The Sphinx's Lair

North

00:00

Isnt it like 1:00 am where youre at (or am I thinking of Rand again)

ffao

probably Rand

though talking to me at 1:00 am my local time would not be a rare occurrence

Eric Tressler

@ffao I don't know where to begin after your hint.

ffao

how many meanings to the word against do you know? o_O

Eric Tressler

00:18

What I mean is: if we interpret it as "very close to" or whatever, then it doesn't make sense as a wordplay element (since concatenation is the default already). Hm. I guess it could be "by"

Gareth McCaughan

"against" could perfectly well be a wordplay element signifying concatenation, just for the sake of surface reading. Nothing wrong with that.

Eric Tressler

@Gareth I considered doing that once, something like "Loss leader missing last meal"

Just [L] - [L], but it feels spiteful

that gives me an idea

thecoder16

(if people are here: codenames weekly game was supposedly 90 minutes ago)

(Deusovi has earned the "Good Question" badge for "...I'm dumb")

Eric Tressler

"ARBALEST" almost fits, except it uses everything and there's no definition, and it doesn't work as an &lit. But we have B+ALE, and ARTS with part of it "leapt forward" and "retrograde"

BALESTRA?

that's it

@ffao B+ALE+STRA: leap forward

Sphinx

00:39

1

Q: Communicating Information about Cards

Seven cards, numbered $1,2,3,4,5,6,7$, are distributed randomly among three people: Rand gets one of them, Deusovi gets three of them, and Gareth gets three of them. Deusovi and Gareth each post a statement in the Sphinx's Lair. All three people can see the messages, and they know that each spea...

Eric Tressler

I saw that word right after I started trying to solve this, and I blew right past it because I had no idea what it meant (and because of "against")

Deusovi

01:00

never heard that word before

nicely done though

@Sphinx there's an "obvious" statement here, but I'm not sure how to prove that it doesn't leak anything

TrojanByAccident

i assumed that first part clued BALE but couldn’t get passed that

Gareth McCaughan

Cute: nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/01/22/…

Alconja

@TrojanByAccident I had all parts of the answer at one point or another, just not all at once. :)

Eric Tressler

01:28

CCCC: Remove chill heart, inside beat red (7)

Sphinx

2

Q: A puzzling note

You find yourself trapped in a room with three painted doors; one yellow, one purple, one black. You know that only one leads out to safety while the others lead to your doom. You find a note. On it is written After thinking for a while, you are confident which door to take. Which door is...

riddle enigmatic-puzzle wordplay

Eric Tressler

Does anyone know the maximum image size allowed in a post (dimensions, not bytes)?

Alconja

@EricTressler There's no limit (that I'm aware of), but it will get max-widthed down to the div width, which is currently 667px in my browser... which is actually slightly larger than it used to be, looks like they've been changing the layout/css slightly.

Eric Tressler

Thanks!

Alconja

Pretty sure it used to be a fixed 640px (I've always limited my visual stuff to ~620px to be safe), but now it seems to be 728px - the fluid space that the vote buttons take up... Possibly SE are heading towards a more responsive layout...

Rand al'Thor

01:44

@Alconja You don't say ...

64

Q: Ch-ch-ch-changes: Left nav, responsive design, & themes

Ch-ch-ch-changes are coming. As you've hopefully read in our various posts on Teams, we are in the midst of some major work. We're introducing a new product, Teams (née channels), and doing the requisite research and design thinking to get it right. In addition, early on we realized that we have ...

discussion featured design navigation announcements

Sphinx

1

Q: Do you *really* know Stack Exchange?

Your goal is to guess what Stack Exchange site I am. Here's a clue to get you started: [s] -> [f] Feel free to edit my puzzle! Good Luck! -yoshifanatic52 Note: Everything in this puzzle is intentional and part of the puzzle, except this note. Make sure you know what you're doing bef...

cipher

thecoder16

@Randal'Thor thanks for linking that, I have to say bleh to most of the changes.

Alconja

@Randal'Thor See, told you so... another bit of validation for Proof by Alconja Gut.

ffao

Looks like Eric wasn't so clueless after all

thecoder16

If the left nav bar is uncollapsible, I'm going to have to write a userscript to auto-hide the left-nav bar each time i load a SE site

Alconja

02:00

From the gif in rand's link above, it looks like it only collapses when the viewport shrinks to the point where it would get in the way.

(which also means it will be pretty trivial to write a user script to collapse it always if you don't like it given all the styling will already be there)

thecoder16

trivial things are necessary. just like the trivial inequality. :P

Alconja

I just hope they don't break puzzles that at least partially rely on the current layout/css :)

thecoder16

Make a meta post! "Puzzling needs to be the exception" xD

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja Ouch.

(Do those puzzles still work on mobile view?)

Alconja

The first completely breaks. The second is fine.

Though I wonder if putting a full width, 1px high white image at the top if it will force mobile to render it properly...

TrojanByAccident

02:17

@Randal'Thor first does not, second does

o wait that’s what alconja said whoops

TrojanByAccident

02:28

am i the only one that thinks that puzzles solved by multiple people together should be community wiki?

Gareth McCaughan

I think it depends on how many people and how (un)evenly the insight and labour were divided.

Sometimes it happens that A gets most of the way there and B and C point out a couple of things that let A finish the job. In that case it's harmless for A to get the credit and the rep -- next time it may be the other way around and everything balances out OK in the end.

Sometimes there are five or six people all working on something together. In that case CW seems more appropriate, though no real harm is done if whoever takes the trouble to do a nice writeup gets some Meaningless Internet Points.

Perhaps the right question is: what behaviour does any given convention encourage? E.g., if you can get those sweet, sweet rep points by posting a partial answer early and waiting for other people to finish your job for you, then that incentivizes early partial answers. Whether that's a good thing or not is debatable.

TrojanByAccident

03:01

hmm

guess i’m just salty lol cause i collected everyone’s work and posted it as CW for the marvelous thing puzzle, but then Deus comes a couple minutes later and posts the answer as non-CW, and now his has a ton of upvotes

Gareth McCaughan

Hmm, understood. In this case Deusovi does deserve a chunk of the credit, for being the one who noticed the runes in the middle.

TrojanByAccident

true, but it was others who identified and translated the runes

Gareth McCaughan

If there were perfect justice, ASCII-only would be getting the rep

but there ain't no justice

TrojanByAccident

seems rather unfair that anyone gets it imo

at least that anyone gets all of it

Gareth McCaughan

It would be nice if there were some sort of thing intermediate between CW and a normal single-user answer, to say "share the rep between these people", but that would be way too complicated.

Trevor Powell

03:09

If there were perfect justice, there would be a not-steganography tag for use in puzzles tagged enigmatic-puzzle which don't include any steganography. So I'd know not to take them too literally. ;)

Gareth McCaughan

Heh.

TrojanByAccident

still, i don’t think deus deserved both the rep and accepted answer all to himself, especially considering he didn’t even post the answer first

Gareth McCaughan

I dare say you're right. But it's not like it does anyone else any harm for him to get them (after all, with a CW answer no one gets any rep).

TrojanByAccident

no one > only one imo

then again that’s my communistic thinking there. if one person gets it, everyone should. unfair for only one

Gareth McCaughan

I suppose someone might be entitled to be annoyed if they were closely behind Deusovi in rep, but really, who has time for that?

TrojanByAccident

03:13

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Gareth McCaughan

no one > just one if it's a zero-sum competition, but I don't think that's a healthy way to think about it.

Anyway, it's like 3am here and I need to go to sleep now :-).

Trevor Powell

I've always felt like points are weird on puzzling.SE, full stop. Especially the way that you get more points-per-upvote for posting an answer than for creating a whole puzzle. That maybe makes sense on regular Q&A sites, but.. feels sort of backwards for a puzzling site? Anyhow, I try not to worry too much about the points, personally.

Gareth McCaughan

Yeah, the balance is all wrong for Puzzling. But we have the same scoring system as everywhere else on the SE network.

Trevor Powell

Yeah, I totally understand why things are the way they are.

Gareth McCaughan

anyway, really truly going to bed now. Bye!

IIRawCodeII

03:17

Have you guys seen the recent puzzle?

Oh, and hello and goodbye

Trevor Powell

Which recent puzzle?

IIRawCodeII

'Do you really know stack exchange'

Trevor Powell

5

Q: Do you *really* know Stack Exchange?

Your goal is to guess what Stack Exchange site I am. Here's a clue to get you started: [s] -> [f] Feel free to edit my puzzle! Good Luck! -yoshifanatic52 Note: Everything in this puzzle is intentional and part of the puzzle, except this note. Make sure you know what you're doing bef...

cipher

I do not really know Stack Exchange, so I haven't really gotten into it. :)

(I'm terrible with ciphers)

IIRawCodeII

It looks like a cool concept for a puzzler

*puzzle

Trevor Powell

The puzzle tells people to feel free to edit the puzzle. I'm tickled by the thought of editing in extra HTML comments inside the puzzle itself to collaborate with other solvers, instead of using normal comments or chat rooms. Would be total abuse of the editing functionality, of course, but the idea amuses me.

Sphinx

03:31

0

Q: Word game - possible to play all words?

You're trapped in a chamber and the only way out is to beat the chamber guardian on his own game: Word88. Both of you each take a turn to play a word. You can play one of the following: Add Play - Add a character to the current word Example: to -> toy, man -> mean Change Play - Change a cha...

strategy combinatorics game

TrojanByAccident

someone help me out with formatting?

0

A: Word game - possible to play all words?

One strategy is to Example: This can go on for some time, but as long as you keep your wits about you and control the flow, you can win fairly easily

can’t get it to display on separate lines inside the spoiler

Trevor Powell

Type <BR> anywhere you want to insert a new line, even inside spoilers. You can also use <P> to start a new paragraph inside the spoiler.

Apep

You can also just add double spaces at the end of each line in this case.

TrojanByAccident

thx

Trevor Powell

Wait.. double-spaces at the end of a line in spoilers adds a hard line break? This changes everything

2

Geez, how have I gone this long without knowing that? Am writing an answer right now where that makes everything so much easier to write.

Sphinx

03:47

0

Q: Make 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 555 by drawing one line

Can you make $$5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 555$$ by drawing only a single line or line segment?

mathematics

IIRawCodeII

I found a good lead in the puzzle so far.

Though, I prefer to keep my work private.

But do you like saltyhashbrown?

Nvm

Anyways, this puzzle has a much deeper rabbit hole than expected.

I'll have to get back to it tomorow

And, I'm talking to myself...

Oh well...

TrojanByAccident

04:03

which puzzle?

@iir

IIRawCodeII

6

Q: Do you *really* know Stack Exchange?

Your goal is to guess what Stack Exchange site I am. Here's a clue to get you started: [s] -> [f] Feel free to edit my puzzle! Good Luck! -yoshifanatic52 Note: Everything in this puzzle is intentional and part of the puzzle, except this note. Make sure you know what you're doing bef...

cipher enigmatic-puzzle

TrojanByAccident

ah

IIRawCodeII

Anyways, night!

John Dvorak

04:27

... sweet. A swarm of 10ks is about to ban Sphinx.

nitsua60

what's going on, if you don't mind?

John Dvorak

A bot that posts every post on main has just quoted a bit of spam

nitsua60

ah, so I'll dismiss the flag, I suppose.

John Dvorak

Thanks

nitsua60

oh, too slow

John Dvorak

04:29

Should users with negative ID be protected from 10k-flags?

Semiclassical

sigh. I really do get tired of knee-jerk spam flags

Memor-X

lol the day that the basic All New Questions Feed Bot gets flagged for posting spam

John Dvorak

The real issue is that the system encourages judgement without context and without feedback.

nitsua60

@JohnDvorak but one could write a crappy bot, right?

John Dvorak

@nitsua60 user bots have positive IDs

negative IDs are system bots, AKA Feeds clones

Memor-X

04:30

@JohnDvorak that's what Sphinx is apparently

https://chat.stackexchange.com/users/-595/sphinx

nitsua60

ah, okay. So that might be worth meta'ing. Probably pretty low priority, though.

John Dvorak

One could point Feeds to a crappy RSS feed, though

nitsua60

Okay, glad it wasn't an actual fracas, though. Night, all!

Memor-X

like an RSS Feed to Smoke Detector

Semiclassical

it might also be better if the bot had a bit more obvious name, but I don't want to defend the people who knee-jerk flagged it

okay, back to my neck of the woods

John Dvorak

04:32

Actually, IIRC either Community or all system bots are unsuspendable.

Memor-X

@JohnDvorak yeh but there's enough useless flags that get used on chat already ontop of the Russian Chat flags, don't need more coming from flagged feed bot posts

anyways *disappears like a Chim-Assassin in .hack//G.U after being kicked*

John Dvorak

True. My best bet is [status-maybe-when-were-extra-bored]

TrojanByAccident

Hey, we had activity!

Trevor Powell

05:25

re: "Do you really know Stack Exchange", I did a little investigation into the "YoshiFanatic52" string. Only thing I found was a YouTube account named "The Yoshi Fanatic", which has just a playlist of 117 videos from other creators (updated today). #52 in the list is a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild tribute song called "Open Your Eyes". Probably completely unrelated.

Trevor Powell

06:02

Bah. Some days I shouldn't be allowed to operate a browser. Tried to edit my answer, and accidentally posted a duplicate of it. Embarrassing. (I've deleted the dupe, but still.)

John Dvorak

Au contraire. Now we have a perfect opportunity to learn how something like that might happen.

Trevor Powell

That puzzle has information hidden in its 'Edit' interface, so I had to have that open. My best bet is that I tried to get out of that 'Edit' interface by hitting the back button, and that took me back to before I submitted my answer. So when I went to try to 'edit' that answer, I was actually doing it in the original "post an answer" form. Something like that.

TrojanByAccident

@TrevorPowell no offense, but your doctor who answer to the male/female thing is stupid

Trevor Powell

@TrojanByAccident No offense, but please feel free to downvote.

TrojanByAccident

Oh I did :)

Trevor Powell

06:11

Yeah, I know.

TrojanByAccident

lol

Trevor Powell

Define "stupid", though. I am interested.

TrojanByAccident

Ah

I mean that it's a joke answer, because it's almost definitely not the one OP had in mind

Trevor Powell

Entirely agreed; it is absolutely not what the OP had in mind. But it does match the conditions specified by the OP, yes?

TrojanByAccident

True

Ah, frick

I lost The Game

Trevor Powell

06:21

I'm as surprised as you! I didn't think it was possible.

TrojanByAccident

re:puzzling.stackexchange.com/q/47033/30376

Trevor Powell

On the topic of "not what the OP was intending", my absolute favourite out of my answers on puzzling.SE is definitely this one: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/25604/…

TrojanByAccident

lmao that puzzle i made got downvoted like hell

Trevor Powell

That's cute. It's also why I don't tend to participate in steganography-related puzzles. Way too many ways to hide data and chain things together. :)

TrojanByAccident

lol

Welp, it's just about 02:30 here, so I'm gonna have some ice cream and head off to bed

Trevor Powell

06:29

I've been trying to figure out how to decode the text in the "Do you really know StackExchange" puzzle. I feel like I think I know the key and the cipher being used, but I just can't make it work.

...and I just got it. Hold on.

TrojanByAccident

o you did?

Trevor Powell

Yeah. See my earlier comment about "way too many ways to chain things together". It's just unlocked the next step. Who knows how many more there will be.

Gah.. I had reposted the answer TWICE. Had only deleted one of the accidental reposts.

I am legit the worst.

TrojanByAccident

lol

Sid

06:48

@TrojanByAccident It's never a good idea to have ice-cream before going to bed.

Trevor Powell

Okay, and one step further. Why do I punish myself by working on these neverending chain-cipher puzzles? :)

Rubio

@TrojanByAccident No offense, but calling someone else's answer stupid is uncomfortably close to the line of Be Nice. You might have just led off with your longer explanation instead :)

Sid

@TrevorPowell Solve easier puzzles or Put Your Brain To Better Uses™

Trevor Powell

Heh. I've pushed progress forward a bit on that puzzle, and posted my results in a partial answer. Very happy for somebody else to take over on it. Or alternately, my brain will probably keep buzzing over it, figuring out the latest step in it.

Mithrandir

07:37

@rubio pharma spammer puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46431/gloryate

And puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46433/bkiroewx

And puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46430/yuor

And pharma spammer that hasn't posted yet puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46438/johnldlsan

And puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46313/eliabldsan

And puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46263/jansdhu

And puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46251/chanldsan

And puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46199/jansdy

Oh, one of our usual sports spammers puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46193/acc-tournament

More pharma spammers puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/46182/jamerdlsan

Hey, welcome to The Sphinx's Lair @TrevorPowell! Haven't seen you around these parts before :)

Rubio

08:25

@Mithrandir heh. I was already nuking some of those

and all the rest now gone.

There were a couple others you missed. ;)

Mithrandir

I assume because they were created after data.SE updated and I didn't notice them on my sweep through the new users page

Trevor Powell

11:07

@Mithrandir I've wandered through briefly before, but.. haven't spoken much!

Mithrandir

well, glad to have you around!

Trevor Powell

11:18

Thanks!

Trevor Powell

12:33

And hey, somebody figured out the last step of that puzzle I'd been working on! I don't think I'd have worked out that last step. I was totally going down the wrong path with it. :D

IIRawCodeII

13:33

I was working on the puzzle and my findings might prove helpful... I have it posted as an answer

thecoder16

13:56

wow this might go a lot deeper then we thought

North

I always miss the best conversations. Damn the time zones

Sphinx

2

Q: Video-games Mondegreens

Inspired by TV Title Mondegreens, I, too, came up with a similar puzzle. It is still based on Mondegreens, obviously, but with video-games! Each of these 10 descriptions will lead you to a (weird) phrase or sequence of words wich, when (badly) misheard, will give you the name of the game. A...

wordplay trivia video-games

North

Greetings, Etoplay!

Sphinx

14:42

0

Q: What am I? (Tiny Riddle)

Little I am, but not always of little importance some ignore me while some adore me I can change good to bad and bad to good which is why sometimes I am repressed

riddle whatami

Sphinx

15:52

0

Q: Unintelligible Batch of Wingdinglish

How do you even read these runes?

enigmatic-puzzle

Sphinx

19:31

0

Q: What is a Sulphurous Word™?

This puzzle is based on the What is a Word™ series started by JLee. If a word conforms to a certain rule, I call it a Sulphurous Word™. Use the following examples to find the rule: $$ % set Title text. (spaces around the text ARE important; do not remove.) % increase Pad value only if your en...

knowledge word-property

Sphinx

20:27

2

Q: What approach should I use to solve cellular automaton puzzles? (Find the previous state of a game of life grid)

There's a type of puzzle where you're in front of a grid (two colors, 6x6) that is a cellular automaton. There's a grid you can interact with, and one that shows what you need to obtain. So you have to: Figure out the rules (basically variants of the Game of Life) Find a state that leads to the...

cellular-automata

ffao

21:08

gah, I really wanted the edit limit on comments to not be so short. sorry for the unintentional spam, @Gareth

Mithrandir

22:30

Hmm, I dislike sending formal emails.

ffao

well, I was helping Gareth out

but I suddenly became interested in the wingdings puzzle once I realized what it was really about

I wonder why

Deusovi

22:44

ha! of course

North

23:07

Ffao how the heck did you even find out these conscripts?

It also triggers me to see them reffered as "runes"

ASCII-only

@ffao why do the last half have ??? at the end

@North why...

ffao

because I only transcripted the first half for most of them

I'm doing a second pass now to get the second parts

North

@ASCII-only Why what

ASCII-only

@North why toes it trigger you

North

Because runes are actually a writing script used mainly by Old Nordic Writing

ASCII-only

23:11

*a family of writing scripts.

North

with the exception of the Futhorc

*right

ASCII-only

and IMO it's not that bad to use the same word for medieval-age scripts in fantasy settings

oh yeah the first script looks a lot like Disney's Atlantean (obviously it's not :P)

ffao

I couldn't find the first script

it probably has something to do with shadow angels, if the pattern stands

ASCII-only

@ffao :/ it took you that long to transcribe one thing?

ffao

I'm not the speedy kid, clearly.

ASCII-only

23:15

Right

googles So it's the Aquarion alphabet

ffao

and transcribing the next one is going to be a much greater pain

ASCII-only

I'll do the first one then

SAYAKA MIKI
SONY STORAGE FORMAT USING ATRAC

@ffao which one(s) are you working on atm

ffao

I'm doing unovian

ASCII-only

You haven't done Imanity yet right?

ffao

no

you don't need to do the first line

ASCII-only

23:22

Turns out I need to (to get the nag of it) latch's Imanity handwriting is terrible

ALinuxLover

how did i get here uh

thecoder16

stay a while! have fun!

ASCII-only

GARACHINE AIRPORT CODE

thecoder16

what script

ASCII-only

Imanity

thecoder16

23:30

which block?

nvm i see it

ffao

ouch, you had to decode a non-English word in Imanity

and you still got it faster than I did Unovian :P

thecoder16

and that's GHE, in case you didn't know

i;ve actually flown there ;p

ASCII-only

@ffao Done Hell, will start Leiden now

ffao

that's hellishly fast

ASCII-only

Oh the hell one had a bunch of easy words

Are you up to witch runes yet

ffao

23:39

I did witch

ASCII-only

WORD AFTER EUROPEAN OR TRADE
THINK WORK SERVE SCHOOL INITS
EARLY BYZANTINE GOLD COIN

These are the rest then

second looks a little weird though so could be wrong

Deusovi

UNION, TSU, SOLIDUS

ASCII-only

Now all we need is how to take one letter from each word

ffao

the obvious idea would be to take letters according to the position of the accompanying anime

But No Game No Life is sixth and I can't take the sixth letter out of TSU

ASCII-only

clearly it's MD | ! - y GHE < 6 v U TSU / :P

! could be ~ and y could be g though

ffao

23:49

oh, I didn't know solidus could mean a slash

then yeah, we're definitely looking for symbols here

thecoder16

Doctor or not, without Mr. Y Ghe, it's weaker than 6 versions of Mr. U Tsu. Yep seems about right :P

Gareth McCaughan

ghe is Cyrillic G

ASCII-only

tsu: ツ, つ, 祖 (third is normally spelt zu though) ghe: Г, gamma: γ

Gareth McCaughan

right

though somehow the kana one seems not to fit with the other symbols

but that's probably just prejudice on my prat

part

minidisc is probably a small circle or something of the kind

thecoder16

the third is chinese and i've never seen it spelled tsu.

ASCII-only

23:52

optical disc emoji: 🖸

Gareth McCaughan

perhaps these symbols need to be treated in something like the way the wingdings were at the start of the puzzle

though they aren't wingding-like

in that they don't form their own font using the same codepoints as ordinary letters

but, I dunno, maybe the low 8 bits of their Unicode code points will turn out to make something useful, or something like that

thecoder16

what if we shift all the characters by a number based on ascii/unicode

Gareth McCaughan

but we haven't yet figured out what to do with the anime bits

ASCII-only

I hope it's not that complex :(

thecoder16

do the characters have a symbol or something

ASCII-only

23:54

I thought they just clued the alphabets for the symbols

Gareth McCaughan

ffao's suggestion does seem like a plausible way to turn those into numbers, but dunno what we do with them then

!/~ could also be an actual logical-not symbol (there is one)

and I bet the gamma is meant to be an actual gamma, not a g or y

are the anime the alphabets come from the same as the anime mentioned in the first-halves, in a different order?

(brief look suggests they are)

ffao

yes, they are

Gareth McCaughan

if they are, does anything useful happen if we reorder the symbols appropriately?

I mean, at least some of them look enough like letters that they might kinda-sorta spell something out, or something like that?

Transcript for