The Sphinx's Lair

Rubio

00:04

is there any way to put a bulleted list in a spoiler tag without it looking like bantha poodoo?

Volatility

like what?

Rubio

like crap, for the non-Star Wars folks.

Volatility

Also, I don't think so. I just use hyphens for bullets.

Display name

Will

You could c/p • but it might look even worse

Display name

00:07

Be classy: Use <ul> as a container and close the <li>s .

Volatility

oh, that works?

Rubio

meh. it's formally correct but doesn't change the formatting, so why waste the time adding in tags that don't help ;)

or does it?

Display name

@Rubio ? Then I have no idea what you mean. It looks way better

Rubio

hm. i swear i tried that before and it didn't make it any better. lemme try it again.

Display name

You don't even have to close the <li>s, btw.

It was just a snarky remark from me.

Rubio

00:10

huh. no kidding.

Yeah, the </li>s add vertical whitespace I don't want

I totally remember trying that before and having it not help. What did I do wrong then, I wonder

Display name

You probably continued your habit and didn't close the <ul> :P

Rubio

Hehe. Possible. I remember trying both with and without closers, and with and without the container <ul>

But clearly I did something wrong somewhere when I did it

Jim

You know what else makes lists?

A colon: and some commas, right?

Will

commas do not make a list of sentences

Jim

Oh you have a list of requirements for your list? Let's set up a meeting to discuss the requirements ;)

Rubio

00:16

Whoa, whoa, you just want to jump straight into the meeting?

Will

why am I being winked at

Jim

Then we can break it up into stories

Display name

yesterday, by Will

@Mithrandir That's hot.

Rubio

dilbert.com/strip/1996-07-05

Jim

Quickest way I could get to sarcasm @Will

Rubio

00:17

Some people don't get sarcasm.

Jim

My car ride has almost come to an end. Hurray for not being in a car.

Anyone get that CCCC yet?

Sconibulus

Lucky, mine still has a couple hours

Will

sarcasm is hard without a sign

Rubio

Nope

Jim

@Sconibulus where are you headed? I went from Minneapolis, MN to Madison, WI

Sconibulus

00:19

Virginia to New York

Jim

Sounds about the same distance

Rubio

That's a pretty drive, if it's light out to see it

Well, unless you're heading into the city.

Sconibulus

Nah, up around Poughkeepsie

Will

00:32

@Rubio ADVERTENT

Rubio

explain?

Will

Taking notice of = def
ADVER(TEN)T

Rubio

kk there it is. You're up!

Volatility

nice

Will

someone say a number

Display name

00:34

412592

Volatility

8,243,721

Will

even it is

CCCC: Failing to sustain wilting plant (14)

Volatility

lol

Rubio

The alternative was: Mistaken in placing an X in the flyer (11) - same idea

Display name

Sorry, lol.

Volatility

00:35

I had to switch tabs to copy-paste the hat name ;-) Guess I was too slow

Will

I'm working on other cryptic clues and one of them is 13 words long & I'm finding it harder to be more succinct but it's really ugly

Sconibulus

01:04

Dehydrogenated? Might work as a double Def

Will

nope, sorry :(

Sconibulus

Thought it was a long shot

Display name

01:22

Maybe an extremely obscure plant name that's an anagram of "wwiillttiinngg"? :P "Failing to sustain" = anagram, "to" = x2

Sconibulus

Sustainwilting might also be the anagram there maybe

Rubio

01:41

I don't think "failing" is an anagram indicator, it seems a stretch too far to me

Volatility

I was thinking "to sustain" was a container indicator

Jim

02:10

@Rubio I was thinking AD and ADVERT might have crossed my mind but ADVERTENT isn't in my personal vocabulary

Rubio

i assume "inadvertent" is :) I started there and then was like, what is it without the IN-? and yeah, learned a new word myself. it's marked "Archaic" in at least one of the dictionaries I use hehe so not surprising it's not rolling off our tongues.

Jim

I'm cool with that. When I'm not in a car on mobile I'm more likely to search a dictionary.

Rubio

@Volatility That's an interesting thought ...

Volatility

You have something? :P

Jim

What's container mean

Volatility

02:19

@Jim when a word "contains" or "surrounds" another word, e.g. in the previous C4, ADVERTENT is ADVERT containing/surrounding TEN

Sconibulus

@supinf shakes fist

Jim

Oh so the same thing I did in my last CCCC as well (my knowledge is top notch)

Volatility

yes

Rubio

I have nothing, unfortunately. Not seeing how to fit any rational synonym for wilting into any rational synonym for failing and getting any word at all, let alone one that means "plant". hehe

@Sconibulus Um, what? hehe

Sconibulus

Plant does have about a million meaning

Jim

02:24

Indeed it does

With many parts of speech

Sconibulus

i think i have found out what you have to do for the first two steps of this puzzle, but it requires some work. i hope i have enough time tomorrow... — supinf 28 mins ago

Jim

Or at least more than one

Rubio

@Sconibulus lol.

Sconibulus

I believe him, but I don't like that answer

Or comment rather

Volatility

Does a clue to the effect of "remove E from HEATER" mean remove both E's or can it mean remove just one (e.g. to become HATER)?

Rubio

02:39

Depends on how you're indicating that, I guess?

It's certainly possible to indicate a deletion by position, in which case you can be precise

Or you can indicate that a given letter should be removed, which is likely to interpreted as removing all instances of it, but there's enough ambiguity there that you could do either

Volatility

I see

Jim

Can we have double definition? Did I see that?

Volatility

That's a valid clue, yes

Jim

Because I just don't think you're making a 14 letter word out of that.

Feels like something like MALNUTRITION though that's too short

UNDERNUTRITION

@Will UNDERNUTRITION

Volatility

How are you interpreting the clue?

Jim

02:48

Failing to sustain is basically dying

Wilting plant is basically dying

Both describe undernutrition

Volatility

I don't see how "wilting plant" defines UNDERNUTRITION though

Jim

Yeah it doesn't. It only describes it.

My guess is this is what was intended. I can't tell you how it fits with cryptic law

Remember I'm like 3 cryptic days old

Volatility

Haha, yeah no worries there, was just pointing out an issue

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus what's wrong with supinf's comment? It's useful information for other competitive-minded solvers :-).

Sconibulus

Nothing super wrong, but if he'd put a partial answer with what he figured out, I'd be less worried about the bounty running away fruitlessly

Jim

03:00

For people who are new here, what's the issue @Sconibulus

Rubio

Someone said s/he thought s/he saw how to make a material advance on Sconibulus' music box puzzle, but it would take work and s/he didn't have time until tomorrow to work on it

TheGreatEscaper

hullo!

Jim

And that's an issue because? Something about a bounty?

Rubio

so Sconibulus is grumpy that they posted that, either because one person who may know what to do won't make headway at it for quite a while longer, imperilling the Bounty, or because the comment itself may make other people less inclined to work on it, or both.

@TheGreatEscaper Hiya

Or neither. I'm speculating. :)

TheGreatEscaper

What's going on?

Rubio

03:07

Same stuff. Different day.

TheGreatEscaper

Haha fair enough answer :P

I was just sensing a mildly dramatic tone in conversation

Jim

Do bounties expire?

Do you lose what you put up?

Volatility

Yes and yes

They expire after a week

Deusovi

@Jim Yes, and yes. Some sites have "ongoing bounty" threads on meta. I believe there's one buried somewhere in ours.

TheGreatEscaper

Huh? I just tried to post a puzzle and SE didn't do anything

Volatility

03:14

I see it

TheGreatEscaper

Oops just must be a delay on my computer, sorry

Is the 'failing to sustain' CCCC current?

Volatility

yes

Jim

Anyone else putting together a Powet Wheels Batman Dune Buggy to make Christmas extra special? :)

Sphinx

1

Q: Four Birds + One

You have a 7x7 tray, and several pieces as shown (the dimensions should be fairly obvious since the picture is to scale, but if not, a yellow bird piece fits snugly in a 4x4 square, the blue piece is a 2x2 square, and the red piece fits snugly in a 3x3 square). Challenge 1: Fit the four yellow...

Jim

@TheGreatEscaper I did have a theory and answer for the CCCC but it needs @Will

TheGreatEscaper

03:24

Yeah, I just read upwards

I agree that it doesn't seem plausible that we can get 14 letters from that clue

But I've never seen a double definition before

I'm just a cryptic baby

They're not really my thing

Will

@Jim ??? Are you referring to UNDERNUTRITION ??? It's not that (I didn't even know that's a word)

Jim

Indeed I was. It didn't work within the rules but a wilting plan and failing to sustain are both described by that

There aren't that many 14 letter words. Maybe a few thousand

Rubio

If a bounty expires, half its value is awarded by the system anyway

So it's only half lost

Will

If there's an answer

Volatility

Unless there isn't an answer

Rubio

03:28

True.

I'll wait until 1 minute from expiry and I'll post "Hi Mom" as an answer. ;)

Volatility

lol

Rubio

@Will This is a proper cryptic? A def. part at start or end, and a fully separate remainder clueing the same word through wordplay?

Will

Yes

Rubio

It's impressive, then :)

TheGreatEscaper

i was wondering if 'failing to' was an anagram marker, so I tried running 'sustain wilting' through anagram solvers...

Since it had the right letter count

But either anagram solvers don't have plant names in their dictionaries, or I'm on the wrong track entirely

Rubio

03:32

Yeah we discussed that briefly earlier. It seems to me like it'd be a stretch for it to indicate an anagramming, but not beyond all realm of possibility.

Jim

Occam's razor says it's an anagram for a plant species

Also: I hate long anagrams

Rubio

Yeah but have you seen Occam's stubble? I don't think his razor is that good a lot of the time.

Jim

It is an impressive feat of follicle

The razor never lets me down

Volatility

@Will is there a reasonable chance that a non-specialist would know the correct word?

Jim

It's an anagram

Will

03:34

@Volatility It's a common word. Most children know it, probably.

Volatility

ah ok

Jim

Supercalafragalisticexpiidocious?

This is more impressive than I thiught

Will

Dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus too :)

Jim

Those anagram silvers are gooooood

TheGreatEscaper

a 14 letter word that most children know :P

Will

03:47

You'd be surprised

TheGreatEscaper

That's reassuring...

IF there is an anagram involved

then it's likely that 'failing' is actually the definition

because 'wilting' provides a nice ing that would be used to end a synonym of failing

Jim

But then plant would serve no purpose

Rubio

except then we have

well nevermind

TheGreatEscaper

plant = 5 letters, to = 2 letters, matched up with a 7 letter word? Idk i'm not very good at cryptics xD

Volatility

It's possible also that "wilting" (~"ends dropping") is a clue to remove the end of a word

Rubio

03:50

we have problems

TheGreatEscaper

Random note - the word 'pollinating' exists in that set of letters

(That's not helpful at all, but I thought it was interesting)

Rubio

unsatisfactory, malfunctioning, disappointment, indiscriminiate, unenlightening, unilluminating. those are what i've got for 14-letter words with a general meaning of failure.

if you can get "sustain wilting plant" to wordplay to any of those, we're done. :)

I'll be honest, I don't see any word in this cryptic at all as being an indicator word. so hard to even guess at what wordplay is happening.

(eh. I suppose I could spell 'indiscriminate' right.)

Volatility

Could also be UNDERACHIEVING

TheGreatEscaper

Yeah @rubio I'm really confused as to how we can get wordplay from this

Deusovi

04:06

Could always be a charades clue.

Rubio

It could, but if it is, and if Failure is the def. part, it'd be tough to find something that unwinds to "failure" from "sustain wilting plant"

TheGreatEscaper

What is a charades clue?

Rubio

(of course it could be Failure to sustain as def, and wilting plant as charade fun, but I've been staring at that forever now and have nothing)

charade is spelling it out without any real indicators because there's no real wordplay, it's just building it piecemeal from synonyms of the supplied words.

think rebus, but all "+" and text, actually. :)

TheGreatEscaper

Ohhh okay

Deusovi

@TheGreatEscaper Two words put next to each other. Basically, the only wordplay is "putting words or other components side by side".

For instance, "Again, a contradiction by that girl (7)" for A+NOT+HER

(Not the best clue, but eh.)

TheGreatEscaper

04:12

Got it

Rubio

Meanwhile, @Will is having a good chuckle. :)

Will

Will has been having a good chuckle for about 20 minutes. :)

Deusovi

04:35

@TheGreatEscaper: That was a wonderful puzzle!

TheGreatEscaper

@Deusovi thanks so much! It's actually one of my physical puzzle designs from a year or so ago, but I realised that with a few adjustments (addition of challenge 4), I could pose it to PSE :)

If Oliver is around to edit his solution it'll be a fairly speedy green tick giveaway :)

I won't bother with checking up the calculations to show that your solution for challenge 2 works, since it's kind of tedious and there's actually a lot of spare room anyway

Deusovi

I haven't checked mine either. It's quite possible it doesn't work.

And things don't line up as nicely as the other one.

TheGreatEscaper

It definitely works :)

The maths is kind of boring, but if you insist, feel free to check up on it

Deusovi

Nah, not particularly worried. It vaguely seems workable.

TheGreatEscaper

When I said 'won't bother with checking up the calculations' I meant I would accept an answer that didn't have them xD

Volatility

04:49

Ah, nice!

TheGreatEscaper

I can dig up the numbers from somewhere if you want

LeppyR64

IS @Sconibulus around?

TheGreatEscaper

Accurate to 2 decimal places, the smallest square the solution for 2 can fit into is 6.96 units a side

Jim

05:11

Cccc still intact?

Will

somehow

Jim

Cuz anagrams?:)

Techidiot

Photosynthesis? :p

Jim

Cuz plant!

Will

nope

Jim

05:15

I have a 7 and 5 year old @Will. I'm going to ask them to tell me all the 14 letter words they know when they get up tomorrow."Sorry kids, Santa doesn't come until you solve the CCCC"

Will

LOL

Techidiot

Haha

Jim

BatmanAndRobin is the first thing I expect them to say

So let's get that guess out there right now

Volatility

@LeppyR64 what have you tried for the note-number conversion?

Jim

Didn't he say knowing how long each note was was important

I'm music illiterate and haven't looked at that puzzle yet and have never heard of nonogram until now (but assumed things like it existed) but I like to brainstorm

Also I shall sleep but wish you all luck. I probably won't be around for a few days

LeppyR64

05:31

@Volatility I tried using the note numbers in the scale as quantities. This gives numbers that are too large to fit in the grid.

I've tried using grouping the notes of the same length, but those numbers seem too small

Jim

Can you give me an example?

LeppyR64

I was thinking about the deltas from note to note as well but nothing "feels good"

@Jim, an example of what?

TheGreatEscaper

Is this the music box puzzle?

LeppyR64

@TheGreatEscaper Yes

Jim

@LeppyR64 of the thing you tried to that was either to large or too small

LeppyR64

05:33

10

Q: My Uncle's Music Box

Unfortunately, my favorite uncle just passed away. He's the one that taught me all about puzzling, and supposedly found Davey Jones' treasure in his youth. I miss him very much, however, I just received a package from his Attorney, containing this message from him. Nephew dearest I leave to y...

logical-deduction visual steganography music imgur-maze

TheGreatEscaper

Is advanced musical knowledge useful? Cos I looked at the music score and it looked more like some cipher disguised as music rather than requiring musical knowledge

LeppyR64

I don't think "advanced" musical knowledge is useful. For the ideas I have, grade school music is all I've needed. I'm not even certain that the notes matter.

TheGreatEscaper

Ahh just read the progress so far. If it's a nonogram, it seems safe to assume we're mapping to a 29x29

LeppyR64

Well, 30x30 with zeroes on the end

TheGreatEscaper

(The zeroes are redundant) In which case semi quaver = 1 seems

Volatility

05:37

@LeppyR64 really? where? Haven't gone through it thoroughly, but the notes look low enough in general

TheGreatEscaper

*in which case semi quaver = 1 seems like a safe guess, since all clues will have total value of 16...

LeppyR64

@Volatility @Volatility That struggles with Bar 11 Treble Clef

Volatility

I get minimum of 25 with that

LeppyR64

I' recognize the british terms, is quaver what we call a quarter and semi quaver and eigth note?

TheGreatEscaper

Yup

Hang on maybe position above E in treble is how much we need to add to the note value?

It seems like a plausible guess

And then bass would be position above G

I don't see any obvious impossibilities with this, I might transcribe it and try to solve the nonogram

LeppyR64

05:41

Rock on. It's 12:30 AM, I'm off to bed. Good luck guys!

TheGreatEscaper

Ha

*happy Christmas Eve to you!

LeppyR64

Cheers!

Jim

06:25

Still feel like the CCCC both parts are the same definition. With the word likely ending in ING

Techidiot

I feel its more of science.. FredFlinstone is what kids know :)

Deusovi