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01:30
@GarethMcCaughan Figure this is obscure enough and has been up long enough to go via Qat and wikipedia, to get: SANKEY* (with "use a _ maneuver" as an anagram indicator & "hymnodist" as the def).
Yup! Well done.
As I said at the time: not by any means a great clue, I just liked the fact that I could make most of my clue the same as its predecessor.
Cool, will come up with a new one. Gimme a few...
 
3 hours later…
04:45
Apologies for the delay, been a bit busy... But here's something approaching an acceptable CC:
CCCC: Religious initiation after mind enthralled by unadorned deliverer of spirits? (9)
0
Q: Riddles and ciphers / All good ways to flex the mind / Can you solve my task?

Benami StandardI have arrived new / Here with ciphers for your eyes. / Can you solve this task? >-\!} ;%[$%) , >-\! >%=$!{} ;{%[[!) @{-)[ [- !)\ [$! ),{! %} )]**!}[ [$%} %} ^]}[ [$! }[,{[ *,[!{ ;%** <! }-(![$%)# {-[! ])[%* )!/[ ;! {!![ Woe I dislike them, / Hints shall be revealed quite soon / Should it not...

05:20
@Sphinx Good Lord @deus. How long did this take?
05:33
I worked on the plans and gridding on and off for about a week, and then clue-writing took 4-5 hours or so over the course of a few days. Glad people seem to be liking it!
I don't like it. It makes me feel insignificant and dumb. :)
 
2 hours later…
07:36
@Rubio - Interesting I emailed him and gave a link to the question and asked if he was OK with that and he said, "That's fine, thanks for letting me know!". Maybe he's changed his mind now that the same author has posted a whole raft of his ideas without seeking any further approval.
If you need it for any reason I can forward the email.
@JonathanAllan I don't need it but wouldn't mind seeing it. The latest communication from him was pretty unambiguously "Don't" so I'm going to stick with that (at worst it's a well-justified excuse to keep those questions off the site, as I'm frankly tired of seeing them posted ad nauseam).
08:08
0
Q: Find the date puzzel

ahmed bena machine intended to crack a big list of passwords billions of them it is known that the process would take months, with the following clues Find the exact date and time when will the cracking process be finished. The actual process began exactly at noon, but we don't know, on which day. By th...

0
Q: My school has a mysterious "crack the code" riddle that I've been struggling with

John ZinovyTitle says most of it. I've been at this for hours with almost no progress. There are two codes (37068 and 57063) that didn't work although they seem to fit the conditions given. Can someone please give a clue to put me on the right track? I feel like I'm going absolutely nowhere, but would still...

0
Q: Shot in the heavens afar

user477343 A cloak blankets way overhead, Beginning the time for your bed. Remember my comfort and love Inviting the skies up above. Look! You can reach like a kite; Look and not burn from the light! Is this closer to islands at sea, Albeit you need not to row, actually? ...

08:20
@Rubio To where should I forward it?
@JonathanAllan onetimesecret.com/secret/e23oyb5lq6xh4b8c32x5oy8vhvfbonc and let me know you got that
(and yes the quoted text you give seems pretty unambiguous!)
Did you get that?
08:28
I did; I never used that... I figured that would passphase your reply, obviously that was incorrect
nope. hehe
oh clues in the name "onetime"
LOL
anyway - that second one should give you the rest of what you needed
it did. I'll forward shortly (can't from this pc & phone is updating OS...)
yeah - if anyone intercepts what I sent before you see it, you would know because it would just tell you the link was already read
08:30
yeah it all makes sense now
& sent.
Hm. That is odd and unexpected. Thanks
I wonder if he just didn't follow the link, or if he hadn't noticed what was actually going on there.
No problem. Possibly one of those, or was OK with it until you emailed and he then saw all of his ideas and the responses they'd received.
 
8 hours later…
16:39
0
Q: Find Those Chess Notations! #4

Rewan DemontayYes, it’s back again! This one is going to be a little different however. Number Of Moves: 11 Checkmater: White Final Position: Now find this notations!

16:53
@Rubio hm, maybe it's possible to create a private room for discussions nobody else is supposed to see? the problem with OTSs is, well, one intercept and the secret is over, and nobody legitimately knows who to blame afterwards
@EriktheOutgolfer I split the info up across two different OTS messages, so intercepting one wouldn't be a big deal but would make it obvious someone was messing where they weren't wanted.
what if they intercept both in an instant? this can be a serious issue...
Well that's why I didn't send them both together. hehe
yeah... with a private room there's no possibility anybody unwanted intercepts anything
nothing on SE is really private
Using private rooms is somewhat frowned upon anyway, except for actual moderation issues
16:57
um... wasn't that a moderation issue?
and they're a little annoying and tedious to set up, so it's a good thing their use is intentionally sparing
wait, don't you just click "Private" while creating the room and then give access to the other person and tell them?
0
Q: A multi-symptom affliction

mkinson "Kindly state your name." The nurse's voice was polite, but quiet. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you, my hearing's bad." Being mostly deaf was quite frustrating for our patient. "Please tell me your name and date of berth." "Pardon, but you really must speak up.." "Excuse me, are you still ther...

You create it. Then you set it private. Then you hope the person you want to talk to has a chat profile. Then you add them to the private room, with write permissions. then you ping them into the room. then you click your heels and spin around three times, and hope all the above actually worked.
The interfaces for almost all of that are, well, clunky. Because of course they are.
to pass one piece of information, it's way too much of a headache. :)
@Rubio I mean...
9
Q: Can we use private chat rooms for collaborating on puzzles?

MithrandirHere on Puzzling, we're a little different from other sites. Like, we know the answers before we post the question (usually), and we want other people to come to the same conclusion. And sometimes, we work on puzzles with other people. Take my Clues series. There is a list of Clues, and the puzz...

;)
Also, "Got a sec?". But I don't think it matters too much doing it this way.
17:02
Well yeah, I mean, but the fact that we kinda had to ask if we even *could* do that should be indicative of something
(and "Got a sec?" actually is used for moderation purposes, but like I said it's a pain to do it.)
@Rubio I feel like that's worth it if any user's right to privacy has a possibility to be hindered otherwise, regarding moderation issues
if it's just part of a puzzle's solution, well... you're pretty good at making it look like some more serious discussion happened over there :P
@EriktheOutgolfer well sure. in this case the user in question was me, the privacy issue was my email address, and I assumed the risk (and mitigated it). I get the concern about OTS being intercepted. I was ok with taking that risk by not giving up all the info in one message, and in making sure the intended recipient got the first one before issuing the second. I think I'm ok here. :)
wait if I ever get a dog do I have to set up an email address for it?
All depends on the breed
At the moment, though, all I've got is a dead kitten in the backyard that we're waiting to remove after the mom and surviving kitten clear out. They're not keen on moving out, though.
17:08
I've heard that dogs have evolved technologically nowadays...
@n_plum I think you lost an "a" somewhere
nods head
As your spy disguise?
wait... who is n_plum?
17:16
I'm never a spy
mmhmm. right.
yeah that's what a spy would say :P
hides
https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/51097/the-third-room-of-numbers-dungeon
This has existed for 2 years (technically two days) and it seems to reappear every April but I'm still lost
what
pretty sure you clicked an "edit" button somewhere... ;)
Yea
17:22
("reappears"... heh)
I didn't look at it until I saw it come up on my feed
obviously, since the last activity is from half a year ago...
@EriktheOutgolfer not n_palum, obviously
well... who knows if what used to be plum's profile is now, well... :P
(the reference might go missed)
Working on a Guardian Cryptic, and I can't figure out "Scotch Governor? (5)" -- Found answer online, but the clue makes absolutely no sense from a definition or wordplay perspective. Answer is rot13(bcgvp)
17:33
can you link?
although the clue alone should make sense...
yeah I got nothin'
Clue and Answer should be sufficient.
Scotch Governor Crossword and you'll get the answer.
I mean... what kind of wordplay is either one of "scotch" or "governor"...
... Google
Which Is why I prefer the american puzzles. They don't take as many liberties.
I think I found the crossword... btw do you have the printed newspaper by any chance?
17:39
Nah. It's an online.
so its ID starts with 2 :P
Globe and Mail Cryptic online, Cryptic Crossword - Saturday, April 13 (archive puzzle)
© 2019 Gemini Crosswords all rights reserved
Might be subscription only.
Not the same as Saturday's print, which I did over the weekend.
that's... not The Guardian...
and no, I can see it :P
17:51
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SAVAAAAAAAAAAAAANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I think North is transcribing the new Lion King trailer
Shhhh
I am not proud of it
But it's hard to get a job as a tree
First time I've done this online version. I'm finding the rules very different than I'm used to.
I.E. Sound of Amusement(5) = laugh, but there's no wordplay.
Which means it could be a simple crossword clue.
yeah, that's what I suspect
but it's obviously called a "Cryptic" right in the title... huuuuuuh
17:55
hmmmm
I'm dyinggggggg
Heeeeelllllppp
So Scotch has 3 basic definitions. Scottish, Whisky, and "To End"
Governor has 2 - Ruler or Boss, and a limiting device.
None of which makes the given answer make sense.
not to mention that "Scotch" is a specific kind of Whiskey...
Actually, Whisky.
Irish and American are Whiskey. Scotch and Canadian are Whisky
and Whisky alone is the same thing as Whiskey, heh
you need the "Scotch" prefix to make sense out of "Whisky" being region-specific AFAIK :P
18:19
441
Q: A short, brutal riddle

Roland Left alone, I'm a word with five letters. I'm honest and fair, I'll admit. Rearranged, I'm of no use to trains. Again, and I'm an overt place, warm and well lit. What am I?

very reputation ... much bounty ....
seeing the reputation fly over you...
I don't understand. It was accepted nearly 4 years ago.
user477343 has been gifting reputation in bounties for a while now, finding (usually very) old posts with interesting but somewhat overlooked answers to award extra rep love to
Admirable.
18:26
personally, I'd call that generous
 
2 hours later…
20:12
re the "scotch governor": an "optic" is, among its other meanings, a thing attached to a drink bottle in a bar, which provides a way to dispense an accurately measured quantity of, say, scotch. (It's called an "optic" because the mechanism is that it lets the drink into a chamber of known volume, and you see by eye that it's exactly full, and then you release the contents into the customer's glass.) So it's a "cryptic definition" clue rather than a def+wordplay one.
(An optic, in this case, governs the amount of scotch poured out.)
@ChrisCudmore you might be interested
When I hear "scotch governor" I think of somebody like mr. president Milosh Zeman.
@GarethMcCaughan pretty literal meaning of "cryptic" I see :P
 
3 hours later…
22:53
0
Q: Temple Sequence

mrGoldenAppleYou and your friends Brutus and April are exploring an ancient temple when you encounter a locked door with a stone keypad next to it numbering 0, 1, 2 and 3. Out of curiosity you decide to type in an answer. 1321 A booming voice then says, Three of those numbers are correct in correct...

23:13
3
Q: I am not a queen, who am I?

MarybnqHere an easy one which dates back to when I was a kid. I have a crown Yet I'm not a queen I have a lot of children Yet I don't have a husband Who am I?


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