The Sphinx's Lair

North

00:12

@Avi No

I said for WHAT not to WHOM

Check my comments I added

Honestly, this riddle was just kinda bad

North

00:38

Mirror, mirror, on the wall (lost thine head without the body), who's the fairest one of all? (3)

Avi

01:03

*coughs in unnecessarily complicated clues*

North

@Avi (L-)LAW(-EHTNO)

Avi

what's the second mirror doing

North

should I not put it there?

Idk I figured mirror mirror as one whole thing

Avi

reverse of reverse is forward?

North

okay

Mirror, mirror, mirror, on the wall (lost thine head without the body), who's the fairest one of all? (3)

Okay I had to just verify that ethno was not some racial slur, because it could totally sound like one

Avi

01:09

still not understanding the wordplay

THE WALL <

losing the L

oh

ON THE WALL <

North

idk if it was very good

You know I just saw this on an OverSimplified video but

One alternative name to West Virgina was Left Virginia and I think that's hilarious

Avi

still trying to figure out

how to do WHALE - HE = LAW

then I can say "He was lost within a whale"

something like "Bill - he was lost within whale, then returned (3)"

HTM

01:44

@Avi Deletions are typically of contiguous letters, so WHALE - HE = WAL would be non-standard

Some flawless legislation (3)

Sphinx

03:53

0

Q: Four sequences made in a specific way

? 233 55 13 3 ? 377, 89, 21, 5, 1 4, 25, 145, 850? ...

number-sequence

Alconja

04:31

Happy 02022020 palindrome day all (and for once it's a palindrome that all parts of the world can agree on).

Sphinx

06:58

0

Q: Did anyone played this ARG game?

first sorry for bad english and if the place, format and stuff is not particularly correct. I tried reddit too, but without success at all. Also for any wrong information (it was a while ago). Anyway, years ago (probably around a decade. I think it was at the time hotel 626 came out, though, unr...

puzzle-identification alternate-reality-game

Rubio

^ that's not exactly on-topic here.

Avi

07:34

Is “unhealthy whale” valid to clue WHALE - HALE = W? What about “Not healthy to eat whale” for T(W(-hale))O?

Also, “Headless creature is in very good shape (4)” for (-w)HALE, lol

Rubio

08:07

@Avi Cryptics should cleanly split into definition (not mere description) of the subject word(s), and wordplay which gives an alternate construction of the subject words, ideally reading as cleverly obscured but nonetheless understandable instructions for how that construction works.

"Not healthy to eat whale" is, I think, problematic in that 'to eat' is different from 'to eats' or 'to ate', both of which are descriptive of the intended operation, and in that 'not healthy' does not describe the operation of removing health (or a synonym) from something. 'unhealthy' is, arguably, closer to this.

@Avi This here, is actually pretty much dead on the mark.

msh210

12:02

A question someone finds puzzling is not the same thing as a puzzle. This is not a puzzle, and really should be marked as off-topic rather than being answered. — Rubio ♦ 21 hours ago

@Rubio In the OP's defense, the site is called Puzzling. :-)

Gareth McCaughan

12:13

@Alconja It's a palindrome in the US! (02/02/2020). It's a palindrome in the UK! (02/02/2020). It's a palindrome in ISO format! (2020-02-02). Its day number in the year is a palindrome! (33). The number of days remaining in the year is a palindrome! (333).

(I learned those last two facts from Matt Parker's YouTube channel. I don't know whether he noticed them for himself or found them elsewhere.)

He claims, and it seems plausible, that there are no other days that fit all these criteria. (Maybe there might be some once we reach six-digit year numbers?)

Rubio

12:25

Well those criteria certainly do make it an extra special day indeed :)

msh210

13:02

@Rubio so special that it should be repeated

Rubio

@msh210 ♪ I Got You Babe

Alconja

13:16

@GarethMcCaughan just watched that same video myself and was coming back to update my prior post, only to find your response. :)

Sphinx

14:06

0

Q: A peculiar attraction

The lines you see below Mean one word each unique Which when put together Forms the answer you seek An exclusive group of people A city that’s eternal A book that’s periodical A trap to capture what’s feeble What is the word? Note: the words may overlap.

riddle word rhyme

Sphinx

15:06

0

Q: Contest winners cryptic clue

Winners of non-US weekly magazine challenge: end for one side, beginning for second (6)

knowledge cryptic-clues seasonal

Rubio

... for which I am completely unapologetic. ⤴

Gareth McCaughan

Just to be clear, is it in fact an "honest" cryptic clue?

Rubio

It is, yes

Gareth McCaughan

15:23

It looks like the sort that would make me think "I'll get back to that one when I've got some letters".

Deusovi

17:11

it looks like the sort that would make me think "there's some gimmick here giving two equally valid answers"

Sphinx

17:49

0

Q: On The Subject of Marble Tumble

(This is part of a series of puzzles written for Timwi for a Secret Santa puzzle exchange, themed around various custom modules for the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. No KTaNE knowledge is necessary for any of these puzzles except the final meta; each puzzle resolves to a single word or ...

enigmatic-puzzle cryptic-crosswords

Sphinx

18:09

0

Q: Help required stealing Christmas presents

Archibald, Beatrice, and Chrysostomus were finally at the end of their journey, at the entrance of the much sought-after room. To get there, they already had sneaked past the guards, crawled through the raindeers' stables, picked locks, and tied up an elf who lay, confused, in a corner of the roo...

riddle cipher language

Deusovi

18:29

CCCC: Discord, as a spirit, almost broken by crusade against a Celestial domain? (9)

Sphinx

18:49

0

Q: Techniques for solving row & column sliding puzzles

This is a type of puzzle that at first looks like a tile-sliding puzzle, where you have a grid of tiles with 1 missing tile, and you can slide individual tiles into the blank spot, eventually arranging them in the right order. But it's quite different -- there is no blank spot, and you slide an ...

sliding-blocks

Avi

19:43

@Deusovi The MLP reference is too strong

lmao

Mithical

19:56

Q?

Avi

20:19

Q?

what does that mean

Mithical

Oy.

It means Q. The character played by John de Lancie on Star Trek: The Next Generation, who the character Discord from My Little Pony, also played by John de Lancie, is intended to mirror.

Avi

ahh, thanks for the clarification.

Mithical

....and before you ask I know nothing about MLP.

And if Derpy gets wind of me talking about it I'll never hear the end of it.

Gareth McCaughan

Derpy?

Avi

I stopped watching after season 4 :x

Mithical

20:27

@GarethMcCaughan Derpy.

Or, Derpy.

msh210

I want "a Celestial domain?" to be SEASONING, but it's probably not, not least because the domain of Celestial is actually seasonings, not seasoning.

Avi

20:54

HEAVEN?

except, it's not in possession of the correct number of letters

Mithical

HTM

Gareth McCaughan

Grr, last step of Deusovi's latest is kicking my ass, and it seems like that should be the easy bit.

HTM

@GarethMcCaughan Same here, it seems a lot easier than it actually is

But I'm off playing Codenames so you'll probably get there first

Gareth McCaughan

21:35

Well, I have a kinda-sorta answer but I don't really believe it. And an alternative I believe a bit less. It feels to me like there's an element of "guess what arbitrary rules I have made for this bit" going on, but very likely when either someone works it out or Deusovi reveals all it will be obvious that nothing else was ever possible.

Deusovi

Go ahead and share your "kinda-sorta answer"?

Gareth McCaughan

Already done.

Deusovi

Did you forget about the second sentence of the instructions? (The in-puzzle ones, not the preface.)

Avi

for the record

the 2nd vertical line

starts with "usenet"

sounds like "use net"

not sure how a marble tumble is supposed to work though (e.g. if it's covering every/nearly every square of the board, then you might use intersections/left out squares as the answer)

HTM

22:10

@GarethMcCaughan hdsdv left a useful comment that might contain the answer you're looking for.

Gareth McCaughan

Oh, it does say "tilt maze". That was my first thought but I couldn't make it work, which is why I went looking for other meanings of "marble tumble" and found the KTANE thing. Will have a look at hdsdv's comment, which no doubt reveals how stupid I'm being.

Yup, stupidity confirmed.

HTM

Nice :)

Gareth McCaughan

Annoying to have been stupid, though :-).

HTM

@GarethMcCaughan By the way, rot13(ubj qvq lbh nffrzoyr gur tevq? V unq nyy gur jbeqf, ohg pbhyqa'g frrz gb svg gurz gbtrgure ncneg sebz JRNYGUL naq FNSRGL)

Gareth McCaughan

Brute force! I tried all the ways WEALTHY and ATTRACT could intersect -- it turned out that none of them made it possible to fit the other words, so they had to be parallel. Then I looked for ways to fit CANASTA with them. Then tried other words, splitting and eliminating possibilities as I went. It was maybe 15 minutes of labour? (My estimate might be quite wrong; I'm not good at estimating time spent doing things.) There were multiple possibilities until the grid was almost filled.

(I feel less guilty about posting that partial answer now I know that you were stuck at an earlier stage rather than at the exact same step I didn't manage to do :-).)

HTM

22:23

Yeah, I had crossed CANASTA with SAFETY and couldn't get anywhere far with that. Maybe if I had stayed with it a little longer I would've seen it, since I did have ATTRACT in the right place

Thanks for the explanation though, to the victor goes the spoils :)

Sphinx

0

Q: A contest of curious creatures

A new riddle by me - I don't think a line-by-line analysis is strictly necessary, but if you could cover off the various peculiarities that would be super. I have eleven limbs, Which can all rotate and swap. I can slip, I can sweep, But never with a mop. I have a few legs, Some...

riddle rhyme

Gareth McCaughan

22:48

@Deusovi Does that mean that you had in fact solved it when you wrote that?

Deusovi

@GarethMcCaughan Nope, I've just written enough Schrodinger clues that I guess I intuitively recognize them?

Gareth McCaughan

23:12

Impressive!

Rubio

@Deusovi Why I never. *cough*

Incidentally, the current solution isn't exactly correct

Sphinx

23:32

0

Q: An unusual shopping list

6 bears 3 cucumbers 2 winks 2 birds 5 sheets 3 judges 2 bones 2 dogs 3 houses 4 feathers 1 rake 3 posts 4 daisies 3 razors 1 bat 3 lords 4 pancakes 2 boards 3 peacocks 5 whistles

enigmatic-puzzle

Avi

screams in needing to create a puzzle

screams in being too lazy to create a puzzle

screams in already having started work on the puzzle yet still not finishing it

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