The Sphinx's Lair

Rand al'Thor

13:00

@IAmInPLS Are they both nouns?

Gareth McCaughan

I think if you're going to ask that it should be in comments on the question

(and @IAmInPLS may well prefer not to answer, of course)

Rand al'Thor

True.

Are both the words nouns? — rand al'thor 14 secs ago

IAmInPLS

I won't answer for now @Randal'Thor. The thing is, I like to see you struggle a bit :-P

Rand al'Thor

Fair enough :-)

Oh, Tom got it.

Gareth McCaughan

dammit, Tom ninja'ed me by 15 seconds

Techidiot

13:04

:D

Rand al'Thor

Stack Exchange, Planet of the Ninjas

Gareth McCaughan

actually, a bit more than 15 seconds: his answer had been there for 14 when I went to put mine in, and it was an answer of reasonable length, so he was probably a good minute ahead of me.

IAmInPLS

Damn riddle solvers!

Anyway Gareth, waiting for your CCCC ;-)

I'll accept Tom's answer later that day, but that's it, indeed

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, I'm waiting for my CCCC too :-)

IAmInPLS

If only that worked that way...

Gareth McCaughan

13:21

CCCC: Summary of morally acceptable actions: any that Hermione and Willow got wrong (2,2,4,4,2,4,2,4)

Techidiot

:O

Gareth McCaughan

why :O?

Alconja

That's ...quite the enumeration.

Techidiot

Its huge :D

Gareth McCaughan

I think it's also much too easy

but we'll see; I've been badly wrong about difficulty before.

Techidiot

13:25

I think its one of the spell. Huge - may be because it's in the pronunciation form

oh-BLI-vee-AH-tay something like this :) @Randal'Thor- Might be aware of this

Rand al'Thor

So it's an anagram of "any that Hermione and Willow".

And probably contains "to do" somewhere.

Can't contain "is", because there's no S.

Maybe "what".

> The permitted input length (maximum 26 letters) varies depending on the server load. Currently it's limited to 0 letters.

Well, thanks, Wordsmith.

TO DO WHAT WILL ... anagram of "any Hermine an"

Techidiot

13:42

@Randal'Thor- You can try this

Rand al'Thor

@Techidiot Heh, I'd literally just found that page just now! :-)

Techidiot

:D

dcfyj

I'd forgotten about it

Sconibulus

@Techidiot pretty sure obliviate isn't morally acceptable

Rand al'Thor

Argh, now I've created a new cryptic clue which I rather like, but can't post it unless I solve Gareth's first.

Gareth McCaughan

13:48

well, hurry up and solve mine, then

dcfyj

to do what WILL MY HEIR EN NAAN!

Gareth McCaughan

wow, dcfyj totally got it

dcfyj

lol

Gareth McCaughan

oh, sorry, I mean totally got it wrong

dcfyj

That was pretty much a given haha

Gareth McCaughan

13:49

I hereby confirm that NAAN is not one of the words in the solution.

Rand al'Thor

Hmm, either I'm counting wrong or this anagram program is.

Gareth McCaughan

or I am

I have made mistakes before...

Rand al'Thor

TO DO WHAT WILL IN TIME ... there should be 6 letters left now, but the program claims it's AAEHNNRY remaining.

dcfyj

The odds of Naan being used are incredibly low. Although, it would be entertaining to make a cryptic about it and see people try to figure it out mwahahahaha

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor my arithmetic agrees with yours.

Rand al'Thor

13:52

Ah, no, too many T's.

Gareth McCaughan

(I was just about to say that)

Rand al'Thor

TO, WHAT, and TIME can't all be in there.

dcfyj

me too haha

Gareth McCaughan

I hereby confirm that the solution does not contain all of TO, WHAT, and TIME.

dcfyj

@Randal'Thor if you click the words it will add them to the text box and automatically update the list

That way you won't have those kinds of errors :P

Gareth McCaughan

13:53

(but of course I am not confirming or denying that it's an anagram of what @Randal'Thor is anagramming)

Sconibulus

"we do what we must because we can"

Gareth McCaughan

7>4

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan I suppose it could also be an anagram of "that Hermione and Willow got".

dcfyj

@Sconibulus "I'm making a note here, huge success"

Sconibulus

yeah, I know, the first part just sorta fit :)

dcfyj

13:54

Good song though :P

Rand al'Thor

To do what will in time - ha! Gone!

Gareth McCaughan

very funny but of course not the correct answer

Alconja

Could have "do no harm" in there (since we're aiming at a moral code)

dcfyj

@Sconibulus Now you've got Still Alive in my head :P

DO NO HARM WHEN AT LATE IN WILY? haha

Gareth McCaughan

@dcfyj Not content with finding the answer immediately, you've now found the other answer, the secret one. I'm going to have to kill you now.

Rand al'Thor

13:59

Which would make more sense from a cryptic wordplay point of view: anagramming "any that Hermione and Willow" or "that Hermione and Willow got"?

Sconibulus

"WE DO WHAT HERO AT MAIN NY NILL"

Rand al'Thor

I was leaning towards the first because "got wrong" = anagram, but Gareth's "neither confirm nor deny" made me think we might not be using quite the right words.

Gareth McCaughan

For the avoidance of doubt, the "neither confirm nor deny" thing was not meant to be "deny" in code. Neither is this intended to be "confirm" in code. I was, truly, just saying that my comments were not intended to say anything about whether the answer is an anagram nor what it's an anagram of if so.

(It's unfortunate but I suppose inevitable that there is no mechanism for completely ruling out that sort of subtextual interpretation.)

dcfyj

Sure there is, ignore the question :P

Sconibulus

I keep wanting to throw If at it, but there's no f

Rand al'Thor

14:02

Or "be", but there's no B.

@GarethMcCaughan But why say it at all if I was on the right lines? :-)

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor Because then my not saying anything might be taken as a hint that you were on the right lines, and I wish to remain hint-free unless I deliberately choose to give hints.

But, as we are seeing here, anything can be taken as having subtext :-)

Rand al'Thor

We used to use <hint> or <nohint> tags, back in the day.

> <nohint> I neither confirm nor deny that the solution involves anagrams </nohint>

dcfyj

Even then, people might read more into it

Gareth McCaughan

Anyway, in any case I think you will make progress faster by thinking about the clue than by thinking about what information I might accidentally have leaked in my comments about it.

dcfyj

By the way, did either of you ever have the chance to look at the C4 I posted a while back?

In particular this one:

Dec 9 at 15:20, by dcfyj

CCCC: The endless steeple with headless acumen of backwards Germany is sneakily procured post-haste (8)

Gareth McCaughan

14:08

yeah, that one got done

or do you mean you wanted some other attention besides it getting solved?

dcfyj

I know that, I'm wanting to hear your opinion of it

Gareth McCaughan

oh, OK

Rand al'Thor

Yay, posted my animals puzzle:

0

Q: A mysterious email from the World Wildlife Fund

You are a secret agent in the service of the KGB. After a delay when your superiors thought your cover had been blown before you even left Russia, you successfully infiltrated MI6 and worked for several months under the pseudonym of Flynn Smith before receiving a warning that this time you really...

Gareth McCaughan

let me remind myself. It was SPIRITED, right?

dcfyj

yup

Rand al'Thor

14:09

@dcfyj Without knowing the solution, I think it sounds awesome.

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor The fourth picture is meant to look like that?

dcfyj

@Randal'Thor I tried to clue it well (my first cryptic) but I also wanted a proper surface reading

Sphinx

0

Q: A mysterious email from the World Wildlife Fund

You are a secret agent in the service of the KGB. After a delay when your superiors thought your cover had been blown before you even left Russia, you successfully infiltrated MI6 and worked for several months under the pseudonym of Flynn Smith before receiving a warning that this time you really...

story steganography animals

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan I neither confirm nor deny whether the fourth picture is meant to look like that.

:-P

Gareth McCaughan

@dcfyj The surface reading is pretty good. There are two things I don't like so much about the clue itself; neither is a big problem. (1) I'm not fond of the "of". (2) The definition seems just slightly off, I think because "spirited" focuses on taking away from whereas "procured" focuses on providing to, if you see what I mean.

Display name

14:14

Is it a hint that you sometimes used the medium version of the original image or not? :P

dcfyj

@GarethMcCaughan (1) I wasn't overly fond of it either but I didn't really see another way, (2) I think they are related closely enough that the link isn't remotely far fetched to make.

Gareth McCaughan

Yup. That's why neither is a big problem :-).

dcfyj

Considering it's the first cryptic I've ever written, I think I did a good job of it.

Gareth McCaughan

yup

dcfyj

Ooh, I just had a fun idea for a puzzle :P

Rand al'Thor

14:27

Ouch, a downvote on my Mysterious Email already? :-/

IAmInPLS

A downvote for me as well...

dcfyj

Feel the hate?

IAmInPLS

I think the one who did this didn't even read our puzzles @Randal'Thor, they seem too close to just a coincidence

Gareth McCaughan

take your minds off the misery of downvotes by solving my cryptic

dcfyj

lol

Display name

14:28

Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.

2

Gareth McCaughan

@Displayname

oops

@Displayname Rand is probably not the best person to make that particular joke at.

dcfyj

@GarethMcCaughan You know there's an edit option right? :P

Gareth McCaughan

yeah

but I'm a believer in leaving my mistakes in the open

dcfyj

haha

I hate the fact that I can come up with an idea for a puzzle really easily, but the content is a completely different story...

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Oh, I've spent enough time in Mos Eisley to pick up these things.

Literally answered a Star Wars question just a few minutes ago :-)

Gareth McCaughan

14:36

yeah, I thought you probably had

(picked it up, I mean)

dcfyj

@GarethMcCaughan Oh, I thought you meant you were psychic and you knew he'd answered a Star Wars question :(

Gareth McCaughan

well, that too, obviously

dcfyj

That would've been cooler

Rand al'Thor

I thought he was an AI, not psychic?

dcfyj

Who ever said AI can't be psychic?

Gareth McCaughan

14:39

the advantage an AI has is that of monitoring the internet constantly and hence being instantly aware of, e.g., any question someone answers on a Stack Overflow site.

dcfyj

That too

Rand al'Thor

Or just watching this page: stackexchange.com/questions?tab=realtime

IAmInPLS

o/ @Levieux

Rand al'Thor

Oh, yay, Levieux is here! Welcome!

dcfyj

@IAmInPLS is really a summoner!

Rand al'Thor

14:44

@Gareth: do no harm that we well into ... ig. Damn.

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor There are two things I don't understand about your animal puzzle: the exact significance of that fourth image (I think it probably stands for just a D but I'm not sure why) and which end of the journey is indicated. Feel free to poke me if those are things I should have been able to deduce.

(Fun puzzle, by the way.)

Sconibulus

At an iron, will he mend yo thaw?

IAmInPLS

@Sconibulus My god

Levieux

Hi! Thanks ;)

I got an update that @Techidiot left a message here, but now I can't find it..

dcfyj

14:59

He speaks! ah!

Techidiot

@Levieux- It was probably here

dcfyj

@Levieux It could be a few days old, I recall someone @-ing you

Techidiot

:)

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Yes, the fourth image should give D.

The answer is also fairly self-confirming, since there's a Russian military base there.

(I wonder if I've put myself on some sort of watch list by searching online for Russian military bases in Syria ...)

4

dcfyj

Hmm, I made a cryptic (1 of 4 in reality) but I'm not 100% sure it's valid...

Rand al'Thor

15:05

@GarethMcCaughan Thanks! How did you get it so fast? I half-expected it would last until I've gone offline for Christmas.

dcfyj

Also, can a cryptic contain 2 sentences?

Gareth McCaughan

I don't think I did anything specially clever; I just happened to take the right path, whether by good luck or good taste I don't know. I started looking up the animals, thinking "maybe their first letters will be significant or something". Then I thought "no, that would be too easy. I should tabulate the Latin names too; maybe there'll be something in the first letters of the genera or something like that". [continues]

Rand al'Thor

Also, yeah, sorry for the slight unclarity about which end of the flight LTK is supposed to be. What I had in mind was "get to LTK on the ground and then you can fly back to Russia" (this may well be the last Mysterious Email puzzle), but the other interpretation sort of works too.

Gareth McCaughan

So I did that and stared for it a bit, writing down first letters of genera and species. Nothing leapt out at me. I then noticed the stuff about the age of the first photo and thought "ah, did its classification change or something?", looked up the Arctic fox in Wikipedia and found that indeed its genus was reclassified in 1903. That (a) gave me a correct letter and (b) confirmed I was headed in the right direction. [continues]

And then I just stared at it a bit more and noticed that taking both genus and species gives something sensible-looking, at which point we're basically done.

IAmInPLS

Na, we rent. Holy, on what mi ladi?

dcfyj

15:08

@GarethMcCaughan can a cryptic contain 2 sentences?

Gareth McCaughan

(My guess about which end LTK was was the one you intended, for what it's worth)

@dcfyj I think it can. It isn't common.

I guess the main thing that made the animals puzzle not-ridiculously-hard for me is the existence of reverse image searching. Without that it would have been really painful.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan OK, you started looking at Latin names quicker than I'd expected :-) It was meant to be easy once you've got that idea, and Latin names >> common names because the latter aren't unique, but I thought people might do more barking up wrong trees before starting to look at the names of the species pictures.

IAmInPLS

@GarethMcCaughan TinEye for the win

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Yep, I was relying on people being able to use that. Otherwise including not-so-well-known species like the lesser mouse-deer would have been a bit evil.

Mithrandir

Who doesn't know what a lesser mouse-deer is?

Gareth McCaughan

15:13

@IAmInPLS Actually I used Google's reverse image search, but I'm sure TinEye would have performed just as well.

And yes, the fact that Latin binomials are unique and common names aren't is a very good reason for using them.

Rand al'Thor

(Bah, I still think this answer fits at least as well as the accepted one.)

Gareth McCaughan

I did also wonder whether e.g. the species' geographical ranges would somehow make letters on a map as with the previous two puzzles in the series, but that didn't seem like a goer and was in any case much more work to check.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor Sם VTC as too broad.

dcfyj

Oh poo, The method with which I was going to encrypt isn't going to work the way I want it to...

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan I've already used the "letters on a map" thing in two consecutive Mysterious Email puzzles - wasn't going to use it for a third as well!

Gareth McCaughan

15:15

I wouldn't get upset about that puzzle, which is a rather poor one in any case.

@Randal'Thor I was ambivalent between "just used it twice in succession, maybe he's over-fond of it" and "just used it twice in succession, probably won't do it again" :-).

Rand al'Thor

I've had this "binomial names of animals" idea brewing for a long time, but I had to rush to put it together for the topic challenge.

Mithrandir

(I think that Rand linked that just to get more +10s.)

Gareth McCaughan

(probably, but I'm not taking the bait)

Mithrandir

resists pressing ^

Rand al'Thor

As with this one, it was a real pain just to find enough viable two-letter codes that could be put together to give a meaningful message.

@Mithrandir I was just going through a bunch of my old answers earlier.

Mithrandir

15:18

thinks that people take me too seriously

Gareth McCaughan

yes, I thought it must have been a bit painful. But I guess there's probably a Wikipedia list of animal genera or something...

@Mithrandir I think you may be overestimating how seriously I took your comment.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan There's a Wikipedia list of mammal genera, but it's organised taxonomically rather than alphabetically, which makes it a pain to search.

Mithrandir

Not you.

Gareth McCaughan

ah

Mithrandir

Also, just in general.

Rand al'Thor

15:19

And one for bird genera which is organised alphabetically but gives no clue as to what kind of bird each genus is, so you have to click through and see unless you actually recognise the genus name.

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor So I see I'm expected to read your mind about what specific thing you had in mind for the red-X graphic in order to get my lovely green checkmark?

Mithrandir

I'd say ~50% of the time i'm being sarcastic.

Gareth McCaughan

Sure you are.

Mithrandir

(I'll leave it to you to figure out if that was sarcasm or not :P)

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Well, they do say you're psychic ...

But seriously, no mind-reading involved.

Gareth McCaughan

15:20

OK then.

Rand al'Thor

It's obvious when you see it, but like I said, you may want to kick me.

Mithrandir

Who doesn't?

:P

(JK, JK...)

Rand al'Thor

(Also, you may have to wait until after Christmas to get the green tick, depending on how much I'm online in the coming days.)

@Mithrandir Rowling?

Mithrandir

Nope

You've ninja'd too many people.

Sid

this thing is answered:What's the bounty for? puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/46595/what-am-i-think-fast

Mithrandir

15:24

...To attract attention?

Sid

For what exactly? Give up 50 rep to earn a few 20-30 rep? Loss..

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor Is that meant to be a very small D in the middle of the X?

(and if so, is that the reason you're looking for?)

Mithrandir

What was the bounty on this for? (The message was attract attention, months after the answer was posted/accepted.)

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Not everything is about rep ;-)

Mithrandir

gasp Really? My life has been meaningless...

Rand al'Thor

15:27

@GarethMcCaughan If you take the "t" off the end of the image name to make it full size, it should be clearer.

@Mithrandir Didn't I promise you a bounty for some reason?

Mithrandir

You said if i voted for you.

...But I didn't...

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir I call fraud. Show me a screenshot of the election page.

Sid

@Mithrandir Never reveal your vote. Bad in a democracy...

Gareth McCaughan

oh, it's a thumbnail? I had no idea

(I did see its name was 6 characters long, but thought "huh, is imgur running out of 5-character ones already?")

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Lukas mentioned some of the images were shrunk down from larger ones with "m" or "t", and wondered if that was a clue.

I kept mum, because eliminating all the red herrings would probably make it too easy :-)

(Hmm, I wonder what the Latin name of a red herring is ...)

Gareth McCaughan

15:29

ah yes. I didn't understand what he meant by that comment, but now I do.

Clupea rubus, presumably :-).

anyway, @Randal'Thor I have updated the answer to indicate that the "it's a picture of a D" option turned out to be the right one.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Red herring, mallard.

^ how to swear in Puzzlese

Gareth McCaughan

also, why haven't you solved my cryptic clue yet?

Rand al'Thor

Because I'm too gormless?

Gareth McCaughan

"mallard" is obviously a reference to something I'm unfamiliar with or have forgotten about...

Mithrandir

Because it's 8 words

Gareth McCaughan

15:32

why should being 8 words make it harder?

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan You've forgotten about the puzzle you just solved? Engineer, this AI's memory system needs fixing! :-P

Gareth McCaughan

If it had a mallard in it, I have indeed forgotten.

oh

sorry

I'm a moron

Rand al'Thor

:-)

dcfyj

@Randal'Thor :P

I don't think my newest will be all that hard

Great... AK is now putting comments on my question and deleting them...

It's bad enough when it happens in chat, but at least I don't get pinged every time it happens here, unlike with comments on my question...

Rand al'Thor

At least the notification disappears when the comment is deleted, unlike with chat pings.

dcfyj

15:39

True

Sconibulus

Too bad Braille doesn't actually encode 2^6 bits, it would be way easier to make puzzles out of

dcfyj

haha

Sphinx

0

Q: Cryptic Encryption

This is fairly simple. Solve the 3 cryptics here to know how the 4th was encrypted. Once you've done that, solve the 4th and that's the answer to this little puzzle. Proclaim hazily, "dear cel"!(7) Indiana and Delaware hanging free. (11) Triumvirates of excursion permits(8) 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 ...

cipher cryptic-clues

0

Q: The Mechanical Octopus

The mechanical octopus is to light up all the glow orbs that forms the 8 corners of a cube. To do that it could use its laser pen and mirrors by passing a continuous beam of photons once through the center of every orbs altogether to emit spectra of colors. If it can do it using as few as possibl...

three-dimensional

dcfyj

It's rather suddenly quiet in here :P

Sconibulus

15:58

I was working on building a puzzle and some actual work

dcfyj

You were working? How dare you do such a thing while being on Stack!

Mithrandir

I'm working too...

Rubio

16:20

I'm ashamed to admit that I, too, am working

But I've been reading chat backlog for the last 15 minutes, while listening to people drone on endlessly on a meeting. I think that counts in my favor.

IAmInPLS

Everyone is working! That always reminds me of this workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/65522/…

dcfyj

@GarethMcCaughan There is one of the triplets that is misleading. One of your attempts is mostcertainly on the right track.

Sid

Not me. I am studying... which in the context probably means the same as working//

Gareth McCaughan

That much is clear :-).

(sorry, that was a response to dcfjy, not to Sid)

and yes, studying counts as working

it seems like something weird must be going on around (1,55,3). That's the one followed by the question mark. Up to and including that, and taking the question mark as indicating an actual question mark in plaintext, we get WHAT HAS NO ENE?. Perhaps (1,55,3) somehow actually indicates a D but I'm not seeing how or why. And from somewhere around that point onwards, I get nonsense.

I have tried offsetting by one word in either direction but I still get nonsense.

I am doubtless being very stupid.

(none of the above is fishing for hints, by the way; just brain-dumping)

dcfyj

16:38

I think you're miscounting your 55

Can I see what you're using to decrypt?

Gareth McCaughan

hmm, that sounds interesting; let me fiddle for a moment

hmm, nothing looks super-obviously broken to me. So I'm doing this in Python. I have the text of the DoI, split out into words, in a variable called decl. I have the triplets in a list called triplets. And I do this (NB formatting will be all wrong):

''.join((decl[j-1]+decl[j])[k-1] for (i,j,k) in triplets)

the reason for decl[j-1]+decl[j] rather than just decl[j-1] is so that if I get something wrong and hit a word that's too short, the thing doesn't actually give an exception

so that I can e.g. tweak this to use different word-offsets and have it not break horribly

the -1s are because Python indexing is 0-based not 1-based

dcfyj

I'm a programmer, I understand the 0-based notation :P

Gareth McCaughan

this gives me: Whathasnoenemtlo'tsarortascevssee

(of course for the word that produces a ' I should really be removing non-letters before indexing)

(if that word is the right word at all, which it probably isn't)

dcfyj

Again, can I have your source text?

Gareth McCaughan

yup, hang on a moment

I'll give you just some of it because TSL doesn't like very long comments

dcfyj

16:45

You could just give me the link you got it from :P

Gareth McCaughan

so here are words 0-59 (as indexed by me) which I take to be words 1-60 in the puzzle:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that

so word 55 (when 1-indexed) is the "the" before "opinions of mankind".

I took it from here ushistory.org/declaration/document FWIW.

again, just offsetting by a few words doesn't produce sensible results after the point where this breaks down, so it doesn't seem credible that your text and mine differ by an omission or insertion.

(one offset version produces the word "octal" shortly after the point where things break down, and I briefly wondered whether your numbers might be in some base other than 10 :-).)

incidentally, for automated processing of their text you need (at least if you do things the way I do) to remove some dashes that have spaces on both sides and therefore might get treated as words if you aren't careful. But there are none of those this early in the text.

dcfyj

Give me a minute, I need to look at something.

dcfyj

17:00

I miscounted (probably counted a line twice or something)

Gareth McCaughan

ah, OK

dcfyj

Check the new "version"

Gareth McCaughan

OK, will do

dcfyj

Sadly I messed up in another way, but that has zero affect on the puzzle.

Gareth McCaughan

well, I get words now

though I'm still trying to figure out what they mean

Sphinx

17:03

1

Q: A Day at the Zoo

You find a note on your door when returning home. It tells you to check your email and find the hidden message. Upon inspection, there is a mysterious email in your inbox. From: [email protected] A Day at the Zoo Alice, Bob, and their 12 children went to the zoo, each person having t...

logical-deduction steganography logic-grid animals

dcfyj

Out of curiosity, what's your result?

Feel free not to share if you don't want to

Gareth McCaughan

What has no end? Gale's two feet of beluga! (5)

(note for anyone else who hasn't been following the conversation: that is what I think one step in dcfyj's recent puzzle comes out to, and has nothing to do with the C.C.C.C.)

Techidiot

Whale?

Gareth McCaughan

sounds good, yeah

though I was kinda hoping to solve it myself

Techidiot

You have already solved the big one. :)

Gareth McCaughan

17:09

sure

Techidiot

@Gareth- But why "What has no end"?

Gareth McCaughan

WHA

Techidiot

Yeah

Never mind got it :)

dcfyj

:P

Good job

Sconibulus

Is the Sturgeon really more famous? I wasn't entirely aware of it's existence until now

dcfyj

17:13

I only know of the beluga whale

@Techidiot "+1 for the efforts"?

Gareth McCaughan

'"+1 for the efforts"?'?

oh

I see it's a comment by Techidiot on the original question

I'm as baffled by it as you are

Sid

Puzzling is really addictive. I just threw away my bio book to do the logic grid and once solved it, I just see Rand Al'Thor beat me to it by 15 seconds. Got ninjaed twice by him in the last 24 hours.

dcfyj

Anyhow, I thought this was a decently clever way of cluing a cipher :P

@GarethMcCaughan Did you have fun solving it?

(minus the counting error on my part)

Gareth McCaughan

Yup, 'twas good. Thanks!

dcfyj

I thought the encrypted was going to be mildly more difficult than the other three, not sure if that turned out to be true or not.

encrypted one*

Sid

17:28

@Techidiot You probably have to give a hint on your unsolved riddle. It has attracted more than a dozen answers and none of them seem to be close.

Techidiot

@dcfyj- I gave +1 to both of you. I already complimented Gareth here so did the same for you in the chat. :)

I guess it took some efforts for you too for building the puzzle. I liked it! :)

dcfyj

The main effort was encrypting the last cryptic :P

Techidiot

@Sid I already gave an actual hint. Wasn't it enough? Let me know

Sid

@Techidiot What? "Sorry no hint, everything is up there"? That didn't help anyone, it seems..

Oh, sorry..

Techidiot

Check again. I think your browser has some leftovers :)

Sid

17:33

My bad..

Techidiot

No problems

Sid

Boo, scientific knowledge? I quit. Better allow some genius scientist to go for it...

Sphinx

0

Q: A bizarre slot machine

There's a new slot machine in the casino in which you frequently gamble away all of your money! There are heads of animals above each slot... A pig, a parrot that rotates after each spin and a umkrabbit. Maybe the slot machine isn't random and there's a unique pattern for each slot? CSV Versi...

cipher pattern visual animals

Sid

Sphinx was only 5 minutes late this time.Good job

Techidiot

Never saw a slave like puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/32660/rottersslave

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