Yeah sorry guys :D The scheme was automatically generated but I didn't think of fixing the "only one crossing" thing.

@Randal'Thor You didn't get neither with Google? :P

I tried, couldn't get them.

@Alenanno does the technology have to do with how tv displays used to work?

Oh!

CRT.

(@Randal'Thor)

That's wat I was thinking of

@Deusovi Oh OK.

So then we need a 4-letter fish whose name begins with T.

Tuna?

tuna is predatory?

Yep.

wow didn't know that

And found in warm seas.

Woo!

And in schools.

Yay.

which puzzle were you guys doing?

thanks!

@Alenanno Done :-)

@Randal'Thor Eheh good. I want to give @Sconibulus the chance to finish his own. Although I'm really not sure yet which answer I should pick.

I've just seen Rand's solution to Alenanno's crossword. Isn't there something amiss where 60d and 66a cross?

@RosieF Why? That part is fine.

Oh hey @Alconja

Hi hi

@Alconja I really liked your "locked door" puzzle. I need to step up my game ahah

:) glad you liked it. Definitively my favorite from a presentation perspective.

@Alconja How did you achieve the retro-videogame look?

All hand (mouse) done at half resolution, then pixel doubled.

@Alconja Not sure what those terms mean ahah

for example, each of the 12 initial images are 200x200 pixels, but I drew them in photoshop at 100x100

@Alconja Ah ok. I get it now.

Then increased the image size (with no resampling/interpolation)

And that gives that look without any extra steps?

That's cool. :D

Well, I also used a deliberately limited colour palette.

But, yeah that's pretty much it

Eheh nice. :D

@Alenanno To be specific, has Sconibulus got 60d's last letter wrong? or has Rand got 66a's first letter wrong? or is the truth something else?

@RosieF Uhm well, @Randal'Thor is right.

@Alenanno With a P at the start of 66a (Of a singing voice using a light register. (5))? Are you sure?

@RosieF Uh oh. I think you're right. That's a mistake. ._.

@RosieF Thanks for noticing. I'll fix it and notify Sconibulus and Rand.

@Alenanno @RosieF I noticed that too, but thought it was more likely that "pyric" had a music-related meaning I didn't know about than that "sil" meant a small mouthful of liquid. I should have pinged Alenanno about it, I guess :-)

@Randal'Thor For some reason I got confused using the dictionaries. :P

I may have another crossword ready but this time, I would like it to be harder.

I probably won't be able to do it then :-P

I have a really super-duper-hard crossword which I found in a magazine and may post here at some point.

@Randal'Thor It's strange though. Mine was mildly received but I've seen others very well-received. I'm not sure what is the difference lol

@Alenanno Pure chance, I suspect. The voting system is a lottery to a large extent.

@Randal'Thor Didn't know "pyric" before. Now we have "con fuoco" in music...

@RosieF Oh, you sing?

@Alenanno Not very well! But I play the piano and compose.

@RosieF Nice. :D Do you have anything online that you composed?

@Alenanno There was once a short series on the radio about pieces of music specially written, to evoke particular views. And listeners were invited to write in. So I wrote a 3-minute piece for violin and piano. And it was one of about 12 entries featured on the web site.

@RosieF Is it still possible to listen to it?

@Alenanno And as chance would have it, only yesterday I sent off my entry to a carol-writing competition. If mine is shortlisted, the radio station's choir will perform it and the performance will be put up on the web site. But I don't know how many entries these comps attract so I don't know if my chance is good.

@RosieF Good luck with that. :P

@Alenanno Thank you.

@Alenanno Not sure it would be still be on the web site now -- it was a few years ago now.

@RosieF Aw. Well, I was just curious to give it a listen. Maybe some other time then. :)

Nice one, @Beastly!

Hi @Randal'Thor

How are you?

Hi @AeJey - long time no see :-)

Sorry, gtg. RL is calling ...

:) Bye @Randal'Thor See you later.

:P

@Emrakul: May I know what happened to Gamelow?

It seems his account is suspended.

@AeJey He got his 'el' deleted, idk what happened next.

@Emrakul: Oh. Ok. 1 year suspension for Plagiarism. I think that's too much :P

@AeJey It's 2months, no?

Oh, it ends in 6 days.

Ok. My mystake :)

"My mystake" is an interesting meta-joke :P

:P

I think he was the most reputed member in the absence of Rand, right?

Ok

@AeJey Hi. Was he really Gamelow before he was Gamow? I thought he took his screen name from physicist George Gamow.

@RosieF I don't think he was ever Gamelow

Game low. Interesting

I am confused now. In my mind his name was Gamelow :P

@ArbitraryKangaroo Try steganography.

@ArbitraryKangaroo Like stenography but with added plates along the spine.

@Emrakul Rand got 36.8K reputation

:33006192 Can't shake that removing habit, eh?

:P

@ArbitraryKangaroo Thanks. :)

@Ankoganit have you tried my new puzzle? It is your forte, I think...

@Sid Solving was never really my forte :P

I'll try though

Looks pretty nice

How would you call a steganographic method/steganographic text? "Steganograph", according to this is a synonym for "cipher"... Weird if you ask me, but how else would I call it?

I guess I would ask this on english.SE?

@LukasRotter In the case where what is being transmitted is a text, I've seen the term "cover text".

@RosieF Thanks, that works. I just saw Wikipedia also uses "steganogram", which is still a cipher according to the online dictionary definitions I found... I can only assume it's a mistake on their part, since it doesn't make sense that "cipher" is a synonym.

Is anyone a member of biology.SE?

@Randal'Thor well you got the solution without using the clues!

Can't accept till you explain them :P

free flags puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/44540/…

free why?

@Randal'Thor didn't notice but you actually got the 'Dexter' bit right, 'Tin of the' means something too

Although what you assumed Dexter means is wrong

Dexter didn't mean right?

@Sconibulus It's Alenanno, you missed an n in your question.

@dcfyj That's especially embarassing because I was talking to him and directly copying his text at the time... I'm basically the worst human to ever human

oooh, but you pointed it out quick enough for a stealth edit, thanks.

Not to mention that the picture in the question has his name on it :P

What are the modifications? I'm not noticing anything different.

Nothing's obviously different (other than the dice and clues) yet

Ok, so it's post hidden that's different then

@Sconibulus "more differenter" :D ahah

:p

I'm preparing my next one, it's either gonna be a huge success or a huge fail. I hope the former.

@Sconibulus lol "The dice star, preparing to destroy the Ivory moon of Gammon II"

You should call it "Return of the Dice Star"

@dcfyj Ahah :D

Nah, that's obviously the third one

Star Dice: A new clue

@dcfyj ahah omg stop :D

Star Dice: The Phantom Definitions

Attack of the clues?

lol

Revenge of the Letters?

Revenge of the Letters?

lol

Revenge of the Secrets, I was halfway through typing

Total symmetry, except the ? :D

It is now :P

hah

The Force Answering?

You should "edit" yours real quick for perfection

is non-advertising spam still spam?

The Formatting Awakens

yeah, that's better

4 and 5 dice are same?

So are 1 and 18

It happened in the last Dice Star too

"You, turned to meat." My first thought - "Lamb"

4,5; 18,1; and 15,16 are all the instances of apparently identical dice next to eachother

and 7 is the "same" as 15/16

6/9 are the "same" too

Quite a few matching ones in this one :P

Well, without ambiguity it'd be much easier.

yeah, I think the ambiguous positioning of the answers is most of the challenge

Water-related pocket monsters might be pokemon?

Wait, that is 7 letters... Never mind.

It might be a specific pokemon though

I just accidentally stabbed myself :(

Like Squirtle or something (obviously not that particular one as it's too long)

@Sconibulus not supposed to do that.

apparently one shouldn't toss sharp metal things into the air to catch repeatedly

@Sconibulus Oh, Dear.. It isn't too serious I hope

nah, just a spot of blood from my finger

@Sconibulus The famous throw-the-knife-and-catch-it-on-the-tip move?

@Ankoganit A case of Muphry's Law?

It's some weird t-shaped spike thingy, probably something like 5 centimeters long?

@AeJey Looks like he's on 32,252 atm, and I'm on 36,880 today.

I found it in the office, and it was a bit of metal, so I obviously grabbed it and started throwing it to myself

@AeJey He was Gerhard briefly, but for nearly all his time here he's been Gamow.

His primary account, that is ;-)

@Sconibulus Is the ruby kipper intentional or should it be keeper?

@Sconibulus No. On Stack Exchange, spam means:

> Exists only to promote a product or service, does not disclose the author's affiliation.

what should we do with the other kind of spam then?

Also, too many pings :-P All this just since I left chat a few hours ago:

@Sconibulus What other kind of spam?

and also, ruby kipper is intentional

@Randal'Thor The kind you eat :P

random letters or other gibberesh primarily designed to impede communication channels

Or, what if it exists only to promote a product or service, but does disclose the author's affiliation

well, I guess that second one is just Not An Answer

@Sconibulus See How to not be a spamme and Can I support my product on this site?

Heh, you can tell this stuff comes straight from SO and isn't site-customised:

> We get a lot of requests from product teams about how they can use Puzzling Stack Exchange to support their communities. Puzzling Stack Exchange works really well for technical support and we welcome this, within limits.

@Randal'Thor have you solved the tet yet?

@BeastlyGerbil Something to do with this?

I prefer my explanation of "dexter". It's so neat, even if unintentional!

move sneakily-patter?

@Sconibulus In the list you added for the visually impaired (which I should add too), you are missing number 10 (it became number 2 because it thinks it's a list). Try enclosing the numbers $1.$ like that.

fix'd

@Randal'Thor very much to do with that!

The book had no punctuation in it

@BeastlyGerbil So ... ?

So, look for punctuation?

Yes

Basically

> He was inspired to send warming pans (used to heat sheets in the cold New England winters) for sale to the West Indies, a tropical area. His captain sold them as ladles for the local molasses industry and made a good profit. Next, Dexter sent wool mittens to the same place, where Asian merchants bought them for export to Siberia. People jokingly told him to "ship coal to Newcastle". He did so during a miners' strike at the time, and his cargo was sold at a premium.

Wow

Never knew that

If anyone needs help for the gaming answers in the star, the pokemon could be lapras and the arcade fighter can be tekken. Unfortunately my whole English vocabulary is gaming-related, so I don't know any of the rest :p

I thought the pokemon would be horsea

@Beastly Edited.

So I was thinking a Bowdlerized bird might a bird that had a "naughty" name with the bad part removed and found this rather amusing read

@Randal'Thor thanks, now I'll accept :P

Horsea is second-gen, no?

It was present in first gen, I think... I am not too sure though

It could be staryu, but lapras is clearly the coolest water type so it has to be lapras

Water-related, I mean

Possible...

I would request someone to try my newest puzzle. I thought that would be solved soon. It has lasted almost 24 hours!

staryu (water) horsea (water) seadra (water) lapras (water/ice) kabuto (rock/water) There are a couple possibilities for that one...

I don't know why I was so sure horsea was second gen

It's number 140 I think

I just don't remember using it or fighting against it in pokemon blue

I don't know about "Those who eat".

eaters!

@dcfyj Sneaky.

Lol

Wait, that is a 6-lettered word...

diners?

That is possible...

See, this is too broad

@Sid I made sure that it was, would've have suggested it otherwise :P

Just answered a 2 month old riddle by Emrakul:

And the statement is quite true indeed...

I'm half sure that it's the answer, though it fits pretty nicely..:o

@Ankoganit Doesn't that quote appear on Emrakul's profile?

And I would say, that received much less attention than it deserved..

Also, I didn't know Emrak wrote riddles. Neat!

Yep, that's gotta be it - nice one!

And that was Em's first riddle, IIRC.

@Randal'Thor Yep, I mentioned it near the end of my answer.

Gah, I was so close in the comments!

Stupid past me, not noticing that I already almost had the solution...

haha, too bad you didn't post that as an answer :P

@Deusovi Bad luck

@Deusovi Heh, I know that feeling :-)

Ah well. Nicely done, Ankoganit!

@Deusovi Thanks!

@Ankoganit ANd to say, Answering puzzles were not your forte!

@Sid HaHa, I guess I got a bit lucky there

Actually it was one of @ArbitraryKangaroo 's comments in this room (now deleted, obviously) that gave me the idea.

Looks like The TM words are back in fashion

He found that one super quick.

Too broad?

Lemme give you another link

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060819203943AAokSoL

Not exactly the same, but almost the same

@Deusovi Is this plagiarism? Unless the two guys are one and the same..

Sounding a lot alike for sure

@Sid Seems more like a chestnut to me.

It just got an accept

It's such a simple idea that many people could come up with it independently.

@Randal'Thor I agree with that too.

@dcfyj I would only consider 2 of the answers valid (the two top-voted ones), so that doesn't indicate "too broad" to me.

Yeah, I just looked up Status (on meriam-webster) and saw the plural for it as "Statuses"

What do you call obese women?

Women

@Sid Their names, if I know them. And if I don't, why would I need to call them?

@dcfyj </thread>

?

Hell, I am searching for a 6-lettered word for that. Obese is 5-lettered while obesity is 7-lettered

@dcfyj You don't know that?

@Sid there are some nice slang words for that here. Definitely good terms to use in a respectful discussion.

@Alenanno I have no idea what you're referring to

@Sid Rotund. Portly. Fleshy.

@Neon612 Fitting the dice?

@dcfyj Have you ever used a forum extensively? Like back when forums where super popular (while now they're like ghost towns, brrr *shivers*).

I never coded for one

@Alenanno Not all forums are ghost towns now. Some are still active.

Perhaps HEWERS for ones who cut stone?

@RosieF Well, many of them succumbed. I'm sure there are some here and there, but it's not like before.

The definition fits (although hewing can be applied to more than just stone.)

I would probably modify my answer to include yours/ It fits way better than sawyer

Plus it fits the "Ones" part of the clue

i should probably make the answer a CW, but, let's complete all the clues

That's up to you. I suck at puzzles, so I hardly ever solve any of them.

Well, I suck at these puzzles

It looks like you guys have made much progress

I'm not going to comment on the accuracy of any of the answers yet, but I will state that around this level of solved, in the last dice star, it was helpful to try to figure out the underlying verbage and work backwards

I'm not really sure about HEWERS though, since by definition it applies to more than just stone

@Sconibulus That'll be pretty hard to do unless we have die #2 I think

that would make it very hard to start at the beginning, yes, but Gareth started in the middle, I think he got World first

but really, the very act of trying to piece it together led to noticing things like strange collections of consonants or vowels that only admitted one word, or admitted no words, and implied we had a clue's answer wrong

@Sconibulus Notice that "OOE" in the last puzzle was a unique letter combination so that made it easier, thus why I said Die #2.

#2 is the only unique one in your puzzle, so if we figure what word goes there that'll help tremendously.

14 is also unique :)

Didn't see that one. Either way, we would need one of those to start going backwards I think.

you could probably do it with the combination of 4 and 5 too, but it'd be a little harder

I saw that too

gareth only had 3 answers missing, iirc

And we only have #4 or #5 so we have no real way of building the sentence yet.

I don't think Formed of natural fiber is "THREAD" sounds more to me like it would be a shirt or something

@ffao I'm pretty sure we had more than that missing when we started putting them together

well, if anyone wants to try

@dcfyj shirt doesn't exist in the dice I think... I had thought of that but thread made me think I had it

some of these might be incorrect, of course

hrd from thread does look weird

There's my name on it!!

@Sid Obviously it's not shirt :P that's only five letters, I just meant it sounds more to me like something that's made from fibers like a shirt or pants or a sweater etc

A bowdlerised bird looks odd... I can't figure that one out...

I looked up bowdlerize, it has to do with removing inappropriate words in text

@Sconibulus How many have I got wrong so far??

All the above!

If you look higher up in chat, you'll see I mentioned that a few hours ago.

The bird thing that is.

@Sid a one-digit number

That's so vague lol

That's not much of a help, is it? SO, I have got at least 4 correct. That is a start

at least one of the SERs is wrong, because we have four of them and only three SER dice

for obvious reasons, I propose horsea :P

What was your answer, again?

Lapras

which uses one of the sap dice

Even looking at the options I listed it's the only one that fits dice and isn't ser

@Sid, just so you know, you have die list numbers wrong and/or incomplete on the two answers that have dice

both of them would be 1,6,9,12, and 18

@Sconibulus I don't quite get you, care to elaborate?

@PartyHatPanda also missed 1,18 for MISLED

all answers you have listed as LID can be used as LED too

because they all have Es

Oh, I get it now... I was thinking of editing all that, once I get all the answers...

@Sid He's saying the die numbers you have for the first 2 are wrong/incomplete

I took that into account when making the list above

@MMAdams also missed LED for shield, but everyone else that posted dice got them right (if the answer is right)

I feel like I'm allowed to help this way, if no other :)

@Sconibulus True, since it helps but it doesn't really divulge any information

Wait, we have 4 LID while there are 3 dices...

Hell, this is all going wrong...

Some of those can be LED though

like shield, sidled, misled

So that's not too big a concern

2 of them would count for LED. We still would need one more LID

All three can count either way

shIeLD/shiELD, sIDLed/siDLEd, mIsLeD/misLED

We have 2 LED only.. Two of them would fit..

I am sort of confused about PNG. Nothing seems to fit that

I think the bowdlerised bird may be brEAsT or bREaSt. (Bowdler wouldn't allow it to be called a tit.)

not sure he'd let it be called a breast either

My initial thought for that was mouse(titmouse) but it's too short

Corpse sounds much better than mutton, but mutton helps to grab one of those TUT...

Well, just a thought. I don't know (a) how offensive breasts are and (b) how strict Bowdler was.

@ffao Probably should go for LAPRAS... Nothing to lose, anyway

Doing a poke-trade?

:P

in all seriousness, it could be horsea and one of the other SERs be wrong

I'm just talking so much about lapras because I think it's a cool mon

could be seadra too

can't use staryu though

I made the answer a CW...

diners? so we still have one ser too many

I've updated two of the clues that appeared to be causing lots of troubles

@Sconibulus Ugh. Wonder if the coder shunted all the semicolons and braces off to the right coz he can't bear the sight of them. But why? perhaps he's used to some language with some crazy syntax where you don't use punctuation to separate statements or indicate block structure, so you have to rely on line-breaks and indents?

@RosieF You mean Python? :)

@Sconibulus Well I did kinda wish there wasn't more than one language with a syntax like that :) but yes, I was thinking of Python.

VB.NET is somewhat similar to that, but it has words to signify the end of function, loops, etc

VB.NET doesn't care about the indents, as far as I've noticed, just uses words instead of brackets, like some sort of anti-symbolic... thing

lol, yes, indents are irrelevant in VB.NET. I do find it easier to find what's ending where though

@Sconibulus I've had a dekko at that code -- not a pretty sight, in more ways than one. permute(n, a) calls permute(n-1, a) n+1 times. Fisher-Yates, ffs. And, rather strangely, if n is odd, each swap is swap(a, 0, n); can that be right?

dekko?

@dcfyj Shufti. Gander. Look.

It's a recursive function that swaps indices of a[]. interesting...

@Sconibulus I once had to code in an obscure language, Algo-68. It was designed to be compatible with machines with 6-bit bytes, so was miserly on punctuation tokens. Rather than { } it used BEGIN and END. But it had a cute syntax for other sorts of blocks...

...e.g. IF THEN ELSE FI, and DO OD.

Well that's a unique way of ending those lol

Argh. My previous 2 messages were posted "2m ago" but they've already "set" :( Not Algo-68 but Algol-68.