The Sphinx's Lair

Avi

01:04

Ruy Lopez :O

cackles in completed sudokus

no computers allowed

Sphinx

02:04

1

Q: A beauty to behold

My first part is edible; It can slide on the ground. The other, mostly inedible; Makes an annoying sound. Who am I?

Deusovi

02:52

Some feedback, @msh210: Generally, noncryptic crosswords have all letters crossed, and no two-letter entries. This has a lot of unchecked cells, which can be a problem for something like 2-Down. Knowing a single letter out of three is not very helpful. (And the 2-letter entries are just uninteresting, typically.)

Avi

03:02

what

not ruy lopez?!

oh, it was ruy lopez :D

I thought the wrinkle in time character was It, not Et?

IT, to be precise

oof, I read the summary by accident

that gives me goosebumps

msh210

04:22

@Deusovi thanks! Yeah, I knew there were too many unchecked letters (even allowing for them at all) and too many black squares and too many (>0) two-letter words. Next time I make a crossword (if ever), I'll try to stick to the rules; this was more for the ciphers.

Maybe I shoulda done a similar (in terms of the ciphers) puzzle, but not as a crossword.

Alconja

04:38

@msh210 FWIW I think you get a fair bit of leeway when you're constructing an "abnormal" crossword (which I say largely to absolve myself of my 2 letter word crossword clue sins of the past). It was still a good puzzle, even if I did get stuck because I was trying to do variations of the across trick twice, as I always forget about the existence of that particular down trick.

msh210

05:17

@Alconja thanks

Sphinx

05:48

0

Q: Setka - Complete grid using clues and sudoku-style logic; Theme - Halftime

This is a Setka puzzle; you can find more (along with a more detailed explanation of the rules) at our website, linked from our profile. How to play Setka, the short version: Answer each clue using only Puzzle Letters and vowels. Clue answers, minus vowels and duplicate letters, go in the corr...

logical-deduction word wordplay sudoku logic-grid

Sphinx

08:09

0

Q: Fun with Flags part 1: something different

We are looking for 4 categories.

visual flags

Avi

14:38

Alconja with the 200+ upvote puzzles, hot damn

gotta make me one of those too :D

Mithical

Step 1: Be Alconja.

Avi

Or I could just spend days making a puzzle

which I have been in the slight process of doing

not getting too much time though

LMAO this coding talk

^ I feel that

Sphinx

15:52

0

Q: Living next door to Alice

Bob and Charlie are living in a small village with 99 houses, each of them has a house number from 1 to 99. At one day they meet Alice, a person, who recently moved to this village. Bob asks her, if her house number is a square number and Alice answers his question. Bob asks further: is you house...

mathematics logical-deduction

0

Q: Decode this message:

Gongs. Achtung! 16324 Trennung 28, 16324 Trennung 28 95220 27182 42355 04528 41268 85136 75910 93275 41209 45460 25239 06265 19939 17512 39694 83952 03747 33998 37518 73308 24473 53061 85975 08947 90886 53256 10058 82063 Ende! Key No. 16324 25815 62579 69763 96269 26985 22966 92962 66292 92572...

cipher

Sphinx

16:52

2

Q: Lenny’s Logical Internship

Lenny recently applied for an internship at Logicorp™, a company built around using logical reasoning to solve any sort of problems their clients face. The interview was long and difficult, and Lenny was asked many personal questions ranging from his favorite mathematician to his favorite color, ...

logical-deduction visual

North

@Avi Nice rhyme

Avi

thanks, but the wordplay is questionable :)

I've seen worse though

North

coughs in my wordplay

Avi

dodgy eyes

North

catches eyes

Avi

17:03

lmaooo

dodgeyes - like dodgeball, but way gross

North

lol

I don't think I've met a user in PSE quite as ambitious as you are

"It's alright, you want to fight, you've got a hunger
I was just like you when I was younger"

Avi

boom

►

wasn't expecting that D:

Sphinx

2

Q: Some kind of measure

My prefix is a sign My suffix describes mine My infix is above you But I'm just impromptu

word wordplay rhyme

Avi

17:55

Diabolical Deductions Digest, step 1: complete?

dcfyj

Finally fixed it... ugh about time

msh210

Franz Joseph Haydn - "Surprise" (Symphony no. 94)

►

dcfyj

@msh210 I can't help but think of "Suprende!" from Magicka haha

msh210

@dcfyj not familiar

Avi

@msh210 OW

goddamnit haydn

dcfyj

18:05

Suprende! dunka dunka.

►

msh210

@Avi Yes, best with headphones, at full volume.

Avi

I had already put it down but it still got me

I will make a puzzle so difficult that you will spend HOURS solving it >:c

as revenge, of course

msh210

@Deusovi just an idea… "a Celestial domain?" can be ASTRONOMY, the definition. Note that "Discord" = ANOMY, though I can't seem to get the rest to work.

dcfyj

@Avi I listened to the whole thing, didn't notice anything amiss

Avi

0:47

msh210

18:14

My other big idea is that "Discord, as a spirit" = ERIS. That hasn't led me anywhere, either.

Avi

sire ;o

dcfyj

@Avi Lol, I hadn't even noticed that

Avi

might be ERI_

dcfyj

is discord an anagram indicator?

because "as a spirit" is 9 letters lol

msh210

And of course a bunch of smaller ideas.

@dcfyj before the fodder? I don't think so.

dcfyj

18:16

@msh210 I don't do these remotely often enough to remember the rules and I've never been much good at them

Avi

guess it's not ERI_

are there like 9 levels of hell & heaven

or just hell

dcfyj

No idea, go read Dante :P

Avi

could be AFTERLIFE?

no idea

'a celestial domain'

or SHANGRI-LA

it's probably actually [discord] as ...

msh210

18:30

It could also be the name of a galaxy or the like.

dcfyj

I was thinking "Mesosphere" but I'm not seeing anything that makes sense right off

msh210

@dcfyj oh, nice, or ionosphere

dcfyj

Depends which sense of "Celestial Domain" you go with, I was thinking sky, etc would be easier to figure out than spiritual (Olympus, etc)

@msh210 where do we pull our rules from for these? I don't remember

msh210

@dcfyj pull? From here.

dcfyj

I thought there was a specific site from which we got our rule set

msh210

18:41

Dunno if there is, but there's an intro at puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45984/cryptic-clue-guide

dcfyj

@msh210 The anagram indicator here is in front:
"Bizarre triangle" - a tool used in calculus (8) [INTEGRAL*]

msh210

(To be clear, when I say it's an intro, I mean that it's good even for newbies, not that it's insufficient on its own.)

dcfyj

?

Who said anything about insufficient?

msh210

@dcfyj yeah, depends on the indicator. I haven't time to explain atm, sorry, but hope to do later if no one beats me to it

dcfyj

I was talking about: "before the fodder? I don't think so."

ugh, I hate formatting lol

Although the only anagram of "as a spirit" I'm seeing is apiarists, which doesn't seem likely to work lol

msh210

19:12

@dcfyj no one. I just wanted to forestall any misunderstanding.

msh210

19:27

@dcfyj an anagram indicator has to make sense, where it appears relative to its fodder, as a normal English word. So if the indicator is "scattered" then it can appear before or after the fodder, because "X scattered' and "scattered X" both make sense in English to mean that X is scattered. So does "X discord", but not "discord X".

Sphinx

0

Q: Dear Hans - the old letter

During one of your late-night studies at library you found a piece of paper, which was used as a bookmark. You opened it and read its content. It seemed to be one of these post-war letters that never reached its recipient. Can it hide something? Dear Hans, news are traveling fast. You must hea...

steganography language

dcfyj

20:58

@msh210 The way discord is written here would make sense to me as an indicator, but to each his/her/their own

Avi

Dis-cord

as in take away a cord?

Avi

21:20

this doesn't work, but it's nearly there - Dash with heart in hand! (3, 3, 3)

H(_IT_) AND + RUN

@Stiv

21

Q: Captain Pun's new boat

My good friend Captain Pun has bought a new boat. "And this is a picture of its sail!" he said, showing me this: "Solve the nonogram and you'll soon know what type of boat it is!" Can you solve the two-colour nonogram to help me work out what type of boat he bought? This puzzle can be so...

word knowledge visual grid-deduction nonogram

^ needs new tag?

Deusovi

oh right, I should give a hint at some point

hint: This clue is a reference to something; the reference was already identified at some point.

jafe

21:46

discord as a spirit could be ERIS

Avi

22:11

EQUESTRIA

STRI(-fe) is almost discord, as a spirit

actually, crusade is QUEST

Stiv

@Avi @Avi Haha! Yeah, I went on a bit of a rampage. I'm a flags fan - the tag is woefully underused. Wouldn't want to give away too much with adding it to that one though! ;-)

Avi

somebody needs to solve the CC :(

my wordplay is woefully underskilled

"against" is "next to"

@Deusovi E(QUEST)RI(-s)+A

Deusovi

yep!

(inspired by the recent/ongoing My Little Pony themed puzzle hunt (puzzlesaremagic.com) -- I'm not a fan of the show myself, but the puzzles were pretty fun)

John Dvorak

Can't wait to see Avi's CC

Avi

D:

Gareth McCaughan

22:28

Ha. I saw Deusovi's clue and thought "well, the one thing the answer definitely won't be is anything MLP-themed".

Avi

22:46

CCCC: Foreign text bruised in tangle with immigrations agency deprived of right to entrance (9)

(as from a UK/US perspective)

Avi

23:06

CC: Tapestry displays lack your head (5) - ARRA(Y - Y_)S

Avi

23:51

Here's a preview for the difficulty level of some of my upcoming sudokus :)

Transcript for