The Sphinx's Lair

Rand al'Thor

00:02

I didn't see that removed message.

Anyway I'd rather not say anything about any guesses at this point.

Rubio

Fair enough.

There's plenty of Unsolved CCsteries around these days.

boboquack

@Rubio How do you pronounce that?

Rubio

Unsolved SeeSeesteries.

Hosted by Robert Stackexchange. Now on Lifetime Television.

Rand al'Thor

@boboquack /ˈðæt/

boboquack

@Randal'Thor Ha-ha-hardi-ha-ha

Rubio

00:08

Robert Stackexchange? No? Nothing? hmph, Fine, I'll take my sketchy humor elsewhere. :)

Buncha youngins, I tell ya

boboquack

?

Rubio

Unsolved Mysteries

Unsolved Mysteries is an American television program, hosted by Robert Stack from 1987 to 2002 and later by Dennis Farina starting in 2008. The show was broadcast first as specials in 1987, then as a regular series on NBC (1988–1997), CBS (1997–1999), Lifetime (2001–2002), and Spike (2008–2010). Lifetime once again airs the revived version of the series, but only in reruns. Although the show is not in production, Cosgrove-Meurer Productions maintains a website for the show, featuring popular accounts and still unsolved crimes (murder or missing persons), with a link to an online form should a viewer...

boboquack

Oh.

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio I'm not American and don't watch television. Have a shrug from me.

boboquack

Me too.

TheGreatEscaper

00:13

Morn' all

Rubio

I don't "watch television". No TV antenna, no cable subscription. I'm American. And I watch lots of BBC program[me]s. The internet is a rich and wonderful way to watch things of interest, and I love it.

Heya @The!

boboquack

Apparently the community solution was a LQP

Rand al'Thor

@TheGreatEscaper Evening.

boboquack

Hi @TheGreatEscaper!

It got solved overnight.

Rubio

@boboquack Heh. Yeah I got the same thing in review.

Rand al'Thor

00:14

@boboquack Yup, afraid so.

Rubio

And now my review counter is pinned at 3 and won't go away. I hate that.

Rand al'Thor

Sorry to be the party pooper, but this is a classic link-only answer and should be deleted. If you manage to solve the puzzle, post an answer then. Or if you've made progress, post a partial answer. A link to an external site where solving is ongoing would be more appropriate for a comment than an 'answer'. — rand al'thor 26 mins ago

It's not an answer, and I flagged it as such.

Rubio

Ah. Deus is doing a proper writeup tonight.

boboquack

Now that it's been solved, who wants to write it up?

Rubio

7 hours ago, by Deusovi

Like I said, I'll do a full writeup tonight

Rand al'Thor

00:16

If it's been solved, let someone post the solution as an answer.

boboquack

Should I edit to make some progress better?

Rand al'Thor

Saying "the answer can be found at this link" isn't an answer by SE standards.

Rubio

Until Deus writes it up, saying "a full writeup is forthcoming shortly" probably suffices for now, unless someone is feeling ambitious.

boboquack

I'll put some main steps

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio Still not an answer.

I'd vote to delete if it didn't have a positive score.

Rubio

00:18

Well yes, the answer should be posted.

I didn't mean to not do that ;)

TheGreatEscaper

Cool! Well that puzzle only lasted 12 hours but the manpower that went into it was pretty high

Hopefully it was a lot of fun

Rubio

It was pretty awesome. Your last two big puzzles have been epic.

TheGreatEscaper

What was my last one? Six-faced?

boboquack

WITLESS

Rubio

yeah I meant WITLESS and this, the big ones

TheGreatEscaper

00:21

Sometimes I just get an idea, think 'no way do I have the time to do this', and then stop paying attention in class to do them anyway

Rand al'Thor

Speculation: @TheGreatEscaper is @Alconja's sock.

Rubio

You've got a potential career in the making, even if just as a side hobby. Even with unlimited time I know I wouldn't come up with anything as good and as tightly interwoven as these.

TheGreatEscaper

Heh, there are careers in puzzling????

Rubio

You think Nikoli puzzles just appear out of thin air? :)

Rand al'Thor

@TheGreatEscaper I mainly get that happening with answers rather than questions.

Or occasionally both in one:

9

Q: Strategy for solving 0hh1 and Unruly?

Q42's game 0hh1 and Simon Tatham's game Unruly are two almost identical logical deduction games. In each one, we're given a square grid which is to be filled by tiles of two colours, and a certain initial setup of given tiles. We need to fill in the rest of the tiles, subject to the following res...

TheGreatEscaper

00:24

Iconic! I'd upvote again if I could

Rubio

That only got +9? Man. Harsh.

What's wrong with this place sometimes, right?

boboquack

@Randal'Thor I know @TheGreatEscaper personally, so the only way that this can be is if @Alconja is @TheGreatEscaper, and pretended not to know about PSE when I talked to them about it.

Rubio

Oh and +10 for the answer.

TheGreatEscaper

It's an internet forum, and despite being a place full of great people, Puzzling.SE will always still have the drawbacks and eccentricities of online forums

boboquack

Can we have @the wrap-up to Grid-36, please?

TheGreatEscaper

00:26

Hehehe i'll do that tonight

Rand al'Thor

@boboquack Shhh. Don't spoil it ;-)

TheGreatEscaper

For now, though, @Rubio, you might have noticed that not only is the purple square of 36 letters the key for the masyu, but the masyu path passes over EXACTLY 36 lettered squares on the cube :)

boboquack

@TheGreatEscaper Isn't that an immediate consequence of the last purple grid though? We couldn't decipher without that match

Rubio

Yah - when Deus said how the final answer is arrived at I just shook my head in amazement. It's really quite beautiful how all the pieces assemble at the end.

TheGreatEscaper

@Bobo keys and ciphertexts don't need to be the same length

Rubio

00:29

^ Yeah, this

boboquack

No, but there is nothing in the instructions to say we need to repeat the key.

Rubio

You don't have to repeat the key

Well - I mean - if you're working it out by hand then the key gets reused until you run out of cipher text, sure, but that's just normal.

If you're using a solver to do the grunt work it just Does That™ for you.

TheGreatEscaper

Anyhoo, I must do some productive things now

Always nice to check in :) I suspect Deus' solution will be up by the time I get back

Rubio

Oh, good. Like, producing more fabulous puzzles, I'm sure. :)

TheGreatEscaper

Nothing quite so exciting, unfortunately

Catch you all later!

Rubio

00:33

Happy fun time then.

Cya !

boboquack

Bye!

@rand I've made the solution a proper solution now.

Rand al'Thor

@boboquack My flag was already marked "disputed", otherwise I'd probably have retracted it now.

Flagged most of the comments as obsolete/chatty instead.

Rubio

So... I have three puzzles now outstanding, each of which have attracted modest but relatively underwhelming view counts and at least some interest, but are all stalled at present, with either nobody or just one fairly new, relatively unknown solver having made any attempt at an answer. Are these just not interesting, or did I misjudge their difficulty rather badly, or what?

There's more to each of them than meets the eye, and (in the pattern/sequence ones) I made some modest effort to make that apparent, but either people don't care enough to work on them to reach the interesting bits, or they've tried and gotten nowhere. I'm trying to bring my puzzles up a notch or two even in well-traveled puzzle formats, but I'm not sure I'm succeeding. Any thoughts? Opinions? Suggestions? Snarky insults? :)

Sp3000

For KMorG the 1000 connection is clear, but not much else. Personally I'm not a fan of that "puzzle" type because most of the latest such posts care more about having meaningful word pair examples than examples that actually hint at the property.

Took a quick look at number sequence, you probably know what you're doing, but nothing comes to mind at first glance

dcfyj

00:49

@Rubio I'm incredibly confused now... (Yes I popped in just to reply to that)

Rand al'Thor

@dcfyj If you were really confused, you'd change your name to fdyjc.

2

Rubio

@dcfyj Lol. Just having fun, only somewhat at your expense.

Walt departed with a comment KUTGW

I decided that must be the name of your sock puppet

@Sp3000 Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure the 1000 connection is clear to many people, though I feel like I've all but stated it outright (which of course I don't want to do).

Sp3000

Well there's also the fact that KMG gives kilo mega giga

Rubio

The numbers one, the one solver hit pretty quickly on a key element (which I've pretty much fully affirmed in hints)

Sp3000

:P

Rubio

00:58

Sure but I noted that wasn't it, in a comment, but on the right track.

That I'd think doesn't leave much left ;)

Sp3000

Oh I see, yeah haven't checked it for a while since I last saw it.

boboquack

@Rubio, is this: i.sstatic.net/qhHQy.png a coincidence?

Rubio

Neither that image nor the sequence it mentions is involved in any puzzle of mine.

How'd you stumble across that, did something in the number sequence puzzle land you there?

boboquack

Thought 3-balls sounded too much like 3-ring

I searched for 5,0,2,4 as DrnglVrgs did.

Rubio

Oh. Gotcha.

Gareth McCaughan

01:24

@Rubio FWIW I thought of 1000 for K almost instantly but was hung up on the idea of km and kg, until you posted something about the puzzle being impossible without the computer-puzzle tag at which point k/m/g being 10^{3,6,9} or 1024^{1,2,3} became an obvious guess. It's still not obvious to me what to do with that idea, but I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

The number sequence one seems really hard to get a grip on, just because there are so damn many things one can do to form a number sequence. You've hinted at pi and at taking differences of consecutive things (though "similar" might mean it's sums of consecutive things, or differences between every third thing, or second differences of groups of three, or any number of other things) but that still leaves a very large space of possibilities and not much to do with it other than keep [...continues

... thinking up particular things and seeing whether they work out. Since inevitably they almost all don't work out, it's hard to keep up much motivation for this.

(Though I'm thinking about it a little right now.)

Rubio

@Gareth Good to know - I guess I didn't gauge the difficulty on KMorG words correctly.

Gareth McCaughan

I wouldn't assume you got the difficulty wrong. It could just be that no one happened to think of the right thing quickly, and after that everyone assumed it was just really hard.

boboquack

@Rubio, my latest meta post isn't meant to be against you, it's something I've been thinking of for a while.

Rubio

Well - I know how to direct the next hints anyway

boboquack

@Levieux That's a step in the proper direction, but not quite there yet ... — Rubio Feb 6 at 18:31

How did you manage not to get K, M or G in that comment?!

Rubio

01:31

The number sequence was a silly idea that in retrospect I should have probably just not posted. It's solvable if you happened to pick up on the original clues, but it's going to need at least 1 more hint, I think.

@boboquack Not only that comment, but all but one of the hints. I had to put K/M/G into the hint with the quote, as they're in the quote. And no, that wasn't easy at all. :)

Hint 1 in particular was tough. 3 and 4 took a lot of searching for alternative words, too.

Sp3000

Not that I'm attempting atm, but at least I'd like to say that radii/radius, slash/slosh and tooth/teeth are good includes in the list

Rubio

@Sp3000 I try to give a decent mix of words - some to help test "is is the letters?", some to help test "is it the meaning?", some to help test "is it word length?" and so on

Sp3000

Yeah that's the sort of clue that's lacking from many of the others :P

Rubio

And I do try to avoid just giving synonyms throughout the whole list, since these are almost never about the meanings

In both visual presentation and content I've tried to step up the What is a... puzzles a small notch. The Koffka Words™ puzzle is still a favorite of mine.

Sp3000

Yeah Koffka was fine. Fortunate though was a bit mean :P

(Also vote counts on Puzzling always confuse me but anyway...)

boboquack

01:39

@Rubio Maybe you can answer my question when the 'meat bot' comes around.

Rubio

I read it just now

boboquack

Again, no offence intended.

Rubio

Aww. I actually had fun making Fortunate. I burned a lot of compute time building it - and an enormous amount of time winnowing the lists of candidate words down to ones I wanted to use

boboquack

Did your christmas words get done?

Rubio

@boboquack None taken. If it'd been directed my way I'd be a mite bit disappointed with myself, as I don't like the ones that are uninteresting and like to make mine have a little something extra.

And no - Deus had most of it, but the final question that hinged on getting the gimmick wasn't ever actually answered by anyone

er. well. answered correctly anyway.

I'm not sure how to answer your meta Q though @boboquack - I'll have to give it some thought. I know what standard things I've tried to do with all my What is a ... puzzles that help make them uniquely solvable and, hopefully, interesting.

Hehe. Every time I click the You have 1 new message. "link" in A Secret Job, I grin a little. That turned out really nicely.

boboquack

01:50

The interesting thing with both the scratch of and the 'You have 1 new message' is that you can reverse the action...

Rubio

Yup. The feature that drives them is called \toggle so yeah

I should have put in a " ^ Minimize " widget on the expanded view. Maybe next time.

boboquack

"Mark as unread."/"You have 1 unread message"

Rubio

Hah! Yeah, that would work nicely :)

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio The trouble with the Christmas Words thing is that it seems to have another "What is a ..." puzzle embedded within it, only now the words are GOLD, RIFLE, PHENOMENAL, etc. -- and we don't have any examples on the other side other than DEFILER. (Unless DEFIER was a mistake, but I'd have thought you'd have admitted it if so.)

boboquack

^

Though I don't think it's 'trouble'

Gareth McCaughan

01:58

"trouble" in the sense of "thing that makes it really hard". Whether it makes it too hard, I dunno -- though I note that it hasn't been solved yet.

Rubio

@Gareth Fair point. Though it's tagged seasonal and, for once, those words have a semantic relevance - just not exactly what Deus thought of - which actually should have sufficed to answer the final question. In terms of the difficulty of that final step, I thought it fair play.

Gareth McCaughan

Yeah, I had the impression they probably did. I'm just annoyed at evidently being unable to figure it out :-).

Puzzling Meta

0

Q: What is an XYZ item™? Puzzles: What (Not) To Do?

Related: Code Puzzles: What (Not) To Do? and Number-Sequence Puzzles: What (Not) To Do? What is a Duplicate Word™? Duplicate Words™, Non-Duplicate Words™ Blueberry,Aubergine Hill,Mountain Manners,Polite Hillary,Donald Yelling,Shouting Effort,Perseverance Correct,Mark Ll...

discussion

Rubio

Well ok I just re-read his answer and he's linked the clues rightly (though his guess at them coming from carols wasn't entirely correct). He just didn't give an answer about MANGER, even though I asked for one in my comment. I kinda forgot about it afterwards, to be honest.

Gareth McCaughan

Since he didn't say how they're Christmas-related I'd say he hasn't got it. (And I don't have the impression that he had in mind anything more definite than what he said.)

Rubio

02:04

I should just get him to add that so the answer is complete and I can checkmark it

The ideal answer would give why each word is Christmas related, but I had decided from the get-go I wasn't going to insist on it, as that's kind of an add-on to the puzzle rather than its meat.

Gareth McCaughan

But without that there's no way for the answer to the question about MANGER to be more than a guess.

(DOCTORLESS is a really weird word. Is there some connection with Doctor Who, which has special Christmas episodes??)

(I am not necessarily suggesting that you should answer that question.)

Rubio

That was a late addition I probably should have done without. Its linkage is pretty tenuous. And that's not a ten/tennant reference. :)

Sphinx

0

Q: Four Fun-derful Rebuses

This is an entry to the Fortnightly Topic Challenge #26: rebus. I've created a new kind of rebus for you! Let's try one together. An easy one, too: How simple, how simple! But come on, you're smarter than that. How 'bout one a little bit harder: Now that's more like it! A bit of a puzzl...

rebus

Rubio

Anyway - I think it's entirely possible to answer with well-reasoned confidence about MANGER just with what Deus' answer says.

Also, those rebus colors are murderous.

Gareth McCaughan

Well, if I had to guess I would say that MANGLER doesn't seem very Christmas-like and kinda resembles DEFILER so probably MANGER is not a Christmas Word. But I wouldn't be more than, say, 65% confident about it. Maybe 75% given that you say it should be easy to answer with confidence.

But, y'know, RIFLE doesn't exactly seem Christmas-y either, to me.

Rubio

02:16

Blasphemy!

(Well - forgivable blasphemy in this case. That was an admittedly intentional choice of word)

Gareth McCaughan

I tried the obvious thing of putting <<Christmas rifle>> into Google and nothing that came back seemed particularly compelling.

Sconibulus

probably referencing the red ryder BB gun

which was rifle shaped

Gareth McCaughan

I did wonder about a Christmas-movie theme

but didn't find anything specific enough to be any use

Rubio

Ralphie in the 1940s who desperately wants “an official Red Ryder carbine action 200 shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.”

Gareth McCaughan

and the fact that there was one (terrible, so far as I can tell from the description) Christmas movie with a rifle in it doesn't seem to me sufficient

...

Rubio

02:20

Everyone just says bb gun - but that's actually what he called it.

Gareth McCaughan

oh, but apparently that was it? (if I'm understanding Rubio's recent comments)

so what, it was just "things Rubio considers Christmas-themed"?

Rubio

I guess so :)

Gareth McCaughan

right, then DEFIER is definitely a mistake because there's a bad guy called something like Urggh the Defiler in at least one of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies, and they were all released around Christmas. So there.

Azog the Defiler, as it happens

Rubio

Lol.

But it's called "A Christmas Story".

And it's a Christmas present.

Well. A desired Christmas present.

Gareth McCaughan

I bet someone at least once has received a mangle as a Christmas present.

Go on then, justify DOCTORLESS. I dare you.

Rubio

02:23

No, because you'll hate me. :)

Gareth McCaughan

But Rubio, I hate you already :-).

3

Rubio

Fair enough.

Gareth McCaughan

The best "explanations" I've come up with so far are (1) something something Doctor Who something

Rubio

annnnddddd

Gareth McCaughan

and (2) there's a Christmas Island and an Island of Doctor Moreau

Rubio

02:24

starred. whee!

Gareth McCaughan

and both of those are 100% unconvincing

so go on, hit me with it. You can't do worse than those. ... Or can you/

?

Rubio

Christmas is .... what?

(The list was supposed to be "Words culturally associated with Christmas", more or less, btw)

Gareth McCaughan

... a feast held to stave off the darkness of winter?
... a celebration of the birth of some guy who got nailed to a piece of wood?
... a commemoration of the birth of Sir Isaac Newton?
... an island?

Rubio

I'll go with option 2, a birth which featured precisely zero doctors.

Gareth McCaughan

whaaaaaaaa?

Rubio

02:26

See, I told you you would hate me.

And that I should have just left that one off the list. :)

Gareth McCaughan

So the word "doctorless" is culturally associated with Christmas ... because the Christian nativity story doesn't have doctors in it?

How about LLAMALESS?

PORSCHELESS?

Rubio

I'm not defending it. :)

Gareth McCaughan

so, anyway, boboquack, one thing to avoid in "What is a ..." puzzles is subjectivity.

Rubio

Yes. I'll accept that. However, in the main puzzle, DOCTORLESS is a valid entry.

So that's not applicable there. :)

Sp3000

Rubio Word™/Number™ puzzle fairness meter:
Christmas <<<<<< One-in-a-million < Fortunate < Spelling Bee < Koffka = Rotary

KMorG???

Rubio

02:28

Hmmmm

Gareth McCaughan

Is it a more valid entry than DEFILER?

Rubio

Perhaps not. I made this a while ago, I don't even remember it.

Gareth McCaughan

sorry, I'll shut up about it now :-).

Rubio

That's more or less why I just let it go. I looked back at it and was like, eh, I probably should have left a couple of these out.

@Sp3000 I kinda stand by One-in-a-Million. It was solved with just about no overtly useful hinting, and the title+tags (once you rule out a few obvious things it can't possibly be) tend to lead in only a few useful directions. Also it was my first number puzzle and one of my first puzzles here (not that those factors would excuse a bad puzzle being bad, but for a fairly early attempt at setting a puzzle I thought it was pretty okay).

Interestingly enough, Rotary was my first Word puzzle. I liked it, but thought it too easy. It was solved in, um, 9 minutes, so I guess that opinion is justified. :) I wanted later ones to take longer to solve than it took to paste in and click Submit.

Anyhoo

Anyone have any ideas on these rebuses? rebii? reeboks?

boboquack

02:45

Roundck

Rubio

Cuz of how it appears on my LCD, I so want to answer "Gunsmoke" for #1, hehe

Gareth McCaughan

I think One-in-a-Million is fairer than Fortunate, though I suppose the title of Fortunate is a big clue for those who have the relevant knowledge.

TheGreatEscaper

I don't watch wheel of fortune, but it was my first thought when I saw fortunate in the title

I just couldn't really be bothered searching up how the show worked :P

Gareth McCaughan

I've barely heard of it. But I'm not in the US, which I guess makes a difference.

TheGreatEscaper

All I vaguely recalled is that it has to do with making words, so I thought that it must be related

I'm in Aus

boboquack

02:54

I've added you to @the FTC list for GRID-THIRTY-SIX

TheGreatEscaper

Theres a lot of wheel of fortune references online, which is basically the only reason I know it

Rubio

03:07

While admittedly less likely, getting (at least) the vowel limitation for Fortunate is certainly possible - I had to pick words carefully to avoid shining a spotlight on that, in fact, as I thought it would stick out like a sore thumb. The consonants would have been a lot harder to figure out without referencing the show rules, but the name was much more transparent on that puzzle on purpose to help point that way.

Ok afk a while. Happy rebusing or whatever.

And thanks for all the feedback - positive and negative. I want my stuff to be fair, fun, and interesting - every bit helps.

stacksfiller

03:51

I just finished drawing a rebus

Now I just have to take pictures and upload it! :)

Warning: I'm not much of an artist

Sp3000

04:24

That's a nice easy rebus, not sure if what I have is just the answer though

Sphinx

0

Q: Rad Enigma Based Upon Sketches

The answer to this puzzle is what this puzzle is missing, besides well drawn pictures

rebus

0

Q: Connect three rings

Is it possible to connect three rings together so that they cannot be separated without cutting one, but once any one of the rings has been cut, the remaining two can be separated without cutting either?

geometry

Sp3000

Trying to tell what should be taken and what shouldn't is proving tricky :P

TheGreatEscaper

Yeah

Some pictures are pretty clear

But the first one could be - - or -.-. or even . .

The hawk is reallly hard to tell

Rubio

...

Am I missing something?

Sp3000

Pretty sure, yes

Rubio

04:33

Oh. So I am.

boboquack

Also no results: 1girl10000cups, 2girls(5+3i)cups, 65536girls65536cups, or 3frenchhens2turtledoves1cup.

A bit late, but I just found it.

TheGreatEscaper

...this is relevant for...?

Sp3000

Yeah looks like Will got it

boboquack

Not relevant here, but I think someone brought it up once and Deus was confused.

Rubio

I didn't think he was confused. He took some pains to tell people not to look up the reference.

Or maybe he was confused before looking it up himself, and then warning others WAY off. hehe

boboquack

04:41

I haven't looked at it.

I was clicking the random button on XKCD and it came up with that.

Volatility

I think he posted it because of what it was

Rubio

I remember seeing that xkcd when it came out

stacksfiller

Yeah, Will got it

How do I checkmark it if it's a comment though?

Should I just checkmark the post it's on?

TheGreatEscaper

@stacksfiller maybe suggest Rubio to edit his answer to include Wills input

fun little puzzle :) although there's a bit of freedom with interpretation with the morse

Have you checked out my latest, Grid Thirty Six? It has a few similarities to your first puzzle.

stacksfiller

05:01

@Rubio ^

boboquack

I was looking online for more puzzles, and I came across this one:

stacksfiller

Also, I tried to make it objective by using all things that are dots or dashes and not connected to anything else

boboquack

A hundred prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned; and each pirate has 12 coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin.
In the room is a single switch, which the prisoner may either leave as it is, or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are all made to wear either a red hat or a blue hat; they can see all the other prisoners' hats, but not their own. Meanwhile, a six-digit prime number of monkeys multip…

Rubio

Hm

boboquack

But I can't find the answer.

Is there an actual answer to this problem?

wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Puzzles

Rubio

05:02

The minuses aren't minuses in the morse part, then?

stacksfiller

Yeah, they're not part of the picture

Rubio

Using them as such actually gives TEST, or seems to

which is quite a coincidence :)

stacksfiller

That's interesting!

Also I think I know the answer to the riddle

You can only save 1 prisoner

The rest are going away from St. Ives

(It's almost definitely a joke question just combining a bunch of popular riddles)

Sp3000

@boboquack The answer is: you get the blue-eyed islander across the river first, the cabbage always lies and the counterfeit coin owns the zebra

Rubio

but who has the black hat?

stacksfiller

05:07

The wine

Rubio

oh. right.

@stacksfiller updated my answer. thanks, and thanks @Will

stacksfiller

05:28

Oh, also @TheGreatEscaper, I saw and tried it. I got a most of the red/blue grid part, three of the purple grids, and one of the yellow before giving up and looking at the spreadsheet.

I don't really see the connection that much

I guess just a bunch of subpuzzles

in different colors

Maria Deleva

06:35

@boboquack These are the words I see: aim (at several places), page, pink, act, top. I am pretty sure most of these are not intended. :)

boboquack

@MariaDeleva How so?

Hi @Emrakul!

user61230

Hello, @boboquack!

Maria Deleva

Well, going around, some are first letters of consecutive words, some are last letters. :)

boboquack

06:54

Co-incidence unfortunately

Maria Deleva

I knew it. :)

But I am pretty sure DDD is supposed to mean something. There is also EEE, but that might be coincidence. Perhaps we need something in 3D?

boboquack

DDD?

Maria Deleva

Feel free to ignore my crazy thoughts. :)

boboquack

Have you looked at TGE's answer?

Maria Deleva

Yes, that's exactly where I am seeing it.

boboquack

06:58

Oh, I see what you're talking about.

Maria Deleva

"Don't drown dad"

boboquack

The hint might help - it won't give away anything much

You can almost use that as a marking rubric...

Maria Deleva

I read the hint as well. Anyway, I will wait for someone to solve it.

Sid

@Techidiot I have the most ridiculous theory as to your puzzle. And given the pattern tag, It sort of fits as well..

boboquack

BTW, can someone just finish the final rebus here?

11

Q: Some Rebuses for U

Here are some rebuses all about U! The first is very easy, the second is moderate (you may need to think a bit on this one) and the last is moderate-hard (it is taken much, much further than the rest, probably too far for some). All images constructed with U's, except for any rectangles. ...

rebus knowledge

I've given heaps of hints

@MariaDeleva Do the riddle!

Maria Deleva

07:26

For the final rebus there I can only think of "ew", which doesn't make sense.

And for the riddle - no idea. The title is a reference to Superman, but that could be irrelevant.

Puzzling Meta

07:49

0

Q: Sorting answers by oldest

When sorting answers by oldest, does it go from when the answer was posted, or when it was last edited? I answered a partial answer to a question, and while trying to work out the rest of the answer, another answer was posted, apparently within a few seconds of mine. I clicked to sort by oldest,...

support

elias

08:13

hey @Deusovi! I've seen you finished the masyu and got the final answer. great job!

can i suggest to refer the squares between the red and green ones as 'orange'?

that helps to avoid the confusion between them and the yellow squares in the blue crossword

also it is closer to the actual color, i guess

Maria Deleva

Does anyone know if you can make an Ask a question button in your post?

Sphinx

08:38

0

Q: Undeviginti - An Enigmatic Puzzle in the theme of the Ancient Times

Undeviginti - An Enigmatic Puzzle in the theme of the ancient times Welcome, my puzzlers. Let the puzzling begin. Just yesterday, I was emailing my friend Bob. Somewhere in the process of him sending an email, I received something weird. The text wa... Flash. Beep... - Beep... - Beep - Beep I...

enigmatic-puzzle

Techidiot

08:54

@Sid No. Sorry. I will add some more examples soon

boboquack

09:54

@MariaDeleva Irrelevant, yes.

@MariaDeleva You're just a letter away...

humn

13:20

@MariaDeleva , this approximaties an ask-question button (it's one line):

[$\bbox[#f55,9px]{\color{white}{\sf{\small A}sk~{\small Q}uestion}}$](puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/ask)

Soha Farhin Pine

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

nothing makes the wind lose its motion

my mind crawls back to memories

uncalled for

the gallows underneath release the demons

I drown in the depth

of unknown seas

The ferocious clouds obscure the moon

nothing makes me feel

like I AM AT PARADISE.

Maria Deleva

13:35

@humn Thank you! :)

Rubio

13:58

@MariaDeleva Another way for an arbitrary image is to screenshot whatever display thing you want, upload it, and when it puts the [![Description!][1]][1] and [1]: i.sstatic.net/xxxxx.gif stuff, add a [2]: where/you/want/it/to/go and make the first [1][1] into a [1][2]

that basically lets you use any image you like, and have clicking it go to a different place. In t his case, http: //puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/ask for the Ask Question page

Maria Deleva

@Rubio, yes I know of this way, but I was wondering whether there is another way (like you can do with tags, for example). :)

Soha Farhin Pine

@Rubio Thanks for the advice!

Rubio

Oh. Not that I've found.

Soha Farhin Pine

What did you think of the PUT ME BEFORE NEW riddle?

Maria Deleva

Well, it never hurts to ask :)

Rubio

14:11

"Put me before new" was good, I liked that one

Soha Farhin Pine

14:23

@Rubio Thanks for the compliment!

Nothing makes the wind lose its motion
My mind crawls back to memories
uncalled for
The gallows underneath release the demons
as I drown in the depth
of unknown seas.
The ferocious clouds obscure
the tranquil blanket
of soothing innocence.
Nothing makes me feel
like I AM AT PARADISE.

Walt

@Randal'Thor Nice. I have some ideas, but any chance for a final template?

@SohaFarhinPine Cool. Is this also a riddle?

Rand al'Thor

@Walt I'm not sure what you mean.

Walt

@Randal'Thor The number of letters for the final solution

Soha Farhin Pine

@Walt No. :-) It's just something I wrote to pass my time.

I wish I could make a riddle out of this

Walt

14:41

@SohaFarhinPine Well, all poems are riddles, really ;) 'Guess my frame of mind'

Ankoganit

@Walt Unfortunately, all of them are closed as too broad :P

Walt

@Ankoganit At least till Poetry.SE comes along

Ankoganit

hehe

Soha Farhin Pine

Seriously, is there a Poetry SE

Ankoganit

don't think so

Walt

14:43

@SohaFarhinPine I'm not sure how that would work

Soha Farhin Pine

Umm...

like

Ankoganit

Umm people would ask questions about poetry and answer them, I guess

Soha Farhin Pine

the questions will ask for a feedback

on poems

this falls under CRITIQUE

Rand al'Thor

@SohaFarhinPine No, but there's a new Literature SE which has a lot of questions about poetry!

@Walt I've included letter counts in a spoilertag on the question.

Walt

@Randal'Thor Yeah, but I thought that was also a cryptic clue. With its own template

Ankoganit

14:47

@Walt Like a metacryptic?

Rand al'Thor

@Walt No, it's not a metacryptic. There's no connection between the four solutions.

Walt

@Ankoganit I prefer uber-mondo-cryptic

Rand al'Thor

It was hard enough to write a rhyming cryptic with a unified surface reading that sounded like a specific nursery rhyme!

Making it a metacryptic too would have killed me!

:-P

Soha Farhin Pine

@Randal'Thor lol

Ankoganit

Volatility once did a rhyming metacryptic

That was the one that brought me to PSE IIRC

Walt

14:49

@Randal'Thor Ah. Sorry

Sp3000

0

A: 'What is an XYZ item™?' Puzzles: What (Not) To Do?

I admit that I'm a bit of a late-comer on the scene, having rejoined Puzzling after these sorts of puzzles started appearing, but I do believe there is a quality issue with the "What is an XYZ item™" series. The most obvious reason, of course, is that this type of puzzle is trivial to set up - pi...

Walt

My ideas should be probably scrapped then

Sp3000

Technically self-promotion in a way, but thoughts?

Rand al'Thor

@Walt In all seriousness though, if you reckon you've solved one of the first two clues, do go ahead and post an answer!

Walt

@Randal'Thor Not really solved. I think I know where the remaining 2 lines are going, but can't know for sure

(Mainly those lines' first parts)

(Second part's a bit tougher. Way too many possible interpretations of 'Spirit')

Same with this‌. I think I get the gist and can maybe solve half, but you guys are way too brainy for me ;)

I'd post it here instead, but I'm guessing spoilers are unallowed?

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