. Although I am not sure whether the upvotes while it is a CW will be given to you. I have flagged it for moderator, so some time later today, it will be done :) And you will see the green notification :P

10:48 AM

@RosieF so I looked up the history of PH in Scrabble, and it seems to go something like this. (1) PH was never in any American Scrabble word-list. (2) It was listed in the Chambers dictionary and doesn't have an initial capital, which was enough to get it into OSW. (3) When Collins took over and OSW turned into CSW in 2007, PH was removed.

11:05 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Thank you for your research.

"Research" is a pretty grand word for looking at a couple of web pages :-).

TheBitByte

@LukasRotter A small hint: Somewhere in the story, just somewhere, the cipher machine has hidden its keys. :D

And by the way, the answer is a bit simple.

Not super hard if that's what you're thinking, but it may not be easy to find for some people.

12:37 PM

...

Too few characters to post, tagged puzzle-identification:

will check back in a few hours

...

@TheBitByte Does that mean the puzzle in it's original form was unsolvable, since the story and therefore the key wasn't contained?

1:46 PM

I just got an idea for a Christmas puzzle - will have to wait a few months :)

If I was creative enough I would post a christmas-themed puzzle every day from Dec 1 to Dec 24 :P

well, you have 2 months to make 24 puzzles, better start working on it :)

TheBitByte

2:07 PM

@LukasRotter It wasn't unsolvable in its original form, just extremely hard to solve.

Now, it's a bit easier, if you find the right key to open the cipher machine.

4:11 PM

Today looks like a riddle day

Yep

Oh just saw your answer, correct

I am right to be a bit annoyed at this, which is basically the same as the correct answer?

(And I posted 10 minutes before)

yeah, that does look pretty much identical

I think a phone fits better though, but not for any reason posted as part of the answer

I said 'any other electrical device with a display screen', pretty sure a phone fits that description

'pet me right' could also mean 'issue valid instructions with a touchscreen' which a modern phone can be assumed to have but a computer can't

I'm using a touchscreen computer right now :P

4:19 PM

yeah, they definitely exist, it's just not as assumable

True

(Hear that, Windows 7! Touch Screens aren't ubiquitous!)

2

:P

4:30 PM

Yes, I agree.

I am generally underwhelmed by the quality of rsp's puzzles, I'm afraid...

Woo, just earnt the proofreader's badge

4:46 PM

Out of curiosity, how much would everyone hate me if I made a puzzle based on homonyms

@Sconibulus There'd be wrangling. Cot does/doesn't rhyme with caught does/doesn't rhyme with court etc...

like for example, 'cannot be felt' meaning you can't make this out of felt, but you can totally feel it

@Sconibulus Ooh I like that.

interestingly enough, felt rhymes with smelt, which is a metallurgic process and a stinky fish

This could go one for ever....

4:51 PM

@Sconibulus So the fish can be smelt!

the cannot-be-felt thing isn't homonym-dependent at all

oh wait

thats worplay

i'm thinking of homophones

... ah, homonym means both homophone and homograph, that's why I was confused

Wait whats a homonym? Different meaning same sound?

different meaning same word

4:52 PM

@BeastlyGerbil and same spelling

apparently it can mean (1) different meaning, same sound OR (2) different meaning, same spelling

@GarethMcCaughan Confusing. That's why I prefer homophone and homograph, because they say what has to be the same.

the first is also called homophone, and the second is also called homograph

yes

oh, I thought homonyms were the intersection of homophones and homographs

I have the same preference and scarcely ever use the word homonym

4:53 PM

rather than the union

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/43028/… Anyone looking at this??

I think it's not so much that homonym means "both homograph and homophone" but that it may mean either "homograph" or "homophone" depending on context, arbitrary preference of the person using the word, etc.

@Sid, I gave up

@Sid I thought about it a bit and made no particular progress

I mean, some of them look like standard urban-legendy things ("there are more people alive now than people who have died", etc.)

Does the reverse-puzzling tag imply that the answer does actually have to be a puzzle type or can it just be anything?

4:55 PM

but how that turns into an actual puzzle I don't know

@Lukas oh, you think ConMan may not understand what reverse-puzzling actually means? I suppose that's possible.

It actually looks like some GK questions. Maybe a crossword type-thingy

the beginning looks like one of those 'multiply the numbers of ears of everyone who's died by X, Y, Q, then do Z, L V, then add the year, and subtract the year you were born and what do you know, it's your age!' things

not so much GK as estimation

Although extra ear mutation and others don't exactly look like they can fit inside a crossword..

@Sconibulus That actually might be correct.. maybe

@Sid Some of them look as if the answer is a numeral (either a quantity or a year-number). A cross-number?

4:59 PM

the problem with those questions is that they're 90% misdirection

The first item seems like its answer has to be an estimate rather than something exact

which is hard to square with getting an actual answer out at the end of the sort of procedure @Sconibulus describes

@GarethMcCaughan the number of people is a red herring, there will be at least one without ears, so the multiplication comes up 0

if it's that type of puzzle

What is exorcist scene rotating?? An anagram of something maybe??

I dunno, I haven't actually seen the exorcist, I think the girl's head spins though?

@Sconibulus oh, I suppose that's possible

the howitzer one suggests something like what-if.xkcd.com/21

5:04 PM

Yep

Okk, that was funny, err. I mean scary

Some theorist say Mt.Everest is actually growing rather than eroding.

@Sid Yes. India's moving northwards and pushing the Himalayas upwards.

Looks like all the clues in there are red herrings..

5:35 PM

Casino puzzle update: Regarding my problem of too big gifs, I have had to ditch the wheel spinning in the roulette, so now only the ball goes round.

5:51 PM

First close vote: cast!

6:49 PM

This is the reverse-puzzling thing I was talking about the other day:

1

Q: Reassemble the riddles!

I'd just finished writing four short 4-line riddles, painstakingly making sure each line was correct, when a wind caught the slips of paper I'd been using to write on and blew them all over the floor. Quickly I picked them up again, but the order of them was lost. I'd written each line of each ri...

riddle reverse-puzzling

Not sure how well it's going to work, or even whether it properly counts as reverse-puzzling. All feedback welcome :-)

@Sconibulus Congrats on 3k!

@Randal'Thor I really like that, lots of fun

Hey everyone! Just got back from class.

How did the exams go?

7:09 PM

It is my first 'favorite' puzzle

I'm off though, will only have phone-based access for the weekend, so probably no chatting

have a good weekend everyone!

7:25 PM

songlyrics.com/smokie/who-the-fuck-is-alice-lyrics

Just saying that as it seems Alice gets really popular in puzzles lately :)

Q: Revision history displays rendered MathJax when it should display markdown

7:52 PM

@MariaDeleva Pretty well!

Congratulations! :)

@Deusovi Well done!

Thanks :D

8:17 PM

1

I just edited this post to change The 216 is 6 cubed is made of 27 small cubes to The $216$ is $6$ cubed ($6^3$) made of $27$ small cubes $\big(\quad~~$The $216$ is $6$ cubed ($6^3$) made of $27$ small cubes$\quad~~\big)$ But when I look at the revision history in “side-by-side m...

bug mathjax editing markdown revision-history

8:57 PM

@LukasRotter, that edi summary :P

@BeastlyGerbil :P

Wow I made a spelling mistake myself there edit not edi

@BeastlyGerbil What a coincydence.

:P

Don't jujj my spellling, it is bettr than yoors :P

Ooh 9 more rep and I've hit repcap for today

Only hit it twice before

Are you sure spelin is not intendid?

9:05 PM

30 more rep until I can finally edit posts without having to go through the review queue and having to add those comments, it's like my 15th favourite privilege.

@MariaDeleva intendid :P

Apsolutly!

This iss weigh to mutch funn, I carnt stopp noww

This is the reason why I made a Twitch chat bot that gives you points when your comment doesn't contain any spelling mistakes :P Didn't really work out, because... Well, it's Twitch.

REPCAP! YES!

9:15 PM

MUPHRY'S LAW!

Well, I carefully browsed your recent questions and answers ;)

Muphry? :P

@MariaDeleva, thaks :P

Muphry

@BeastlyGerbil, you are welcome :)

Oh that is correct

You can bet on @Randal'Thor, knowing the name for whatever weird thing you are randomly talking about

9:17 PM

This is not the first entry of Muphry on this chat :P

@BeastlyGerbil I've literally just been cited in another room as an example of good spelling.

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/26854095#26854095

Not sure why that isn't oneboxing

Did anyone here participate in a game jam before? I only did once and am planning to take part in another one tomorrow, but my biggest fear is that as soon as the theme is announced, no good idea will come to my mind ;(

@MariaDeleva I learnt it from @Gareth, I think.

and thanks to whoever is upvoting my answers right now :P

@LukasRotter guess who :P And no, I haven't participated in a game jam. But my daughter wanted a game of dinosaurs against worms :P

Kids want strange things sometimes :P

@LukasRotter You can have your edit spree now :P

9:26 PM

I don't understand why so many word questions haven't been edited with the word-property tag yet: For example. the only difference I see is that no fancy yellow table is included. Is this intended or can I spam the front page now? :P

Well, this is surely not the reason, as I believe some without the yellow table have been edited (if I am not mistaken). I believe there is one of mine that hasn't been edited yet, but I am too lazy :P

Then I'm just going to go for it, let's see if my privileges will be removed :P

@LukasRotter Please don't edit too many all in one go.

A few at a time is better, precisely so that you don't spam up the front page and push all the new puzzles out of sight.

@Randal'Thor K

But isn't it beautiful? :P

If someone (new) enters the site now, they would think it is only for Word TM puzzles

9:37 PM

@LukasRotter Ha, I see you've just got the edit privilege!

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I just couldn't resist :P

So, would you propose a game Dinos against Worms? :P

@MariaDeleva If the announced theme is dinosaurs/worms/animals, I might actually take it into consideration :P

@LukasRotter And they would kill you with stones for the ridiculous idea :D

Have a good night/day/whatever, all, I am done for today. :)

Q: The maths problem "paradox"

Goodnight!

TheBitByte

10:09 PM

@LukasRotter What's up?

You spammed the frontpage man, Not cool.

The cipher machine is mad now. It demands the key. More than two. Less than five. All of them, like a hive. Oh, that doesn't make sense, hence, I shall stop rhyming, and start mountain climbing.

I'm bad at rhymes, sometimes, isn't that a crime, if you read between the lines, a hundred times, while counting the first thousand primes?

I should really stop, my rhymes are a flop, okay, am I done now, somehow? Anyhow, I guess that's it, rhymes are something I won't recommit, at least until, a stock split.

Puzzling Meta

11:29 PM

-2

{Insert_Question_Here} [A few minutes later...] Maths.SE: Closed: Puzzles are not allowed. Puzzling.SE: Closed: Maths problems are not allowed. How do we resolve this sort of "paradox"?

discussion