The Sphinx's Lair

Alconja

01:01

@Randal'Thor DASHBOARD (def: console, one's father (about) = DA...D, hasbro (broken) = SHBOAR)

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja Good job!

Deusovi

Ah, nice!

What about "toy" though?

And "his", for that matter?

Alconja

yeah... I'm assuming slightly rule breaking for readability

Rand al'Thor

Like I said, it was hard to get a smooth surface reading. I had to introduce a couple of superfluous words.

Originally I was trying to use "abhors" instead of "Hasbro", but couldn't make it fit.

Rubio

Nice @Alconja - I tried dozens of words for console, never thought of dashboard

telegames
sportsman
telespiel
colortron
commodore
adversary
telematch
ataripong
fairchild
astrocade
megadrive
atarilynx
seganomad
dreamcast
hyperscan
gamestick

Deusovi

01:05

"Console father about boarish disarray, forgetting one (9)" might've worked better.

Rubio

those are all 9 letter one or two word game consoles, btw. ;) in case you ever need that again

Deusovi

@Rubio: You could've saved some time - if it were two words, it would've been indicated. For instance, "Sega Nomad" would be (4, 5), not (9).

Rubio

Oh, I know

I got carried away ;)

Alconja

...question about clue validity... can i use a single indicator word to indicate a process applied to multiple following words? eg. [I] [A] [B] [C] [D], where [I] is an indicator, say for an anagram, where the anagram is produced collectively from [ABC]

Deusovi

Yeah, sure.

Gareth McCaughan

01:09

"smooth surface reading" is lovely but much less important than not having superfluous words. I guarantee I would never in a million years have solved Rand's clue as it stood because it simply wouldn't have occurred to me that the word "toy" might be aardvark there just to improve the surface reading even though it hatstand destroys the syntax of the crossword clue.

2

Deusovi

But they have to be consecutive and not indirectly clued.

Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten it either.

Superfluous words that aren't connectors (is, or, of, and) are typically Very Bad Things™.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Sorry :-(

I didn't realise superfluous words were that bad.

In fact I wasn't even sure whether @Deusovi was joking when he said "what about 'toy' and 'his'?"

Deusovi

Nah, I wasn't joking. It seemed right to me, but I was confused about the extra words.

Rand al'Thor

Also, @Gareth, I wouldn't use an aardvark as a hatstand if I were you. A moose makes a much better hatstand.

Rubio

True.

Alconja

01:12

Ok, I think this is valid:

Deusovi

The point of the wordplay part of a cryptic is that it can be interpreted as instructions of a sort (though sometimes they're very tenuous grammatically).

Alconja

CCCC: "Again and again! Strike back!" - the killer (8)

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Oh, and congrats for making me spend about a minute wondering what on earth those words were autocorrect fails for :-)

Rubio

And @GarethMcCaughan - I hope that your thoughts on the Cleverly Disguised Word are on point, cuz that's some good thinking there

Alconja

speaking of tenuous grammar :)

Gareth McCaughan

01:13

@Randal'Thor No need to feel bad about it. Just don't do it again :-). And I'm glad to have conveyed a little of how superfluous words feel to a cruciverbalist :-).

Deusovi

MURDERER: (RE + RE + DRUM)<.

Rubio

man. Like fish in a barrel.

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja No clue where to start on that one. I'll leave it to D and G the crossword heads ... oh wow, Deusovi already got it.

Deusovi

:D

Rubio

That was, like, maybe a minute.

Gareth McCaughan

01:14

@Rubio It's almost as if Deusovi is good at these.

Rubio

@GarethMcCaughan Bah. Couldn't be that.

@Alconja is just obviously bad at making puzzles that take time to solve.

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio (as for the cleverly disguised word, GPR says I'm doing the right kind of thing but not the actual right thing, which I guess is better than nothing)

Rubio

*cough*

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi, you got another one ready for us?

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio yeah, Alconja's whole history illustrates that

Deusovi

01:15

Yeah, that's clearly the right explanation. Come on Alconja, step your game up. :P

Rubio

Most. Definitely.

Alconja

:)

Rand al'Thor

I'm about to go to bed, but might wait a bit if there's another CCCC upcoming.

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor: Let me think one up. Haven't written one yet - I could do a simple one from my upcoming post on writing good cryptic clues, but I'd like to do something more clever.

Alconja

You win. I'm officially retiring from puzzle making, an abject failure...

Gareth McCaughan

01:16

noooooooo

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Yes, while you're the best puzzle writer on this site ;-)

Well, you could be - who knows.

I'm still looking forward to seeing your first puzzle here.

Ideally it should combine elements from all of your existing answers.

Rubio

That would be a neat trick.

Rand al'Thor

If you take the initial letter from every answer Gareth has posted, they spell out something very interesting.

Rubio

... hey!

Rand al'Thor

hoping for stars on that

Rubio

01:19

My mother is NOT that

Rand al'Thor

OK, bedtime for me. Good luck with the next CCCC, everyone.

Deusovi

Night!

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor See also: oreilly.com/pub/e/1598

oh no, wait

Deusovi

CCCC: It makes wet god - disgusting! (6)

Gareth McCaughan

I thought you were making a different joke from the one you actually were

(if you take the initial letter from every puzzle I've posted, it spells out something interesting, namely the empty string)

Deusovi

01:24

(You all are going to either love or hate this clue...)

Alconja

I hate it already.

:P

Deusovi

Ah, don't you love the sense of community we have here on Puzzling?

Alconja

I know, the way our mutual hatred of each other brings us together...

Rubio

Remind me to make my next cryptic, if I ever get another shot, all about my deep and abiding dislike for Deus and his chronic inability to make, or solve, good puzzles or clues.

In fact, here it is.

(0)

Deusovi

Ooh, got it. Is the answer ?

Rubio

01:27

Yes. It's Gareth's most recent puzzle.

Deusovi

I don't quite get the wordplay half, though. :P

Rubio

^^ I just explained it. Sheesh, do I have to do all the work here?

Ok afk a bit, back later. I'm not sure if I hope this latest clue is solved, or isn't.

Deusovi

Alright, see ya! c:

Alconja

Wasn't clued very well tbh... it needed a "?" at the end to indicate the wordplay was also part of the def.

Gareth McCaughan

I need to go to bed; apologies for not contributing to solving D's latest. I will make the following remark: I think you're "supposed" to look at it and think "oh, anagram of WET GOD", and I bet that doesn't work, and I suspect "it makes wet" is the definition and "god - disgusting" is the wordplay part. But having observed that RAVILE doesn't, so far as I know, have anything to do with wet-making, I'll leave it there.

@Alconja On the contrary, the wordplay and the definition didn't overlap at all.

Alconja

01:30

@Deusovi Wait... is that the new clue? (only just realised... since it didn't have the prefix)

Deusovi

Whoops, yeah!

Alconja

@GarethMcCaughan Ahh.. my bad, I misread it :P

Gareth McCaughan

@Alconja You sure did. I don't think there's any part of it that you read correctly.

Alconja

@GarethMcCaughan My failure once again shines through.

@Deusovi I'm wondering if it's somehow related to deus (god) => odious (def:disgusting), but not sure how "it makes wet" could perform that transformation...

Deusovi

Interesting theory! I'm not going to confirm or deny, of course.

You'll definitely know it when you have it.

Alconja

01:47

Also, without looking for clues, just as a cryptic rules clarification: I'm assuming "It" has to be "it", and can't be "I.T."?

Deusovi

Yep, that's correct.

Deusovi

04:24

Hey, @Ankoganit!

Ankoganit

Hi @Deusovi

Deusovi

09:02

@Randal'Thor: I've written up a guide for cryptic clues, since you and several other people wanted a full explanation of all the rules behind them. Hopefully this was clear enough - if you see anything I should add, please let me know!

0

Q: Cryptic Clue Guide

This post is not a puzzle. There is nothing puzzly hidden inside it or the self-answer, posted at the same time. What exactly is a cryptic crossword clue, and how do I write one?

5

Rubio

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd bookmarked.

@Deusovi Thank you sir!

IAmInPLS

Nice, @Deusovi

This is and will be really helpful!

Deusovi

09:21

Great, glad I could help! Let me know if you have any more questions - I'd be happy to answer anything that I haven't covered there! c:

Rubio

09:32

Did you see the comment regarding the (apparently missing) explanation for "?" cueing?

boboquack

Could a hyphen clue minus e.g. in your CCCC god-disgusting be some word from god with the letters from some word from disgusting removed?

Rubio

removals have to be complete, so it would have to be ALL letters from something meaning disgusting

user189275

@Rubio @LukasRotter @BeastlyGerbil @Sid I am MBB.

user189275

I, like almost everyone, noticed that completely crappy questions are filling up the site, and while I was told that this ultra low quality "puzzles" are "seriously downvoted", I was skeptic about that.

user189275

I made up a super crappy insta-thought rough hypothesis of what affects the upvotes, and I had a. Quality b. Effort c. Instant gratification (I don't really know this term) as the three main factors (and I'm sure I'm wrong).

Rubio

09:35

Lol.

user189275

So, I decided to open up MBB account, and while keeping the quality and effort to ultra low (to make sure these are ultra low, I strictly, before making each puzzle, thought various ideas + sorted out the crappiest idea in strictly under 3 minutes, and typed each puzzle within less than 5 minutes, to make sure I don't give too much effort), vary the gratification each time to see how it affects the upvotes.

user189275

While the first post, being extremely stupid-trivia related, was downvoted (for good), the others was upvoted, and I seriously don't see how they are "puzzles".

user189275

Also, I decided to check how pilagarism is handled (@Deusovi), so the last riddle is verbatim copied form a William Cowper poem (which is in my school textbook :P), and nobody even noticed !

user189275

I stopped this experiment because I don't really care much about crappy puzzles being posted on this site as long as there are good arty puzzles, and I spended too much time (~10 hours +) in collecting datas from other puzzles to verify my hypothesis, which completely took up my time.

boboquack

@Rubio I realise that, but would that be acceptable? @Deusovi?

Deusovi

09:38

@boboquack Yes, that would be acceptable.

At least, I think it would. Some people may disagree.

user189275

This is copied verbatim from this.

Rubio

@ArbitraryKangaroo In fairness, puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45820/… was actually a decent puzzle; and for Quick n Easy the premise was sound, but I'm not sure there's a good way to execute it without requiring almost explicit hints (as we collectively found). The others I didn't really spend any time looking at, they seemed pretty bad but some were well received. (Surprisingly well, in a couple cases)

user189275

@Rubio I find all of them completely crappy super nonsense. And yeah, the "puzzle" you linked is super trivial, and is a rote exercise than a puzzle, because the idea is instantly obvious.

Rubio

As for plagiarism, it's actually ok if (a) it's not already here and (b) it's given proper credit. I personally would add (c) it's expected people don't just mechanically copy some source(s) for everything they post, as we don't just need to have some copyrighted work reproduced here in toto, and a little added personal creativity wouldn't hurt. There's rules for all this, in any case.

user189275

No sorry, I thought some people will immediately notice that the "riddle" is plagiarized, but to my surprise, nobody did. And just to say, there's no personal creativity except ditching the first and last para and ctrl+C and ctrl+V-ing.

Rubio

09:49

It's not like people go plagiarism-checking every submission. If someone didn't recognize it, there'd be no reason to immediately identify it as such.

In any event, as for your experiment, I think the results are interesting.

user189275

No okay, but still nothing is done to it, But I read somewhere that "strict" stuff are being taken against plagarism.

Rubio

Sorry everyone btw. chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/14524?m=33473416#33473416

Lukas Rotter

Ok, so Gareth gets +500, Sid and Beastly get nothing. Just to make it official :)

Rubio

Hehe

Lukas Rotter

Of course the user who needs it the least (the one with most rep) would win, lol.

Rubio

09:54

I thought I remembered another comment about an actual valid rep reward. I couldn't find it in my search, but I didn't try particularly hard.

user189275

@LukasRotter No. you spotted it first, didn't you ?

user189275

[By the way, all but one of my messages are perfectly consistent]

Lukas Rotter

@ArbitraryKangaroo Maybe (at least the one who mentioned it in chat first), but I purposely didn't participate in the competition I set up.

Now I just need to find the answer @GarethMcCaughan presumably put the most effort in.

Any suggestions? This one looks pretty decent.

user189275

Just wait for GMC to speak for himself.

Lukas Rotter

BTW, did MBB even mention himself that he is AK? If not, MBB should do so to remove any doubt...

user189275

10:02

Yeah, so I am lying perhaps :P

Lukas Rotter

Well, it's definitely a possibility. :)

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

42

Q: Help! I am infected with the puzzling bug!

Argh...I can't get this bug of puzzling off my head! It's really weird, and so annoying, you know...I can't help thinking about puzzles all the time. It's like... when I see a word, I think of anagrams...when I see tiled floors, I think of sudoku on them...when I see a door, I look for loose bric...

wordplay cryptic-clues

user189275

@LukasRotter:

user189275

x lm ... cpy tijq ? pyyciy, z ie fev. (10 letter obvious key) — Mushroom Bang Boom 20 secs ago

user189275

The obvious key is: Plagiarism

Rubio

10:11

I tried SOCKPUPPET first. :)

Lukas Rotter

@Rubio Well, there was another bet between Beastly and me: If MBB = AK/TPK, then nothing happens. If MBB != AK/TPK, he wins 500.

Rubio

@LukasRotter I see. So you win a big fat nada on that one.

Lukas Rotter

If Beastly entered the second bet and said "I think Mushroom Bang Boom is: Arbitrary Kangaroo" first he would've won 500 either way, I don't remember me stating any rule against it :D

user189275

Nobody mentioned tpk, but MBB is handled from the mail with the chat account tpk, so I think Gareth doesn't actually wins :P

Alconja

On plagiarism: it's not ok to copy something and post it here verbatim, even with attribution (unless you have explicit permission from the author, or the content has been released under a permissive licence).

4

Lukas Rotter

10:19

@Rubio Yep :P If I don't have any unsolved question of me (there hopefully will be one soon), I start a chat game where I can only loose or win nothing.

Rubio

Actually he mentioned you specifically by name. :)

Lukas Rotter

oops

user189275

@Alconja Yeah, sure, that's obviously true. That's why to test that (after how long someone finds out) I posted that one.

Rubio

Ugh.

Lukas Rotter

I removed my message because it was a duplicate of this one. I refreshed the page and somehow jumped from editing to posting a new comment.

Rubio

10:23

welp. I only stayed up to satisfy my curiosity. Now that what was the generally accepted "obvious" identify has proven to be the actual identity, I can hop off here and get some sleep.

user189275

Yeah, but I guess it was obvious for overuse of "trivial", I suppose.

Lukas Rotter

@ArbitraryKangaroo And because of the the style of the name, the removed comment on an answer and general writing style :P

user189275

What's the general writing style ?

Lukas Rotter

But yeah, the "trivial" ultimately gave it away completely (although I thought MBB was actually trolling with that)

user189275

No, actually not joking, they are infact trivial.

Lukas Rotter

10:26

@ArbitraryKangaroo I meant that I thought he purposely used the word "trivial" so often to make it seem like it's you.

user189275

Oh yeah, mimicking me is super easy.

Gareth McCaughan

@LukasRotter It's not at all clear to me that there's any sense in which I actually deserve +500 for solving the "Who in the world is Mushroom Bang Boom?" puzzle, especially as I was far from the only person to guess. (I suppose it's actually +500 for "being able to follow instructions in exchange for 500 rep".) But if you really want to do this, pick any answer of mine. Perhaps actually better to pick one that extra-obviously isn't deserving of a big bounty, and explain in comments.

@LukasRotter Or you could make a new question about MBB, say explicitly in it that its only purpose is for me to answer it and get a bounty, etc. But that might reasonably be held to be a misuse of the site and possibly both question and answer would get a ton of downvotes.

Lukas Rotter

I think I'm going to award it to this answer, seems like it didn't took very much effort.

Gareth McCaughan

10:41

One of @Rubio's, then?

oh wait, wrong tab

yeah, that one didn't take very much effort. (And it was a kinda silly puzzle.)

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

3

Q: ASCII Puzzler 2: Arrows Depicting Movement, Things, or Pointing Out Objects

This is a sequel to ASCII Puzzler 1: Part 1 and a prequel to ASCII Puzzler 3: The Trees and ASCII Puzzler 4: Not a Rebus!. Here is the second rebus I have for you to figure out: | V --- O <--- B --|--> -|- --- /\ ^ | Here is another rebus I made. The main theme of this is a...

rebus

Gareth McCaughan

Incidentally, clearly I'm the person who needs the +500 most. I'm on exactly 19500 right now :-).

Lukas Rotter

@GarethMcCaughan I can only award the bounty in 23 hours, unfortunately.

Sid

@Randal'Thor A big apology to you....

user189275

Haha. The hilarious-est bounty line ever.

Sid

10:52

What's the current CCCC?

Is this a puzzle? puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45986/…

user189275

10 hours ago, by Deusovi

CCCC: It makes wet god - disgusting! (6)

Beastly Gerbil

11:13

@ArbitraryKangaroo I knew you were MBB

Sid

11:28

@oleslaw Any further hints to your puzzle? The latest hint only throws further doubts and the obvious try doesn't work out.

oops... That was meant as a comment on the question...

Gareth McCaughan

12:25

@ArbitraryKangaroo As for plagiarism -- that puzzle had been on the site for what?, two hours before you owned up and said it had been plagiarized. I don't know how many people even saw it (certainly I didn't).

Would someone have said to themselves "that's remarkably assured versification for a mere puzzle" and looked it up? Would a Cowper enthusiast have happened by and recognized it? Either is possible, but there's no reason on earth why either should happen in the first couple of hours after posting.

Gareth McCaughan

13:31

(Some comments on MBB's puzzles, in order of appearance. "Overseen chat" was very bad and I'm actually not sure why I didn't downvote it. "A stupid cipher?" was clever and funny despite MBB's attempt to do something stupid. I upvoted it and regret nothing. "Quick n easy" was OK. I upvoted it because I though it deserved to be around 0 rather than at -6. "A true deep quotation" was OK and the misleading absence of spaces was (I think) a neat feature. I neither upvoted nor downvoted. [continues]

"Riddle who is he?" was bad because too easy (and also because copied without attribution, albeit from something not intended as a puzzle). It was solved before I ever saw it. I downvoted it.)

In general I think these were baddish but by no means all terrible despite MBB's/AK's attempts to make them low quality. Clearly AK is just so much smarter than the rest of us that what is nontrivial to us is trivial to him. His intellect would be much better used solving puzzles than telling the rest of us how stupid we are.

Or might be better used doing something else entirely. AK said earlier that he was leaving PSE. I would be sorry to see a skilled solver go, and I suspect he could be a good setter if he attempted to set good puzzles rather than bad ones, but I would not be at all sorry to lose the endless stream of complaints about how stupid the community here and its taste in puzzles are.

Sconibulus

14:15

It looks like of the five questions, two were well-received, two were poorly-received, and one was terribly-received.

Based on my question history, 5 or less is pretty bad, 10ish is good, not great, and 20+ is very well-liked

Lukas Rotter

14:28

I'm making a pattern puzzle including a GIF (what a surprise), but want it to be solvable without viewing any image. The problem is that there are hundreds of instances of a certain pattern included in the GIF. So while listing a few of those would probably be enough information to solve the puzzle, there's still technically more information in the image. Do you think just listing a few examples is enough? (maybe include a link to a full list on pastebin)

dcfyj

Depends by what you mean by "a few" but I don't see why that would be a problem

Lukas Rotter

It's like 10 examples from 1,000 (maybe more, haven't checked how much the total amount will be).

Sconibulus

throwing 1000 frames at a gif will probably make it incomprehensible, or too big to fit on a hosting site

Lukas Rotter

@Sconibulus I don't mean it like that, but I unfortunately can't tell you what exactly it is without spoiling anything... There are probably around 50 instances of the pattern in every frame of the GIF

dcfyj

so 20ish frames?

Lukas Rotter

14:36

No one will bother analyzing the GIF anyway and will rather focus on the text form, so I think it shouldn't be a problem.

dcfyj

I wouldn't assume things

Lukas Rotter

@dcfyj Not necessarily... As I said, I think I can't say anything else without spoiling too much :P I'll just link to a full list on pastebin and list some good examples in the actual post.

Hm... I just realized that even describing the GIF in text form doesn't really make it solvable for people relying on screenreaders... ;_;

Puzzling Meta

14:53

0

Q: Is it OK to make a puzzle which requires distinguishing fairly similar colours from each other?

I was playing with some puzzle ideas this morning, one of which involved messing about with different colours in a way which might be impossible for someone colour-blind. I won't go into details (spoilers!), but instead will make this a general question: are puzzles OK which require distinguishi...

discussion etiquette

user189275

@GarethMcCaughan It's bit hyper sarcastic :P

IAmInPLS

15:17

Can someone turn bitter? I mean, a wine can, but a person?

Sconibulus

Is there more to this than just a bottle of vinegar?

Gareth McCaughan

15:33

@ArbitraryKangaroo What is?

@Sconibulus Why not put it together and find out?

Sconibulus

because that would require better image manipulation skills than I have :)

dcfyj

Isn't that what Paint is for? :P

Rubio

16:03

@GarethMcCaughan One of my what? Heh

Deusovi

As for the MBB thing, Gareth summed up pretty accurately what I was thinking. I didn't even see the question, and Cowper isn't exactly a famous poet. His comments on the questions themselves also matched my own (though I did downvote the chatlog question).

Ankoganit

@Deusovi Can CH be an abbreviation for god? I've seen it stand for Bible and Church, so I figure it might...

IAmInPLS

Can someone answer my question please? :-(

Deusovi

@Ankoganit I don't think so. I've never seen it that way, in any case, and I don't see how that would work.

Ankoganit

@Deusovi Oh, okay, nevermind then.

Deusovi

16:09

Cryptic abbreviations don't come out of nowhere - they're commonly used abbreviations (though sometimes field or region specific).

IAmInPLS

Can someone turn bitter? I mean, a wine can, but a person?

Deusovi

@IAmInPLS Sure! Bitter as in "angry".

Gareth McCaughan

Yes, a person can turn bitter. No, CH can't mean God. Yes, it can mean church. I can't see how it could mean Bible. (Though e.g. OT and NT are often clued by "books".)

Deusovi

@GarethMcCaughan Yeah, I was wondering about "Bible" too.

Ankoganit

@GarethMcCaughan (CH -> Chronicles -> Bible ?)

IAmInPLS

16:11

Thank you!

Matt

@IAmInPLS I'm not in the habit of cannibalism, but I image that human meat doesn't last forever

Deusovi

@Ankoganit Chronicles is a specific book in the Bible, not the entire Bible.

dcfyj

@Ankoganit That should probably be CH -> Chronicles -> Books -> Bible :P

Sconibulus

CH->Chronicles->Narnia->Bible

Ankoganit

Well, yeah, I know that's a stretch

dcfyj

16:12

lol

Ankoganit

@Sconibulus That's better

:P

Sconibulus

The Last Battle was weird

dcfyj

How so?

Ankoganit

(BTW, for CH=GOD, I thought PUVPXL(rot13) would be the answer)

dcfyj

CH=GOD makes me think of Cthulhu...

Deusovi

16:14

@Ankoganit ...What.

Ankoganit

@Deusovi You got how it would work? ;)

Deusovi

No, not really.

dcfyj

@Ankoganit How does that work? lol

Ankoganit

CH=god, ICKY=disgusting, and It makes wet (in a ,erm, naughtier sense) is the def (?!).

dcfyj

How in the world does "Chicky" mean it makes wet?

Sconibulus

16:17

@Deusovi I think I hate you

ROTTEN

dcfyj

disgusting being the def, how's the wordplay fit in?

Ankoganit

@dcfyj Well it doesn't really... well, forget that

Sconibulus

wet rot 10 = god

dcfyj

lol, oh that's wrong

Ankoganit

@Sconibulus Whoa

That's genius!

dcfyj

16:19

and It makes?

@Deusovi Any confirmation/denial of @Sconibulus' answer?

Deusovi

That's correct!

"It makes wet (into) god": definition 1

"Disgusting": definition 2

dcfyj

ah

Deusovi

@Sconibulus :D

dcfyj

you're evil lol

6

Ankoganit

@Deusovi Man, that's nifty

@Sconibulus New one? :D

Deusovi

16:21

Took me ages to find a pair of words that worked.

@dcfyj Thank you!

dcfyj

Someone should have an epiphany on my meta piece, I want it solved :(

Deusovi

Hey @BeastlyGerbil!

Beastly Gerbil

Hi!

The first thing I see is that somehow 'you're evil lol' has been starred 3 times.

dcfyj

I bet @Deusovi can see what the answer is in my puzzle :P

@BeastlyGerbil Look at @Deusovi's CCCC

Deusovi

:D

Beastly Gerbil

16:26

What was it?

dcfyj

and @Sconibulus' answer to it

"It makes wet god - disgusting (6)"

answer: Rotten (rot10)

Beastly Gerbil

Oh nooo........

dcfyj

?

@BeastlyGerbil You've turn into Mr. Bill!

Beastly Gerbil

I'm laughing thats so bad :P

Deusovi

Hm?

Hey, I thought it was a great clue. :P

dcfyj

16:28

@BeastlyGerbil Like I said, he's evil, lol

Beastly Gerbil

Okay now I'm also starring that comment

dcfyj

lol

Lukas Rotter

chat.stackexchange.com/search?q=lol&room=14524

Deusovi

15 hours ago, by Deusovi

(You all are going to either love or hate this clue...)

Beastly Gerbil

@LukasRotter lol ;)

Hi @IAmInPLS! Nice puzzle

dcfyj

16:30

@Deusovi See, I never saw the original posting

Sid

@Deusovi Is there any way to link the cryptic clue tag(Its definition) to your puzzle/answer?

Beastly Gerbil

Thats a good idea. We should add that in the tag wiki

Sconibulus

cccc: A good score after active Athenian worship. (9)

Deusovi

@BeastlyGerbil Sure - I'll give it some time to see if anyone else has noticed any errors or omissions first though c:

IAmInPLS

@BeastlyGerbil Thank you :-) it is much better with the previous one with matchsticks... And it should keep you busy for a while :-P

Beastly Gerbil

16:37

I'm assuming each 'thing' relates to an actual object

I think it may relate to a board game

Sid

@Techidiot Interesting puzzle...

Techidiot

Inspired by @Deusovi's post :D

Lot to learn though. Hope I didn't break any rules :)

Sid

applicable in italics?

Techidiot

Well, it can be solved using only 2 methods.

IAmInPLS

16:53

@Techidiot hey, I choose to not answer your comment on my puzzle :)

Sconibulus

Hmm, I don't think I get "Entertainer is most grating without tail (4)"

It says the answer is "HO(-arse)ST" but I don't follow

Gareth McCaughan

@Deusovi Very nice clue.

@Sconibulus arse = tail

Sid

Err, Arse=tail?

@Techidiot Made some edits to your puzzle. Feel free to rollback if it changes anything...

dcfyj

Ignore that

Sid

Not another AK..

dcfyj

17:03

It's something that people shouldn't see

Actually, I'd love it if a mod could remove it from existence

@Deusovi @GentlePurpleRain Could one of you delete my deleted comment? i.e. get rid of it completely?

Gareth McCaughan

@Sid "tail" is US slang for a woman's rear end (I think specifically a woman's rather than a man's).

dcfyj

@GarethMcCaughan Yes, usually when someone says something like "chasing some tail" they're referring to a woman

Gareth McCaughan

yup

dcfyj

I don't think I've ever heard it used for a guy

Sid

I don't think that's used in UK English. Typical slang is arse rather than tail(At least, the one that I know)

Gareth McCaughan

17:09

I've pretty much only ever heard it used (1) by men (2) about women (3) with sexual meaning and (4) decidedly crudely.

dcfyj

yup, people are crass

Gareth McCaughan

@Sid yes. And "arse" as opposed to "ass" is specifically UK rather than US, so using "tail" to clue "arse" is a bit odd :-).

I wouldn't be astonished to hear of it being used by gay men of other men.

dcfyj

Quite possible, but they tend to be less crass from what I've seen/heard

Sid

duplicate? puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45998/…

dcfyj

If not, it's incredibly similar to the other ones

Gareth McCaughan

17:19

there are certainly lots like it; is there an exact dupe?

Sid

@GarethMcCaughan I didn't notice that you had already answered...

Gareth McCaughan

I don't find any other hits on searching PSE for "eight balls".

(But then, you could do 9 as easily as 8.)

no hits for "nine balls" either

(it's kinda a shame that we don't have a "too easy" close reason)

Sid

There is a 12-ball problem

Gareth McCaughan

this question puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/18036/… states the question here and its answer (including the generalization) in the question and then goes on to ask a different question

should that count as a dupe?

it's marked as a dupe but the question it's alleged to be a duplicate of is different, being about the heavier-or-lighter case rather than the lighter-only case.

Sid

Possibly, it states 9 balls and we have only 8

Gareth McCaughan

17:25

yes, but I don't think we should reckon something not a dupe merely because an earlier question solved a slightly harder version of the same problem that's solved the same way.

Sid

I think, the final question saves it... I don't think it would be found anywhere else on the site

Gareth McCaughan

Except that the question I just linked to has, essentially, the answer to the generalization -- again, in the question rather than in an answer

It's not made entirely explicit, but it says 9 with 2 weighings, 27 with 3 weighings, 81 with 4 weighings

I don't think it's really very important whether it explicitly says 59049 with 10 weighings or not

Sid

@Mithrandir Your puzzle has a few strange things in it...

Mithrandir

@Sid Which one?

Sid

With the help of Rubio, I had gone through the gif image which led to an E-mail which only said to read the books

Mithrandir

17:29

Yes. There's more stuff hidden in the books.

Gareth McCaughan

oh, wait: actually the question it goes on to ask is the generalization to any number of weighings. I'm not quite sure why the questioner wasn't able to read that out of the Wikipedia page they quoted.

Sid

That is, Back to square one...

Mithrandir

It specifically refers to homework.

Such as, math.

I.e, Life of Fred.

(My homeschool math curriculum.)

Anyway, @BeastlyGerbil found two out of... five? hidden letters for another link, and the image type is also hidden somewhere, so....

Sid

And the photos? Nothing in there, I suppose

Mithrandir

Which?

Rubio

17:32

@Mithrandir FYI, knowing the image type isn't actually necessary

Mithrandir

@Rubio No?

Rubio

if you retrieve ABCDE.gif when ABCDE.jpg was posted, you still get the image.

and if your browser is anything reasonable, it does the right thing

Mithrandir

ah.

Sid

Those files have many photos mainly of characters from "The Hobbit"

Mithrandir

Only two are from there

And Mithrandir is very importat

Sid

17:35

@Rubio Do your thing and Try Q3h2 and something else and see if you get anything remotely close to the puzzle (If you have time, that is)

Mithrandir

Those are only 2 and 3 of the link

Rubio

that search space is too big

Mithrandir

You still need 1, 4, and 5

Rubio

btw @Mithrandir is there anything hinting the case of these letters? i had to brute force to find the last one

the one in the gray rectangle

Mithrandir

What gray rectangle? o_o

Sid

17:37

Those things,whatever they are, are they important? On the life of fred thing

Rubio

@Mithrandir lkGRy

Mithrandir

@Rubio Which one is that? I honsetly don't remember

But they all have cases

All of the ones on the bookcase can just be copypasted from the tinyurl

And the hidden ones do show their cases.

@Sid What things?

Rubio

It's the one on the front of the desk in the grey rectangle

And if its case is supposed to be evident, it's a mystery to me how :)

Sid

These weird shapes- i.sstatic.net/RXkZe.png

Mithrandir

@Sid That's Fred.

@Rubio The big ones are capital.

Rubio

17:47

Bah. That's hard to see. I guess that makes sense.

They're like, two pixels taller. ;)

Sid

I am wearing a high-power lens and yet everything looks pretty much same to me...

Mithrandir

shrugs

I can tell.

:P

Rubio

I was looking at it at 800% zoom and the capitals are actually maybe 4 or 5 pixels taller. If you know that's what you're looking for you can see it, but the font doesn't make it any easier to tell if you don't.

dcfyj

@Mithrandir @Sid @BmyGuest your three icons together almost look like a singular image (look at them on the chat room user list)

Mithrandir

Well, that font has small caps, which is important for like l and I.

dcfyj

17:52

@Mithrandir You ruined the image!

GentlePurpleRain

@dcfyj We don't have that power. If it's really important, you can talk to the Community Managers (use the "contact us" link at the bottom of any SE page). When it's deleted, though, it can only be viewed by SE mods or CMs.

dcfyj

ok, It's important-ish, but there's no way anyone will know what it's for

Mithrandir

@dcfyj @BmyGuest left anyway.

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