The Sphinx's Lair

Gareth McCaughan

4:01 PM

@GentlePurpleRain Right. So greater participation seems unsurprising.

Sid

@GentlePurpleRain Did the mods vote? Or did you try to remain neutral and didn't vote?

GentlePurpleRain

I don't remember for sure, but I'm fairly certain I voted.

Mithrandir

o_O I'm on the laptop for the first time since the election ended and it's weird seeing @GarethMcCaughan in blue.

(Sorry, but it looks more natural on @Rubio...)

GentlePurpleRain

It's because his name is so long.

Gareth McCaughan

@Mithrandir Um. OK, I guess. I'm sorry if I seem a very unnatural moderator :-).

Mithrandir

4:04 PM

Actually, even just the 'Gareth'.

Gareth McCaughan

bans Mithrandir

Sid

MOD POWER ABUSE 101.

Mithrandir

6 hours ago, by Mithrandir

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, yesterday, by Ixrec

9 mins ago, by Mithrandir

@PaulWhite MOD ABUSE!!11!!eleven

GentlePurpleRain

I don't think you can ban a chat mod...

n_palum

DEUS BRING THE HAMMER

Mithrandir

4:06 PM

@GentlePurpleRain technically, I gave @gareth his diamond, I can take it away and ban him too ;)

Gareth McCaughan

bans self

n_palum

^ That's Rubio's job, not yours

GentlePurpleRain

"My taxes pay your salary! I own you!"

n_palum

I've got a friend who does ROTC and gets money from that so we always mock that we own him and pay for his food

GentlePurpleRain

ROTC?

I guess on Stack Exchange it would be more like, "My upvotes gave you that rep! I own you!"

Mithrandir

4:10 PM

My vote gave you that diamond! Your power belongs to me! ...actually, I didn't vote for Gareth (sorry!), so that's not true...

Tumbler41

Wait, you mock (that you own him) and pay for his food, or you mock (that you own him and pay for his food)?

n_palum

The second one

Gareth McCaughan

@Mithrandir Lots of people didn't vote for me. Please feel free to not-vote for me again in the future. (But if you didn't vote for me because you anticipated some particular variety of failure, do feel free to let me know what you fear; it might help avoid it.)

n_palum

@GentlePurpleRain Basically military pays for his school, but he has to do stuff for them during school and then commits to 4 years after school

Mithrandir

@GarethMcCaughan I just didn't have 4 votes available :/

n_palum

4:12 PM

So the government pays him, ergo we pay him :P

@GarethMcCaughan I only voted you third because of the time thing :/

Gareth McCaughan

@Mithrandir yeah, I would have liked to have four votes too. (As it happens, you did get one of mine.)

Sid

@Gareth same as Mithrandir. Also, I was a tad bit concerned about the time that you might be able to devote to the site.

Mithrandir

Thanks :)

Gareth McCaughan

My, there are a lot of people suddenly very keen to explain why they didn't vote for me.

n_palum

I didn't vote for Mith because too much power :P

Gareth McCaughan

4:13 PM

(For the avoidance of doubt, I don't mind at all.)

n_palum

You did ask in a way ;)

Gareth McCaughan

Indeed, I did.

n_palum

I was a bit surprised with results.. minus the two who won

Sid

I did predict that the election would be close. Maybe, I would make a good psephologist in the future..

Gareth McCaughan

@n_palum what had you expected to be different?

n_palum

4:17 PM

@GarethMcCaughan I expected you two to win. I didn't expect Mith to be that close. I did not expect either Perry or Marius to get as many votes as they did (Not in a bad way). And Glorfindel also received more than I thought.

Again not in a bad way, just figured it'd be a lopsided race.

Gareth McCaughan

Interesting. I thought it was obvious that Mithrandir was a strong candidate and semi-obvious that Glorfindel was.

Sid

Yeah. Mith was a pretty strong candidate. Glorf was good as well.

n_palum

Mostly out of the fact that they're already a mod, I figured the whole commit to one would factor. And mostly because I've never seen Glorfindel around besides the occasional answer.. Seems to just sit in the review queue like perry.

Deusovi

@Sid I voted. I'm a community member too!

Rubio

If you guys want an election related puzzle, here's one -

n_palum

4:20 PM

@Deusovi Did you hit the vote button with your hammer?

Rubio

4 other people cast the exact same ballot I did. Who did I vote for?

Sid

@Rubio yourself?

n_palum

@Rubio 1) You 2) You 3) Your cat

Rubio

aw. my cat, incidentally, turns out to have tarsal leukemia.

Sid

Sounds bad.

Deusovi

4:22 PM

:c

Rubio

Not good for kitty, no.

n_palum

@Rubio Ah, so you found out about the lump.. Sorry to hear

Sid

@Rubio What's the treatment for her?

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio Damn, sorry to hear about the cat.

I think exactly five people voted Rubio > me > n_palum. Perhaps Rubio was one of them.

Rubio

Treatment options (in general) are either/both: chemo, amputation of the limb.

Gareth McCaughan

4:26 PM

(If I'm interpreting the data correctly, that's the only thing that got exactly five votes and puts Rubio in first place. I didn't look for things that don't put Rubio in first place.)

n_palum

@GarethMcCaughan are you basing that based off how you voted?

Gareth McCaughan

Presumably amputation makes a substantial difference to survival rate, else no one would do it?

Sid

Oh man. Both are bad.

Gareth McCaughan

@n_palum No, I'm basing it off the actual results available for download.

n_palum

(If you can afford it/want to) Prosthetics are really successful nowadays and you could always do that

@GarethMcCaughan Ah okay, Well that was not how I voted so wasn't me

Gareth McCaughan

4:28 PM

@n_palum I was addressing Rubio's little puzzle above: "4 other people cast the exact same ballot I did. Who did I vote for?". I wasn't saying anything about how anyone else voted (beyond saying that there were 5 people who voted that particular way).

Rubio

Yeah, neither of the options are very good overall. Cost, too, is a large consideration; I know people who have spent upwards of US$5K on treating a cat that ends up dying in under a year anyway, and - love them or not, they're pets... we go in knowing they're not here forever. That doesn't make them disposable, but it also doesn't justify being financially reckless.

Gareth McCaughan

right

(which doesn't make it any less painful for you of course)

Sid

So, what do you plan to do?

n_palum

@GarethMcCaughan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe it's all a ploy and our votes don't matter and it was predetermined

Gareth McCaughan

Huh, it looks as if there were also exactly five people who voted for me and no one else. I doubt Rubio was one of those, though; I don't think he would waste his second and third place votes.

n_palum

4:30 PM

@Rubio Been in that boat 2x with dogs now. Granted my parents made the decisions. But we've had to put two down after illnesses etc.

Rubio

@n_palum Yeah it's not particularly easy ... but then again, nobody ever promised us life would be.

@Sid Kitty has an appointment at an oncologist tomorrow for more specific determination of options and outcomes. So pending that.

Gareth McCaughan

(and six Mithrandir-only ballots -- but only two Rubio-only votes. I can think of no obvious reason why Rubio would get fewer solo votes. Probably just noise.)

n_palum

Conspiracy, Mith went and recruited Lit users to come vote

Or, better conspiracy. Finland doesn't actually exist

2

Sid

They would have to get 150 rep to vote, I think.

n_palum

Not impossible ;)

Gareth McCaughan

4:34 PM

Neither of those would explain very well why there were five me-only votes but only two Rubio-only ones even though Rubio got somewhat more votes than I did overall and we were (I think) fairly similar candidates.

Rubio

You basically get 100 just for showing up :)

n_palum

not basically, you do if you have a certain amount elsewhere

Rubio

I think you have to actually do something - like, anything - to get the 100, but I might be wrong.

Deusovi

Nope.

You just have to add an account.

n_palum

I joined Sports yesterday and got a free 100 association bonus

Come on, you're a mod, you have to know everything

Sid

4:36 PM

"because apparently SE trusts us."

@N_palum You're

n_palum

@Sid It's technically "other users trust you"

Cringes fixed... ;_;

Rubio

Hehee

Easy, guys.. I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I ~~make gold records~~ do moderator stuff.

n_palum

Dogs don't wear pants, we see right through the façade.

GentlePurpleRain

@Rubio It's a hard decision. With my cat, we ended up opting for euthanasia instead of multi-thousand-dollar exploratory surgery to try to figure out what was wrong. It was very sad putting her down, but we just couldn't justify that kind of expenditure.

Sconibulus

@GarethMcCaughan I wonder how many people voted for Mithrandir/Glorfindel in either order, with no third vote

(rough proxy for charcoal)

n_palum

4:47 PM

Good point.

Sphinx

0

Q: Story of Fuzzy Nazi

A team of scientists were doing some nature-survey works at a forest-area in Germany. Suddenly they noticed, there is a cottage, probably very old. . They decided to take a visit to it, when they will get some time. But when they reached to the cottage, it did not seem anyone lives there. dis...

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus Four, apparently. One preferring M, three preferring G.

Sconibulus

huh, either that's a terrible rough proxy, or there were far fewer than I'd have guessed

(was expecting about 15)

Mithrandir

5:06 PM

Sorry about your cat, @Rubio

Forklift

I voted rubio, gareth, and marius

I based that vote on how often I saw their names and how long theyve been at puzzling

figuring theyre most invested personally. I also read their q&a to make sure they didnt seem like huge jerks

origanally I had palum, but I was concerned with only 2 months it's hard to gauge longevity

n_palum

@Forklift I expected that going into it :)

ffao

I don't think time investment as a sole criterion is a good voting strategy

But to each their own, I guess

Forklift

investment, involvement, and staying power (plus, not a jerk). That's more thought than many put into who to elect for president.

n_palum

You never know how people think, but I definitely expected not getting votes due to how long I've been here

Forklift

5:16 PM

even as a new member with new privileges, I wouldn't have voted if I thought doing so was unhelpful to the community

@n_palum

sorry, you're quite active and helpful. but sometimes people burn out quickly

its just hard to say so I hedged with longer-timers

n_palum

I get that ;) I appreciate the comments

ffao

@boboquack A common mistake I see is people equating difficulty with puzzle quality. Hard puzzles tend to be bad more often than not (because that means they were underclued). In your case the difficulty was compounded by inaccessibility due to the knowledge required.

Forklift

wow, I just max repped!

never had that happen before.

Mithrandir

Congrats!

Forklift

better wait til tomorrow to hint my unsolved puzzle :)

thanks!

Sid

5:25 PM

I had got 198 once. because someone decided to downvote me

n_palum

HNQ answer

Forklift

yeah, I saw. my puzzle got almost 1000 views from HNQ but no solves.

Beastly Gerbil

6:28 PM

I've only rep-capped 8 times :/ according to this query

rands capped 76 times, gareth 48

Sconibulus

6 for me, apparenty

what's the difference between Soft, Rep, and Active?

never mind, I'm dumb, it says right there

Sphinx

7:20 PM

0

Q: Call my name and I will come home!

I can fit in all visible dimensions, 3 times in reverse. I am a deficiency of what I ought to be. I can have one thing more in common with the one true way, than to the ultimate key but both are widely accepted. I can travel in packs, sometimes 'lone, you could say somewhere in the Twilight Zone....

riddle word

Sphinx

7:58 PM

1

Q: I like spaghetti

I'm not Budha, Jahweh, Allah or Zeus, yet they call me God. The third under this name, but I go under more than one. One by the rank of a policeman, one where I'm the skinny guy and one sweet as candy. I'm born to work in a company using SCRUM, but people try to impersonate me. I could giv...

riddle word

0

Q: Up upon the high mountain

where the high mountain shall remain I shall not. wether the shine is shiny enough I do not know but you seem to do so. What am I?

riddle

Forklift

8:09 PM

@ThomasMoors, I am usually on a few times a day between 9-5. I like to brain reset between tasks

Thomas Moors

I meant that you do stand ups daily :)

Forklift

aha! at my previous job, yes. Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday. this job has a more um...

mosh pit style of work allocation and communication

My CSM skills are not required here

Beastly Gerbil

I'd like to take this brief moment to congratulate myself on cutting my cipher guide down fro 37000 characters to 29000 which is now postable. I'd also like to take this moment to ask is that to long?

Sconibulus

that is a long cipher guide

Beastly Gerbil

indeed

Sconibulus

8:20 PM

what information does it have? In broad stroke

Beastly Gerbil

I'll post the index I added at the start:

ooops.

Thats better

Not really actually. Some of those are sub-topics

The real headings is 'What is a cipher?', 'Types of cipher', 'Cryptanalysis' and 'Resources'

- What is a cipher? - Brief History - Definition
- Types of cipher - Classes and definitions - Transposition ciphers A-Z - Monoalphabetic Substitution ciphers A-Z- Polygraphic Substitution ciphers A-Z - Polyalphabetic ciphers A-Z - Other ciphers A-Z- Mechanical Ciphers
- Cryptanalysis - Frequency Analysis - Index of Coincidence - Kasiski Examination
- Resources

Can a mod or someone delete that longer list, I shortened

(@Rubio @Gareth or someone)

Mithrandir

@BeastlyGerbil boom

Beastly Gerbil

thanks

And again my I ask, too broad? Personally I think its fine, I've just gone through all the famous ciphers and explained them (mainly for new users). Theres a brief intro and some stuff on cryptanalysis and then a short list or resources

Forklift

I read it when you posted it first and found it informative. Normally I avoid cypher puzzles because they seem too hard, but I feel with a guide liek that I might try one

Beastly Gerbil

9:10 PM

@Forklift I haven't posted it yet? :P But yeah, I've seen so many new users get confused about ciphers, or avoid them because they do seem hard, so I think the guide will help. I'll post tomorrow.

Right now, It's bed so night!

Sphinx

0

Q: What is a Tone Phrase™?

This is in the spirit of the What is a Word/Phrase™ series inaugurated by JLee with his original Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. If a phrase adheres to a certain rule, then I call it a Tone Phrase™. Use the examples below to find the rule. And in CSV: Tone Phrases™, Not Tone Phrases™ ---------...

pattern word-property

Forklift

9:27 PM

I thought you had put it as an answer to a puzzle recently.

Sphinx

9:40 PM

0

Q: What is it - popular riddle

This was a really popular riddle a few years ago and I did not find it posted here, so I might as well ask it. What is it? Who makes it has no need of it Who uses it is not aware of using it Who buys it has no use for it

riddle

Alconja

10:58 PM

Do I need to post a hint for my CC?

ffao

2 days seems to be the regular hint-posting time

though this one hasn't seen a lot of discussion

I don't know if this means it doesn't need a hint yet or if everyone is so confused it desperately needs a hint

I'm on the confused camp

Alconja

Well, if it helps with confusion, I mentioned the other day in chat that the clue is 100% solvable and valid without the [Note] part at the end.

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