The Sphinx's Lair

Will

22:03

@Rubio Done with the first word :)

Gonna take a break now though

Chris Cudmore

@Rubio is napping.

Rubio

@rubio is back

and what the hell. Someone downvoted that puzzle since I left.

Will

wtf

Rubio

Anyway. @ChrisCudmore You have a suggested construction for that cccc for ESCHEW?

TrojanByAccident

22:22

@Rubio @ChrisCudmore was gone by the time you posted that message :P

Rubio

aww drat.

Will

Almost doooneeeeeeeee

Rubio

sawwwweeeeeet

TrojanByAccident

I've solved the 99 coin puzzle

now I just need to give reasoning

Rubio

cool

TrojanByAccident

22:29

don't want to post before I've got my reasoning down pat like some of you :P

Rubio

When you get ninja'd by 45 seconds on an answer that took you 15 minutes to type, you may revisit that position. hehe

TrojanByAccident

lol

Will

What if I get ninja'd on the card

I'd cry

Rubio

I'd be impressed. hehe

The only other person I've seen connect enough of the dots (heh) to have a shot at it was TechIdiot, at least before the hints

TrojanByAccident

I feel like @Randal'Thor or @BeastlyGerbil is going to come and ninja me

Will

22:35

Got the diamond. So close

Rubio

just K to go?

Will

Yeah

TrojanByAccident

*hacks your terminal, steals your work, finishes it, posts it*

Rubio

H was pretty brutal wasn't it

TrojanByAccident

Hydrogen?

Rand al'Thor

22:37

@TrojanByAccident Or Gareth or Rubio or Deusovi.

You don't have to worry about me for another couple of hours though; I'm repcapped.

Rubio

Heroin. (heh, from my other recent puzzle ;) )

Rand al'Thor

I shouldn't even have done that Sudoku really, but it was fun.

TrojanByAccident

@Randal'Thor I don't think Gareth would take this one. Deusovi might, we haven't seen him for a while. I would fully expect @Rubio to.

@Rubio Oh

Rubio

I'm not even looking at the coins, rest easy where I'm concerned.

TrojanByAccident

lol

Will

22:39

Done!

Rand al'Thor

@TrojanByAccident I don't even know what puzzle you guys are talking about.

Will

Now to type a decent explanation to go with the image

Debating redoing the first letter I messed up first too

TrojanByAccident

3

Q: 30 fake coins out of 99 coins

You are given 99 coins which consists of 30 fake ones. You also have a digital balance scale with perfect precision that shows how much difference between weighs you put on. For example, if you put 10 g on the left side and 20 g on the other side, it will show -10, otherwise +10. You are asked t...

Rubio

I really wanna know what's going on here personally

Rand al'Thor

@TrojanByAccident Oh blimey, one of those.

Will

22:40

Yeah actually I want to see that word in its full glory so I'm going to redo the letter :)

Rubio

Hehee

TrojanByAccident

@Randal'Thor I've got it solved, I'm just writing out my reasoning

Rand al'Thor

I am the top answerer in logical-deduction, but sometimes I'm just too lazy to have a proper go at those coin weighing things.

@Rubio No maths, no language ... well, what is it based on then?

Doesn't look like @Glorfindel ever comes in here either.

Rubio

Honestly, I half expected it to be: "How many hats I've had by day since December 25th"

except there's no way to determine that, that I can tell

Will

Should I include all the calculations I did in Notepad? I figure no one would read those much anyway...

Rand al'Thor

22:42

He's a Charcoal regular though, so we could find him there if we really wanted to.

Rubio

@Will I think just showing how it works suffices

Will

By, like, explaining your hint? :P

Rubio

the actual numbers are pretty boring anyway, the only thing that matters is being able to show what the coding does

heh. actually yeah, that'd be a great way to show it, wouldn't it

So I saw my first chat review signal today. That was ... weird

TrojanByAccident

?

Rubio

When stuff gets flagged in chats, I apparently see that now

For having 10k+ cumulative rep

TrojanByAccident

22:47

@Randal'Thor How do you make the tag format like that?

@Rubio oh. I'd think you'd see that anyway, since you're a room owner?

Rubio

type [tag:whatever]

TrojanByAccident

oh

Rubio

@TrojanByAccident This was for some completely different chat room. It was a little unnerving. :)

TrojanByAccident

@Rubio Oh

Will

... to reference Buffy or not to reference Buffy

I think yes.

I did it.

Rand al'Thor

22:54

@TrojanByAccident Seeing chat flags is independent of room ownership.

After all, anyone can own a minor room if they want to.

@Beastly Let's allow OPs to choose their own poetic structure, shall we? There's nothing wrong with internal rhyme.

Will

I thought I knew how to put, for example, red text in an answer, but it appears I do not. Help?

Rubio

Colored text in a spoiler is ... um ... nontrivial.

Will

Not spoiler

Rubio

In plain text it's easy with MathJax

Rand al'Thor

$\color{red}{hello}$

Rubio

22:59

^ that

Will

Thanks.

Rand al'Thor

Or $\mathrm{\color{red}{hello}}$ if you don't want it in maths formatting.

Rubio

though you probably wan...

durn it rand, stop out-typing me hehe

Rand al'Thor

Sorry, I've had years of practice at FGitW :-)

Rubio

I was just gonna suggest $\color{red}\text{foo}}$

what's "rm" in mathrm?

Rand al'Thor

23:01

-2

Q: Can we get an easy, markdownish way to color text?

Recently, while posting a question, I realized that it would have been handy to be able to color-code some of the text in my post. I think we should have a way, using markdown, to do this easily. Only a few colors would be needed, but HTML colors should be allowed too. It would be nice to be able...

feature-request

@Rubio Remove?

Rubio

huh.

Rand al'Thor

i.e. remove maths formatting

$\color{fuchsia}{\mathbb{OMG!}}$ — A E Nov 28 '14 at 14:55

Rubio

blame Jim

well bb I get

it's bold

Jim

Agreed!

Rand al'Thor

Aha, that markdown doesn't work in chat ... which means I get to see how he did it without any mod comment-editing powers :->

Rubio

23:02

but rm just seems arbitrarily arbitrary. hehe

(hehe. Hi @Jim - saw you pop in and felt like having fun)

Rand al'Thor

Dammit Jim, I'm a riddler, not a markdown expert!

Rubio

You have no idea how tempted I am right now to add an answer to that coins problem, just so Trojan sees that "1 new answer" message pop up as he's typing

something like "wimble womble woo character limit yay!"

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio flagged as abusive

Rubio

lol

Rand al'Thor

Seriously, nonsense answers (e.g. of the "cat on keyboard" type) do get flagged as abusive.

And after some number of flags - three? six? - the answer is removed and you lose 100 rep.

Rubio

23:10

Ouch.

Rand al'Thor

It's not worth it :-)

Volatility

re: CCCC, I just noticed that "East-west flow" could be WOLF. Have no idea whether that's relevant to the actual solution though.

Rubio

Oooh I know I know.... it's.... oh. wait.

Will

Solution posted :)

Rubio

Hah!

Volatility

23:18

Nice

Rubio

The "HINT" red herring wasn't. I wanted to make a word

and "HI" is the only word reachable in a-z

it was pure serendipity that HINT was involved :)

Will

Well I'm considering it a red herring because I tried to find meaning in it at first :)

Rubio

You broke the "o" somehow, but the rest looks spot on

Will

And there is, of course, none.

O no! Let me see if I can fix that D:

Rubio

ah. your first segment leaving D is too much +x-axis

Will

23:20

did I mess up the end of C or the beginning of D

ah

thanks :)

that should be easy to fix if that's all I did wrong

Rand al'Thor

8 hours ago, by Sconibulus

My initial though is that I want it to be WOLF??

Will

`D +
280 105
Ah
295 145`

wow how'd I do that

Volatility

@Randal'Thor Ah, didn't see that

Rubio

@Will Nice job. It's nice seeing it solved :)

Will

That should do it...

Rubio

23:30

THERE it is. :)

TrojanByAccident

I swear to god, if one of you posts an answer to the 99 coin one after I've spent 3 hours writing it...

Rubio

*laugh* that's a long time. talk about dedication

TrojanByAccident

don't you dare

I need only two more sentences

give or take 5 sentences

Rubio

stop typing in here then. go. finish. :)

@Randal'Thor clue 5 is LONDON BRIDGE

they'll probably end up being landmarks

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio I've been known to spend longer than that on really long/hard answers.

Rubio

23:37

perhaps surrounding some central point

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio Why not just London?

Rubio

For one, OP says it's more than LONDON. for another, the clue points at the subject of the nursery rhyme, not its location.

"London is only part of that answer."

TrojanByAccident

Ah, shoot

Now I'm not sure if my answer actually solves the problem

Mine is giving the minimum amount of coins

the puzzle asks for minimum amount of weighing

eh

if needed, I can update with the needed math

posting in a couple minutes

nvm, just adding it in now

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