The Sphinx's Lair

4:34 AM

i'm gonna downvote something of yours randomly just to screw with you. ;)

user189275

4:56 AM

@Rubio You should format your messages properly (i. e caps and punctuations), otherwise they take bit of extra effort to read.

Sphinx

0

Q: I hope your internet's working

I'm new to this StackExchange - I'm more active on programming stack exchanges. So here's a computer-themed puzzle: 4K5L3RdR-PASTE That's it. I'll leave you with one clue - The title.

computer-puzzle

Rubio

@ArbitraryKangaroo You should not delete your comments, otherwise conversations take a lot of extra effort to understand.

And sorry, I don't always capitalize - bad habit. I'll try to do better, good sir.

Lukas Rotter

8:29 AM

What's a better title? "A weird, spooky ..." or "A spooky, weird ...". I obviously can't say what the "..." stands for, except that it's halloween themed.

I'd say option 1, but I'm not sure.

Jonathan Allan

8:47 AM

"I saw weird stuff in that place last night; weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, Godless, evil stuff"

"...and I want in!" - Homer J. Simpson (Homer The Great [The Stonecutters episode])

"Weird, spooky ..." possibly no "A"?

Alconja

@LukasRotter Spooky is a material right?

Jonathan Allan

I think both may be opinion

"that house is spooky" is opinion, not material, right?

Alconja

:) yeah I was kidding.

Lukas Rotter

@JonathanAllan The problem is "..." could for example be "bottle". So I think the "A" must stay :P

Jonathan Allan

oh (passes hand over head)

yes it may need to, I wasn't saying no "A" for sure

Lukas Rotter

8:53 AM

I think I'm going to stay with "A weird, spooky" because it will nicely fit :P

Alconja

I'd go with "weird and spooky", as in "well that sure is a weird and spooky puzzle title"

Lukas Rotter

@Alconja True, that sounds better.

Jonathan Allan

one for Goa/Psy lovers... youtube.com/watch?v=Mkuyhr9ojMA

Sphinx

9:23 AM

0

Q: Treasure hunt of the century

Will you help my find the treasure? I just can't find it! The only hint I have is Paste->e28DSjPF

cipher treasure-hunt

Alconja

@JonathanAllan I guess you can put me in the "not goa/psy lover" category... this is the most recent album I bought :)

Jonathan Allan

video not available :(

Music good, singing not so sure...

Maybe you'd prefer something like this (a cover of a 1982 Heaven 17 song) youtube.com/watch?v=MfMa2lrFxhY

Alconja

:) an acquired taste to be sure... a mellower track

Lol. I'll pass.

Jonathan Allan

9:41 AM

That singer... maybe it's my Britishness, but his accent just grates on my ears :(

music is indeed nice

Alconja

Singers are like that. I hear loads of music that I really like except for the singer ruining it

Jonathan Allan

...and mellow / hard is not something that has any effect, I listen to stuff ranging from Solar Fields to Drumcorps

(hmm, or is this harder, whatever)

Gareth McCaughan

@ArbitraryKangaroo I got a "someone mentioned you" notification here and it pointed me at ... "(removed)". Perhaps that was some kind of response to what I said about Winkler's book. Anyway, that's the last time I take any trouble to help you with anything. You are seriously losing goodwill here.

Rubio

10:00 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Apparently he removed the comment I snarkily responded to earlier, too. Which was telling me "You should format your messages properly (i. e caps and punctuations), otherwise they take bit of extra effort to read." Because I guess it's hard to understand what I type unless it's properly written.

Alconja

:) can't listen right now, but will come back to it. That being said, dillenger isn't necessarily a fair representation of my tastes either. I do listen to some mathcore and technical death metal stuff, but mostly more progressive metal/rock and post rock (and punk). This was my second most recent purchase.

@JonathanAllan the above was in reply to this... if it wasn't obvious.

Gareth McCaughan

Didn't he get some sort of official warning from one of the mods about his message-removing habits?

Alenanno

10:29 AM

Hey all

Jonathan Allan

hihi

Rand al'Thor

We need a new fortnightly topic challenge post, but I'm super-busy today and don't really have time to do it ... @LukasRotter you wanna do the honours again?

Actually, looks like it's our fortnight for unconventional tag fusion, so we'll need more than just copy-pasting last fortnight's post and changing the dates and tag name. @Alconja Maybe you'd like to do it? Was there ever a conclusion in that chatroom about how exactly to define the challenge?

Alconja

10:49 AM

@Randal'Thor yeah I can do it. There was some wordage in chat that I think people were happy enough with.

Ankoganit

Hi all

Jonathan Allan

hi

Ankoganit

What do you people think about the recent pastebin mazes? Are they allowed?

Jonathan Allan

would be better if they were i.stack.imgur. The one I solved was not amazingly imaginative though.

Alconja

Not a huge fan of the use of pastebin (except for non-essential, convenience stuff), since it's likely to eventually become a dead link

Ankoganit

10:55 AM

Agreed. Imgur is much more reliable.

Alenanno

I agree as well, I thought it was imgur at first, then the answers showed it was pastebin instead.

lois6b

11:11 AM

@JonathanAllan I solved a puzzle thanks to your answer ^^

Jonathan Allan

Always glad to be of service :) which puzzle?

lois6b

1

Q: Treasure hunt of the century

Will you help my find the treasure? I just can't find it! The only hint I have is Paste->e28DSjPF Note

cipher treasure-hunt

Jonathan Allan

ahhh another paste

lois6b

yes xD

I thought it was a bad puzzle when i read it because the previous one was about pasting too... but the idea of using different bin pages for text was kind of great hehe

Jonathan Allan

oh, I like the double letter kk ee yy

lois6b

11:15 AM

i didnt notice the "k" as I usually write "okk" lol

Jonathan Allan

did the tool just tell you it was Rijndael-128?

lois6b

and "ey" has meaning so i was stuck

Jonathan Allan

@lois6b ^^

lois6b

one of the text say: ask about it to the master locksmith Rijndael the 128th who lives in the city of Ecb.

Jonathan Allan

Oh yeah :p

Alconja

11:29 AM

@Randal'Thor Done. If any mods (@GentlePurpleRain?) are online, can you switch the featured tag over to the new one?

Sid

What is considered to be unconventional?

Lukas Rotter

@Alconja "Ideally, puzzles should involve the two tags being genuinely merged into a single challenge, rather than just having a two step process of, applying tag A then tag B." Would a cipher that is presented in geometric form but could as well just be written as plaintext be valid?

Alconja

@LukasRotter I think so. You've merged the geometry into the cipher in that way. You're not solving a geometry puzzle to get a cipher out.

@Sid That's up to the puzzle poser. But I think most people's gut feel will be fairly consistent.

Lukas Rotter

Posting my puzzle now, I hope checking it twice is enough to avoid mistakes :P

Sid

Would this be considered unconventional tag fusion? Since it combines both riddle and steganography.. puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42403/…

Alconja

11:40 AM

@LukasRotter Awesome. :)

lois6b

@LukasRotter nice puzzle

1

Q: A weird and spooky clock

Out of nowhere, a clock appeared on my desktop: (you don't have to be able to view the GIF in order to solve it, I think the "preview" image gives you all the minor clues hidden in it. I also included a text version) I also found a manual for it: While all clock hands are exactly 1 long, ...

cipher geometry visual time seasonal

Lukas Rotter

Thanks, I guess this time everyone should add puzzles to the fortnight post on their own? (since it's their opinion it's unconventional)

Alconja

Yes. Please do.

Jonathan Allan

By "but with the start/end positions excluded" do you mean the one that's 3:15:15?

@LukasRotter ^

Oh, LOL you just edited it in :)

Lukas Rotter

@Alconja Oops, totally forgot to include the tags in the post as mentioned in the chat room. Should I include all tags or just the one's which I deem unconventional, i.e. cipher and geometry?

Alconja

11:55 AM

@Sid Sorry missed your message... I wouldn't say it's particularly unconventional. It's not that uncommon for riddles to use acrostic style clues, which are effectively steganography.

@LukasRotter Just the unconventional pair

Sid

@LukasRotter Your puzzles reminds me more of trigonometry than geometry.. tan, angle,etc..

Lukas Rotter

@Sid There isn't a tag for that, but I think geometry still applies, since it's also about geometric shapes.

Sphinx

3

Q: A weird and spooky clock

Out of nowhere, a clock appeared on my desktop: (you don't have to be able to view the GIF in order to solve it, I think the "preview" image gives you all the minor clues hidden in it. I also included a text version) I also found a manual for it: Hour-hand is the darkest, second-hand th...

cipher geometry visual time seasonal

2

Q: A numeric sequence that I can find no answer of

180; 167; 149; 130; 118; 103; Y; Y = what number. It should be easy, they told me to think like a child and then go to mathematics but it looks like I can not find the answer. Any ideas?

mathematics logical-deduction calculation-puzzle

Sid

@Alconja If you have the time, could you write up a wrap-up post for this? puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/28494/…

Alconja

@Sid Sure. Can't guarantee when I'll get to it, but I'll see what I can do.... What sort of stuff are you interested in seeing included?

Sid

12:03 PM

I want to know what your thoughts/inspiration was for that magnificent puzzle...

Jonathan Allan

hehe I just spent a while golfing a way to make the string " ||"+(n-2)spaces+"|" - by binary(2^n * 5 / 2 - 2) indexed into " |", only to find it's the same byte length (12) as the string concatenation itself.

(actually one shorter than just concatenation but same as a join)

Rosie F

12:35 PM

@JonathanAllan Yeah, sometimes the easiest or most efficient way to code something is a look-up table.

Jonathan Allan

Yep, I did some funky lookup table build using lexicographical permutation indexing for a phone app to perform ICM calculations (recursive combinatorial application of Bayes' theorem) - it can calculate deals for up to 23 people in reasonable time (others do up to 9 and some are slow). The code is pretty hard to comprehend though! I should get around to putting it on the Play store...

- although not much call for deals with more than 9 people

user189275

@GarethMcCaughan Well, the reply was: " Thanks. The latter is probably a 3d generalisation of ***." Sorry, But I seriously didn't mean it as to harass anyone, but as later I found out the ***'s may not work (and it was not breaking any conversion too), so I deleted it. And I actually need your help twice or thrice more regarding that book.

user189275

But, haha, banning for deleting comments ? A nice joke :P

Gareth McCaughan

I don't know whether banning was what was being threatened. But sanctions for antisocial behaviour that you continue despite being repeatedly asked not to by others who find it annoying? Yeah, I'd be perfectly happy with that happening.

user189275

@Alconja Awesome fortnight idea.

Rosie F

12:45 PM

@JonathanAllan Impressive! How many test cases did you run your code on? I hope << 23!.

user189275

@GarethMcCaughan Anti-social (?!) behavior ? :O

Gareth McCaughan

Yes, anti-social behaviour.

It makes conversations hard to follow. (You have been told this repeatedly.)

It annoys people. (You have been told this repeatedly.)

Alconja

@ArbitraryKangaroo It annoys people. (annoying = anti, people = social). So, maybe not banned, but certainly loses you a bunch of good will...

Gareth McCaughan

It's obviously not the biggest of big deals. No one dies as a result. But it's rude and annoying, and persisting in it when you've been told it's rude and annoying is itself rude and annoying (because it indicates that you don't care about annoying other people).

Lukas Rotter

@GarethMcCaughan "No one dies as a result." > @Lukas Rotter that isn't a drinking game, that's a fast track to death by alcohol poisoning.

Jonathan Allan

12:48 PM

@RosieF Hmm, I've used it many times, but not often with more than 9 people. I've checked it against ICMizer and cardrunnerEV for a number of scenarios, and against Pokerstars at all my final tables (they often have off by penny errors in their calculations, obviously using floating point, whereas mine is using integer fractions)

user189275

After being told by Alconja and Deosuvi before, and realizing it was actually nonsense, I stopped deleting comments part of conversation long time ago.

Jonathan Allan

Oddly enough I had a deal where we did an "even chop" and the shorter of the three remaining players was awarded the extra cent by Pokerstars :p

Gareth McCaughan

@LukasRotter ah, yeah, good point. I did assume no one was actually so foolish as to play that game.

Sid

I have just completed my latest conspiracy theory!!!

Rosie F

@Sid Well, that's what you'd like us to believe...

Lukas Rotter

12:57 PM

Btw, dolphins taking over the world is not a myth.

Gareth McCaughan

@ArbitraryKangaroo Ah, OK. I hadn't noticed. (There's probably some moral here about how reputations are more easily acquired than lost.) Well done, then.

Alenanno

@ArbitraryKangaroo Well, suspension might be too strong in that case, but suspension isn't the only measure that moderators can take if a user doesn't cooperate. :P

I just realized that rhymes.

@RosieF I see what you did there.

Sphinx

3

Q: A crossword so simple, it practically solves itself

An entry in the 19th fortnightly challenge... A Grid Some Clues There are three examples of this in the finished grid Two answers that touch a corner, in relation to 25A (D) Contained in the rotational symmetry of the grid The clue above corresponds to an answer in this direction Position...

logical-deduction crosswords

Alconja

How come the bot now posts stuff from the main site, but not from meta any more?

Jonathan Allan

1:23 PM

possible duplicate of The Unfinished Puzzle Section ^^

(reference to PPCG close reasons)

mind bending @Alconja. Really! So much self-reference, it's gonna be tough.

6D might be DOWN.

Sid

Is this answer here for any other reason than the author needed it for another clue?- might be "NO" (21D)

Alconja

@JonathanAllan I don't think it's as hard as it looks... When I gave it a trial run, I was able to do it with almost purely logical deduction and only 3 or 4 educated guesses towards the middle. And there's very much a tipping point where the whole thing will crumble

Sid

The thing that this crossword references constantly-LOGIC? (Might be 17A)

Alconja

And to anyone who was in chat the other day when I was talking about crossword ideas, that ultimately morphed into this. Super minor hint: I'm terribly sorry, but I failed in my attempts to squeeze an answer of ENGLISH into the grid anywhere. :(

Jonathan Allan

@Sid, quite probable; but possibly "YES" (to keep symmetry) 18D(?) with "Do you really need a clue for this answer?" as "NO" (because we already have all the letters from 22D and 23A)

oh, although 21 itself makes the board asymmetric!

Sid

1:35 PM

22D is most likely a number, possibly one or two. because of the 9th clue...

Jonathan Allan

"Number of letters in this answer" = FOUR

Sid

Number of "V"s that appear in the grid=ZERO?(4A)

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