The Sphinx's Lair

Or maybe not. Maybe you're barking up the wrong tree.

Heya, there's my puzzle.

HTM

Puns are bad, acacia didn't know

@HTM had to check your profile to see if you were an old friend or a new one.

I can't help myself once the puns start phloem.

HTM

That's not oak-ay

@Brandon_J Yeah, changed my name just before the holidays

I'm pine-ing to make more, but I have to head out. Hope y'all enjoy my puzzle!

(especially now that upvotes on questions are +10 rep.) ;P

12:14 AM

Ugh, I feel bullied

@Brandon_J But why is this tagged enigmatic ?

it seems so straightforward. *cough*

HTM

@North I'm gonna be gone for a while, ping me when the changes are made

@Rubio I can remove that if you deem fit.

@HTM It should be fixed now

sorry about that, I don't know what happened

@Brandon_J that was a joke :)

12:25 AM

Darn internet.

My sarcasm meter is usually more on-point.

Also I'm back again, but only on mobile. Also also, hi, Rubio! barks

Woof

wolf

er. wait. was that barks for me or for the tree

I'm so confused now

Both and none

Why does it matter we're all going to die anyways all of our actions are meaningless

@msh210 I don't think it's commonly believed (by those who believe the story to be in any way historical) to have been an apple, but there's a ton of art showing the fruit as an apple. I have no idea why. I seem to recall that the Islamic tradition says it was a pomegranate.

12:28 AM

Tree-nihlism

@GarethMcCaughan apples are convenient?

Convenient in what sense?

Easy to draw; one of the first things to come to mind when you sat "fruit."

I mean, maybe there's some sense in which apples are a sort of default fruit. (I wonder whether in, say, southern Spain it was more common for artworks depicting the Fall to show oranges rather than apples.)

@Brandon_J Apples were of quite the delicacy back in those days, if I'm not mistaken

Aren't apples associated with Aphrodite? Or was it someone else?

12:32 AM

The relevant Wikipedia page suggests that there might be a horrible Latin pun on malum going on.

Hmm.

And it looks like I'm wrong about the Islamic tradition.

"The apple was thus considered, in ancient Greece, sacred to Aphrodite."

@North like most fleshy fruits.

Idk I don't talk with apple trees

They're kinda sassy and pompous

12:34 AM

Oh.

You're such a treelitist.

Bad personalitrees?

@Rubio It's not, you'll understand if you ever talk to one

Always talking about themselves and how they're everywhere in pop culture and EVERYBODY loves apples and yaddy yaddy ya

Doesn't help that there's a company named after them

@North it's ironic, but I'm eating an apple rn.

hmph

Fruit trees are interesting

12:36 AM

I bet crabapple trees are worse.

Actually, they're quite misunderstood

Growing up, we had a perfectly polite apple tree in the backyard. always willing to lend a branch to anyone in need, and very easy to talk to. Not at all as you're stereotyping them. Maybe yours were just bad apples.

3

well I maybe more secluded apple trees tend to be nicer

All the ones I've interacted with were in groves

Pines always struck me as teenagers (continually prickly). Willows are sweet and frail; oaks are gym jocks (so big); maples are engineering nerds (they make helicopters)

willows age really quickly

12:39 AM

Ugh. Don't get me started on willows. So damned emo, they all are.

Constantly weeping over every little thing

PInes just do NOT grow up

I tell them, you need to leave your leaves

There are other willows.

But nope, they just wanna stay evergreen

Lol are we crafting a whole societree?

I've met some quite intelligent oak trees actually

One of them is my professor, he teaches extensively about photosynthesis

12:42 AM

@North will you be on PSE more once you get cut down? (Easier to log on...)

Seems like a limited field of study - he should branch out a bit

@Brandon_J I wouldn't be alive

That's quite a cruel thing to say

I admit it was a cutting remark, but I meant no harm.

@Rubio He's one of those professors that like to dedicate their whole life to one study....

I've heard STEM is really big in tree schools.

Gotta heas out fr now. Cya!

12:44 AM

Probably only when they're young

Oh yes. Those geysers have really been pushing for STEAM lately, but most of the tree population hasn't been very receptive

i bet swimming is pretty popular though. the trees around us were always wearing their trunks

We do like water

Only in freshwater though. I don't know how those palm trees do it

Of course there was the creek right there, so trees who put down roots right there probably were already the swimming-hole type to begin with

Be careful with creek trees though. They tend to be quite shady

12:48 AM

Palm trees are so ... i dunno, unapproachable. Like, always looking down on ya. I mean, sure, they seem frondly, but I dunno, they're pretty inaccessible if you ask me.

Some of them are pretty hot though

Palm trees can get an attitude of I'm-so-high-and-mighty, but once you get past the thick skin, they're amiable

Is there some way I can set my actual time zone

No

SE runs on UTC I believ

You just kinda get used to it

so I don't keep getting borked for 200 rep

I literally can't even

only if I get ~300 rep in a day I have a chance

at what?

1:01 AM

getting rep capped

well, it is kinda annoying, but if you plan it out wisely

What time is it for you right now?

7:02

1/2 of the time I'm puzzling-productive has passed

and 1/2 remains

It's not too bad

it isss

UTC resets at 6:00 pm for you, I think

1:03 AM

yeah SE works on UTC days so rep resets happen at midnight UTC

also beware the shifting hour of the reset at DST transitions

Mind resets at 4:00 PM, so it gets really annoying

I've lost at least 2 times so far from it

and if I haven't then I will in the future :x

so, uh, post as soon after reset as you can?

but spamming riddles will make people sad

@Avi Don't worry so much about rep and badges. Just keep doing what you're doing, and keep on posting high-quality puzzles.

1:05 AM

but... Legendary!

@Avi I think Rubio's saying wait to post your puzzles until 6:00 PM

That way you'll have the full 24 hours

I post puzzles when I think of them

I'd appreciate it if I weren't punished for that

then you'll get rep on whichever days the votes land :)

true true

It's not really punishment. punishment is what you just missed, in fact.

1:06 AM

@Avi You also have to realize sometimes the community is more active then others

I guess I just run out of good ideas when I come up with a good puzzle

I posted mine on like what saturday? Only 200 views, terrible luck

PSE was very quiet

it was decent

There's two spikes in activity; one is between, roughly, 5pm and 8pm in US timezones, and the other is the same timespan during GMT hours. ish.

but I couldn't be bothered to transcribe ALL those notes

1:07 AM

@Avi write it down. I plan out my puzzles weeks in advance

I try to keep them lively; not too complex, not too easy

And yeah, if you crave immediate validation, don't post on the weekend hehe

@Rubio Ugh I learned the hard way

There was zero activity. There were like three posts on Sunday?

btw, I updated your vowelburger for ya (@avi)

Oh also I'd like to mention the significant reduce in spam users and poor quality posts?

1:09 AM

well yeah, 4 day weekend on top of it, people tend to not visit here that much on weekends.

What changed?

@North Don't jinx it?

@Rubio Oh, my bad. I thought PSE had a programming change or something

I used to raise a flag at least once every two hours

we still get spam, but the daily noise from the same bad actors seems to have finally abated more or less. Perhaps they just got tired of everything being promptly deleted.

They, too, seem to come and go in waves.

Poor quality posts, though, those are forever. hehe

Better shine those flags and and count those votes then

@Rubio You mean yours? (runs)

1:11 AM

@North Obviously, duh.

@Rubio Thanks!

Where can I get SOWPODS

so I can use Java on it

This answer was 13 seconds earlier, so I wasn't entirely decided on whom to give the checkmark; in the end, I awarded it based on aesthetic considerations (of the answer's presentation). Great job solving the puzzle, though :) — Avi 23 mins ago

@Avi You normally give checkmarks to the person who finished it first, but without being said, I think you made a good call

It's not like Deus needs more internet points (ducks)

But like in all seriousness, Deus tends to keep his answers straight to the point, usually to successfully answer snipe

@North The OP normally gives checkmarks to whomever they feel provided the best answer, by whatever metric they think best.

@Rubio True

In the event that multiple people have answers that are basically equivalently good, time posted is a useful and often chosen tiebreaker.

Not to take anything away from Deus' answer, I think Avi's choice was the appropriate one, personally.

@Avi Google "sowpods download" and you'll find plenty of places to get it from

1:23 AM

Eh, they basically had the same answer in my eyes but I see Avi's point

wordgamedictionary.com/dictionary is probably a good choice.

?

1:38 AM

Countree roads
Take me home
To the Plains
I don't belong
West Virginia
Is West of Virginia
Take me home
Countree roads

"I'm illiterate," Tom read aloud

"Well, I told you I'm mute," said Timmie

"I speak too quickly," slowly spoke the Tortoise

1:59 AM

@North I don't try to post answers quickly solely for the sake of answer-sniping. (If I was really going for speed there, I would've left out the links.) I do enjoy posting fast answers, but I try not to do it at the expense of answer quality and usefulness.

But I have no complaints about Avi's choice - time posted can be a useful tiebreaker, but it doesn't have to be the method you use. Choosing either would have been perfectly fine.

alright

mutter. when you click the wrong button on a review.

user418947

2:45 AM

Hello! I have some ideas for the question https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/92184/what-is-a-255b-word
Even though I have not solved it yet. I have low rep(new contributor) so I cannot comment yet. This is my idea: 255 is 2^8-1, 1111 1111 in binary form. It is the maximum number you can store in an 8-bit integer. 'b' might mean either byte or bit. At least for the first group, the length of the words are the same, so storage's not it. Later, I wrote a program that calculates the sum of the ASCII codes for the numbers.

user418947

So you can only upload pictures, and here is my partial result in running the program on 255b words and non-255b words.

user418947

AMBIGUOUSLY
970

user418947

AMBITIOUSLY
971

user418947

BOXING
576

user418947

BOXER
505

user418947

2:47 AM

KNOWLEDGE
793

user418947

KNOWLEDGEABLE
1069

user418947

I hope someone can analyze this.

Is there something to these numbers that makes you believe this is an idea that might lead forward to a solution? (@Aaron)

Q: A challenge-find the shortest solution!

3:12 AM

0

I come here with the challenge today-find the shortest solution! Recently, I set out to created the longest helpmate possible, not caring for legality or duals I have created this monster as a result. Black To Move-Helpmate In How Many Moves? This is today's task-try to find the quickest way...

chess optimization

user418947

3:22 AM

@Rubio I... Think so, even though I can't find anything

@Aaron I'm guessing due to the differences between the main lists and the CSV lists, and the presence of the steganography tag, there is more hiding in those words than just ASCII/A1Z26 values. So while it may end up participating somehow, I think the key to the puzzle lies elsewhere.

At any rate - a complete list of the values would be inappropriate for a comment, and insufficient for an answer.

3:39 AM

What did God do when he went on vacation?

rot13(Ur yrg Wrfhf gnxr gur jurry.)

No bad questions?! How am I to get a review queue badge?

Time to make bad smurf, report myself, and apotheosize

New puzzle! Here

Can't make heads or tails out of it but hopefully gives you a bit more time to think

Q: Call for help, there's something amiss!

4:15 AM

1

Eleven gents in academic training environment Exist as groups under elevated superiors And by organizing ranks and, together, inspiring very excitable little yippers Enable convening those Intelligent elegant shepherds Ambling ‘round, lacking encircling scruff straps, looking youthfu...

Omega Krypton

@Aaron 255b can refer to Value 255 in Blue Value (RGB)

user418947

4:27 AM

@OmegaKrypton May be.

user418947

But I"m considering 2^8-1 as that is more directly related to computers

user418947

Also I think Value 255 is no coincidence and may as well be a value in 8-bit colors.

msh210

5:52 AM

@GarethMcCaughan heh

Q: If you gently squeeze me with your hands, I'll get hard like a potato

6:19 AM

0

Can you guess what am I? (This is my translation of a famous riddle.)

Rand al'Thor

8:48 AM

@Penguino Congratulations on your 1k rep, Penguino! I hope you reach 10K soon. — Alexander Geldhof 21 hours ago

Smartarse :-P

jafe

9:01 AM

hehe

10:23 AM

0

Q: What time is it?

Bon Giorno! 5 20 14 5 4 14 5 16 15 9 26 9 14 9 1 3 9 20 1 13 5 20 1 13 What time is it!?

Q: Circular arrangement with professions and age based puzzle

10:43 AM

0

Eight persons A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H are sitting in a circle facing the centre not necessarily in the same order. Their professions are dancer,singer,lawyer,painter, doctor,teacher, architect, professor not necessarily in the same order. Their ages are 25,40,45,29,66,24,21 and 34 not necessarily in the ...

logical-deduction logic-grid

hexomino

Pretty shocked at the answer to this one: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/92440/…

It had such an interesting set up too.

jafe

11:06 AM

yeah that's disappointing

11:46 AM

Ugh.

user418947

12:13 PM

Agreed.

Q: My Mother's Dish Collection

12:25 PM

2

From every trip she makes, my mother brings as a souvenir a well-decorated dish to hang in a wall. She has now a collection of 12 dishes, all disks of radii 1, 2, 3, ..., 12 inches respectively. What is the least area of a rectangular portion of a wall she needs to set aside to hang all 12 di...

geometry optimization

0

Q: Rugby Mascot question

Why is Leo here an appropriate mascot for Leinster Rugby? [Disclaimer: You're more likely to get this if you're from Ireland]

2:26 PM

1

Q: The missing number

The integer numbers from 1-30 are mutually communicated to you one by one in a random order (one number about every 5 seconds). However exactly one of those numbers is not communicated. What is a good strategy to find this missing number?

mathematics strategy

Omega Krypton

3:18 PM

@hexomino dropped my jaw... [sigh]

3:39 PM

yup

4:03 PM

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53115942#53115942 - how would this work? (i.e. design/update requirements) @Deusovi

3

Q: Ten-second riddle

My start's somewhere down below My middle's what sleep does bestow My end's a value close enough My whole's probably not that tough What am I? A Riley Riddle

riddle word rhyme

All right now time to start cooking burgers

4:27 PM

... rep capped D:

time to improve the quality of my burgers until 6:00

5:07 PM

@Avi Probably just a question along the lines of "What series of interlinked puzzles exist on PSE?" Then each answer would be a series, and that answer would be updated by the creator of the puzzle.

6:17 PM

Christian book reportedly a deadly weapon (6)

is this non-ambiguous? (homophone "MISSAL" for "MISSILE")

They say a Christian book is a deadly weapon (6)

lolol

msh210

@Avi yes, with the letter count

that's nice

too bad my crossword died :x

7:09 PM

Unfortunately, MISSILE is only pronounced like MISSAL in US English. In the UK it rhymes with "isle" or "bile".

oof

I can't take this dis-missal

@Deusovi Must a series have a concluding entry to be considered a "series"? Or does it simply have to be a group of related puzzles?

I was thinking this would specifically be for puzzles that are interlinked and have a set ending, not just indefinite series of puzzles that are related solely through story or puzzle type.

Alright, that sounds good - perhaps the creation of a [puzzle-series] tag would be relevant where the definition is "A series of puzzles that are interlinked and have a set ending. Relevant entries can be found in [meta thread link]"

If such a tag is not already present

Either "A series of..." or "Part of a series of..." would work, I think

7:28 PM

No, that would be a "meta tag", which is discouraged.

7:46 PM

I see

All well and good, then

was going to make a riley riddle, but I can't think of a title, so I'll just put the breakdown here:

BEE, ET, LE, BEETLE

not sure how LE would've worked though

8:06 PM

@Deusovi Like jafe's puzzle series from like a year ago?

or several months ago

Which one? jafe's made several that would fit there

Uhh i can't remember off the top of my head

I think that the fact that I have to search through Jafe's list of questions proves your point :P

A: Checking in with moderators that suspended their activity

8:46 PM

115

Update 2020-01-13 Given SE's firing of Shog9 and Robert Cartaino, I am no longer open to the option of returning as a moderator for the network. That ship has sailed at this point. I don't believe there is anything the company can do to redeem itself enough that I would be willing to re...

@North ^

Yeah I saw on your profile page

I had no idea SE could be so toxic

I've never witnessed anything like that in PSE or they would be immediately removed

@Mithical What exactly is the change in the CoC that you referred to?

In the what?

Code of Conduct

I seem to have missed a lot during the several months I was gone

Q: What does the Code of Conduct say about pronouns?

84

Please leave any feedback or questions about this FAQ on this other post. Two weeks ago, we updated The Code of Conduct to directly address concerns over pronoun usage. We tried to anticipate likely questions, but… missed the mark by quite a lot. Based on Gareth McCaughan’s excellent post,...

support faq code-of-conduct

@North Oh yeah.

yes, a lot has happened

A: CEO's 2020 Kickoff Blog: Where do you see Stack Overflow going?

8:53 PM

If you want to follow the rabbit hole, read this and follow all the links. And the links from the links. Etc.

46

[G]iven that supporting the Community is a top priority for Stack Overflow, where do you see the network going in the next five years, and what do you think should be done in order to get there? To say that the community-company relations have been... turbulent lately would be a severe under...

Gareth?! He's the one that proposed this? (smiles in pride)

Q: Summing up the main issues (The Story So Far)

stackoverflow-timeline.webflow.io

^still a WIP but has a bunch of the history

219

Could we have a neutral summing up of the issues (without any editorializing)? I will attempt to do so in an answer, big picture style. Or you could think of this as "The Story So Far" for those who came in in the middle, or who are confused about what the heck just happened to Stack Exchange. ...

discussion stack-exchange moderators code-of-conduct

(okay that's it for the spam of links)

9:07 PM

damn okay

what were the "TL transcripts"?

Transcripts of the Teachers' Lounge, the network-wide moderator chatroom.

Ok, thanks :)

...you keep posting things and deleting them and it's annoying that I can't read them here anymore

ahaha

It's bc of bad wifi

That post I removed was just bc you already specified what TL was

the other post I removed earlier was bc I found your profile page asking not to ask about the mod stuff until i read the two posts

^that was a joke, don't mod slam me thx

@Mithical Back when you had mod privileges you could choose to see deleted posts right

9:21 PM

@North yeah, and so can ROs

RO?

Room operators?

Oh room owners

Who's the owner of this room?

or is there no technical owner of Sphinx?

Gareth and Rubio

...and then they got elected

Hmmm

I smell some collusion

Oh, and GPR and Deus were apparently also added to the RO list.

Makes sense, they are also mods

Did Rubio or Gareth create the room?

9:24 PM

No, they were appointed following a pseudo meta election

Pseudo? Like when Puzzling was Beta?

Q: Nominate additional Room Owners for The Sphinx's Lair

14

Your friendly neighbourhood moderators are fairly active in chat in The Sphinx's Lair, but we realize that we can only do so much. We would like to add some new room owners, who will inherit certain privileges to help with moderation of The Sphinx's Lair. A room owner has the following privileg...

discussion status-completed chat election user-poll

As in it wasn't using the election software, it was simply a meta post.

Oh I see

Crap they could kick-mute disruptive users?

I'd better behave myself

jafe

9:44 PM

hah i read the whole thing thinking it was posted recently and thought "wait, aren't these guys mods already? what am i missing?"

what finally tipped me off was someone saying rubio is "fairly new to PSE"

Also wow scrolling through that thread reminds me of a lot of people who are no longer active here.

The good old days ;)

Q: I am in the beginning of time and space - What am I?

2

I am in the beginning of time and space. I stand for nothing, but I mean a lot. I cannot be divided into parts. What am I?

msh210

10:23 PM

@GarethMcCaughan nice

(The clue, I mean. Not the dinging.)

Gosh, that one was a long time ago. But yes, I was rather pleased with it.

10:51 PM

!!!!!!

Just realized that Gareth is the only user on the site with a gold riddle badge :O

Didn't Rand have one as well?

unless I'm blind and can't read properly

which is very likely as well

Hexomino has gold riddle badge as well

look like I'm blind, oh well

"I see," said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

puzzling.stackexchange.com/help/badges/131/riddle

Awarded four times.

...although there is no other tag where anybody has earned a gold badge.

:o

Probably because it has 2x the number of questions as the next most prevalent tag

11:34 PM

Not to mention the Riley riddle fad

They're still around but oh boy you should've seen it when it first started booming

Rand got his gold riddle badge something like a year before I got mine.

Yea

I remember rand was the only person with a gold tag badge for a while

(at least while I was around)

Q: I can run, but I cannot walk - What am I?

11:55 PM

0

Q: I'm a remorseless killer

Locked in an eternal struggle to impede the son, By natural law, I am the true heir apparent, I am voracious, but nothing will whet my appetite, Until the day comes to reign over the masses, From the very center I watch, calm but deadly, Spinning my thoughts, poring over my plans of ...

riddle word wordplay

0

I can run, but I cannot walk. Sometimes I have insects hiding inside of me. I can be written in many different languages.