The Sphinx's Lair

Alconja

12:26 AM

@jafe As an Aussie, this was the first thing that came to my mind (though it's usually "seppo")

oAlt

4:14 AM

I backread some of the C4's, and there's one that still confuses me ("make for thousand epidemiologists first (5)" --> forge). I get how "for" and "e" were clued, but how does "thousand" imply "g"?

Ankoganit

5:02 AM

@oAlt G is an abbreviation for 'grand' which can mean a thousand dollars

oAlt

5:49 AM

AHHHH

right right thx

Sphinx

8:18 AM

0

Q: Mind Your Idiom!

Emoji Puzzle: Mind your idiom! Text version: ❌u🎣 💀 👇 ⚫ 🔄 ⏰ 🥊 🛣 🔐🏠🏠 🔪 🗒 ✅ ☔ 🧽 ☀️ ❌🌼🐓 🐳 ⏰ 💨👆 👉 🍌 🍌 👴🏻 🔥 👉🔄 🔄👈 🍳 👱‍♂️ 💪 🍪 👁 👁 👆☁️ 🥵 💦 💦 👂 👂 ☔ ☀️ ❌ 🚀 🧪 🤔 👆📦 💰 💪 🦵 🌎 🦪 👇⚽ 💨🔥 🍛 🗓 ☀️ 🌇🌆 🍟👇 🔥 🥶 🐈 💼 🦶 ⚰️ 🐈 👅 👆🛣...

Sphinx

9:03 AM

0

Q: Make the numbers 1-100 using six 6s

Rules: Make the numbers 1-100 using six 6s Use the operations + - * / exponentiation and ! No Rounding as in $((6 - (6 + 6) / 6) + 6!!) / 6 = 9$ No using other digits Multi digit numbers and .6 is allowed Use overhead lines for recurring decimals: $.\overline{6} = .66... = \f...

mathematics formation-of-numbers arithmetic

Sphinx

10:33 AM

1

Q: How to get 32 by using ( +1 , +1 , ×3 , ×3 , ÷2 , ÷2 )

How to get 32 from +1,+1,×3,×3,÷2,÷2 And using two square components

mathematics logical-deduction knowledge calculation-puzzle formation-of-numbers

Sphinx

12:48 PM

-4

Q: Calculate this integral $\int{\sqrt{x^2+\frac{13}{x}}}$

$\int{\sqrt{x^2+\frac{13}{x}}} dx$ Make sure to simplify it

mathematics arithmetic

Sphinx

1:32 PM

0

Q: Wood puzzle of 6 equal parts

I got a wooden puzzle (I guess it is a puzzle) consisting of six equal and symmetric parts (four of them from different angles in the picture). I have no manual and would like to know what its name is and how it should look like when assembled together.

puzzle-identification

msh210

3:16 PM

Not the CCCC: Fancy term to box in a dandy: an adroit Iran "slayer", per'aps! (10, 13, 3, 15) rot13(nzonffnqbe rkgenbeqvanel naq cyravcbgragvnel naq yvgrenyyl)

Sphinx

4:32 PM

1

Q: Cipher text on an ancient wall

The following text was found written on the wall of an ancient tomb: $\text{DXFDMKEPU}$ Can you decipher what it means? Nearby the wall, this piece of parchment was found. Perhaps it is a clue for deciphering the word? The following instructions were found (seemingly referring only to t...

word enigmatic-puzzle cipher no-computers grid-deduction

msh210

6:10 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Maybe it's time for a hint....

North Læraðr

7:55 PM

@jafe say what now

Also Jafe did you get out of Spain safely? I never had a chance to ask

jafe

we're flying back next week

North Læraðr

! Wow

jafe

unless the plans change... again

just applied for refund of our previous tickets (flight was cancelled)

wouldn't want to be an airline eployee atm

North Læraðr

I'm guessing you had to pay a lot of extra to prolong your stay at whatever hotel/residency you were staying at?

jafe

nah not really, it's only a week or so extra

North Læraðr

7:59 PM

Oh, that's good

jafe

we've been here for 6 months but that was the plan all along

North Læraðr

I thought you were stuck in Spain for like a month or two longer than you wanted to

THat's good

jafe

woulda been a bigger change of plans if the pandemic hit before we could get here

didn't know there's rhyming slang in australia... thought that was a cockney thing only

North Læraðr

8:15 PM

What's a rhyming slang

jafe

they replace common words with phrases that rhyme with the word

North Læraðr

Never heard of one before

jafe

like "stairs" is "apples and pears"

North Læraðr

I'm American, and that's not really a thing :P

at least as I'm aware of

Quintec

8:30 PM

it's a thing, just not really in america

North Læraðr

That's a better way to put it

Sphinx

9:46 PM

1

Q: “I just can’t solve this easy puzzle!”

“Yuh can’t solve this easy puzzle?” “Bah, it’s already solved!” “Nah, it’s so easy it only looks solved.” $$ \require{begingroup}\begingroup \def \a #1#2#3{ \abc {three}{#1}{nine} {#2}{fourteen}{#3} } \def \b #1#2#3{ &&\abc {five}{#1}{seven} {#2}{f...

word-property

Mithical

oh, a humn puzzle

Beastly Gerbil

A very frustrating humn puzzle lol :P

I'm starting to convince myself there isn't another entry

John Dvorak

10:02 PM

You mean, it's not humnly possible to solve?

Beastly Gerbil

My small gerbil brain doesn't have the capacity to think humnly

humn

... so i clicked on the link in your comment, @Beastly G, and wound up here ...

jafe

we all need to live with that humnling realization at one point or another

hah, baited

humn

Happily! Before long i'll overstay the welcome.

This puzzle really is easy, with no tricks, and you will kick yourself.

jafe

how are things in humnland?

humn

10:15 PM

The pattern is probably also a duplicate of some other puzzle and i was nervous about it being closed.

Hi jafe! Pretty good. All this social isolation has given me puzzle time again!

jafe, are you really Suomessa?

jafe

i'm in spain right now, hopefully flying back to finland next week

unless the airline decides otherwise (again)

humn

Right!

The main reason i ask is that i learned English in Suomi.

Helsingin poika sulle.

jafe

yeah i know, i assume you've been away for quite a while though

i'm from tampere myself

humn

Last place i lived was Koivistonkyla" (sorry no a" on this keyboard), somewhere in Tampere!

Beastly Gerbil

@humn even if this was similar to another puzzle, I doubt it would be closed. I doubt that the other puzzle has all of the possibilities and the layout of your puzzle alone, with the goal of finding the missing sum would be different enough to make it unique

humn

10:25 PM

@BeastlyGerbil , thanks for the encouragement. I did search, but alphametics don't always search well.

And, yuh, jafe, last time i was in Tampere was 1977, near Juhannus, but what i remember more is skiing to and from 1st grade in the dark.

jafe

aand stiv solved it

that's quite a while, i haven't been alive that long :P

Beastly Gerbil

Stiv is definitely not humn considering he's been a member for only 10 months :P

jafe

#1 puzzler of 2020, though!

humn

Yay, @Stiv!

jafe

(and it's not even close)

puzzling.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&filter=year

Beastly Gerbil

10:32 PM

If Stiv stays around long enough, (which I really reallu hope he does) then he'll be at the top in no time

jafe

absolutely

Beastly Gerbil

30k in 10 months, at that rate it would be possible to hit 100k in around 2 years from now

As if on cue :)

humn

Fast solvers can be slowed down, though.

Beastly Gerbil

It can be difficult to stay motivated, I disappeared for two years after all lol

Stiv

Ohp, ears are burning... @humn That puzzle genuinely just made my heart race when I spotted the trick to it. Wow.

humn

10:36 PM

@Stiv ! I stumbled on it after being disappointed by not having any subtraction versions work out.

Beastly Gerbil

I was convinced there was something involving 'hundred' :P That probably wouldnt even have been allowed with 'a hundred' or 'one hundred'

But it didn't matter becuase there wasn't any that worked anyways

humn

i was looking for something like "nine + twelve = twenty-one" and my program spat out "one + six = seventeen-ten"

Beastly Gerbil

I didn't even consider a triple

@humn I was considering that as well! With the dash as a minus, that would have been an incredible find

Stiv

I was starting to go over twenty, noticing that ten+eleven=twentyone and ten+twelve=twentytwo, but then I reasoned this was more than one entry into the set and I needed to find something else altogether...

Beastly Gerbil

I very much hope this hits HNQ, it deserves it - very clever puzzle

It should considering theres 3 answers, even if one is deleted

jafe

10:39 PM

HNQ is black magic, you can't predict it

pretty sure one of the steps of the algorithm includes the sacrifice of a he-goat

Beastly Gerbil

Very true

humn

My only Q on there was called "Finger that bad digit" and it got renamed for sounding as rude as it was meant to.

Beastly Gerbil

My latest puzzle, which literally went from 2 upvotes to 20 never should have, and I still dont know why

It had 1 answer, at I think 4 upvotes at the time, the puzzle had 2 or 3, and it randomly hit HNQ 5 hours after I posted it

humn

@BeastlyGerbil you deserve thanks for bringing in new potential solvers! (Not to mention posers.)

jafe

there's a PSE wood puzzle question on HNQ right now that was solved by literally googling "wood puzzle" and clicking one of the first hits

Beastly Gerbil

10:42 PM

HNQ is a fantastic idea, but I don't think it works in the favour of our site sadly. It's great to see lots of puzzling questions on it though!

Stiv

@BeastlyGerbil And re this comment, I'm flattered BG thank you but I don't think that'll ever really happen - the guys at the top have such a huge amount already and rack up so many rep points with regularity that the net difference between us in any period would never make a dent in their 'lead' (if you think of it as such).

The biggest of the big guns are perfectly safe up there I'm sure! :) I'm just enjoying the ride (and finding out I am very easy to distract from things I should be doing instead...!)

@jafe Yeah, that surprised me too - I actually have that one at home from a pretty standard puzzle set!

Beastly Gerbil

Sometimes it can be sad to see an increible puzzle, really well thought out, lots of time put into it, get solved by one person and a really good answer, only get say 100 views, when another puzzle, (which could still be good, just not as good or with as much time put in) get 4000 because it gets 3 answers instead

Stiv

Yeah, that's my biggest bugbear with riddles - it's very easy to make a rubbish riddle and garner huge rep from it and a HNQ, whereas the puzzles that actually take time to make, solve and answer to the extent that only one person answers it tend to go totally under the radar.

Beastly Gerbil

@Stiv I disappeared for two years, and came back to find the site mostly the same, which was great to see, but you were the standout change, it blew me away even more when I realised you'd only been on a few months, not even over a year :)

humn

@Stiv, if you'd like to amble the countryside, a couple of my unsolved puzzles were meant to be journeys of discovery. Like the recent die-sum puzzle. There's no gotcha, and the techniques that lead to solution just keep building on each other.

Stiv

10:47 PM

@BeastlyGerbil Ha, thanks :) To be honest, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster!

@humn I'll take a look. I do try and look through the unsolved puzzles from time to time - the Necromancer badge is definitely my fave...!

Beastly Gerbil

It can also be very disheartening for a puzzle maker too. If you put a load of time and effort into a puzzle to make it as complex, compact and clever as possible and then post it with high hopes, just to see another puzzle which maybe took 10 minutes to make get a load of attention it definitely doesn't make you want to make the higher quality puzzles as much

And I definitely can feel like that as I tend to make the longer puzzles as I enjoy making them more :)

Stiv

@BeastlyGerbil That was how I felt a lot with the Twelve Labours series I made back in the autumn. The series took months of planning and storyboarding and I was delighted it was so well received by those who followed it through (positive comments - and considered feedback - always spur you on), but it wasn't until the meta puzzle at the end that any of the individual puzzles really garnered attention.

Beastly Gerbil

Granted I am probably saying that ^^^ with a bit of salt too :P I've seen some fantastic clever 10 minute puzzles who absolutely deserve more attention

humn

@Stiv , want one that's been left for dead three years now? Gonna plug it:

12

Q: Day and night of the two timers

Make a non - 24 - hour day / night cycle with the most daylight and fewest pieces Specifically, devise schedules and an arrangement for two electromechanical 24 - hour light timers to control the flow of power from an outlet to a light bulb. The challenge is to obtain t...

optimization real time jigsaw-puzzle circuitry

Mithical

IME, it's always been that way across the network: The complex things that deserve votes get much fewer votes than the simple, easy quick things.

The simple things everyone can understand, so they vote.

The complex things, people go TL;DR and click away.

There are exceptions, but I've found that that's the general case.

Stiv

10:53 PM

@humn My brain is now fighting with the need to get to bed and sleep! (sound of internal struggle) I have no idea who's going to win this one!

jafe

there's definitely an argument to be made for putting the puzzles in HNQ that the average programmer distracted for 20 minutes can solve

considering where much of our outside traffic comes from

Stiv

True

Mithical

Like... this took four months to write.

Beastly Gerbil

Personally I'd love to see it where HNQ is a community vote. Say each community gets a certain amount of questions, based on their size, and all users can vote for which question(s) from that day they think deserves more recognition or is a good question

That way the site can showcase it's best questions, or in our case puzzles

jafe

isn't that kind of how it works? we upvote, we answer, and the algorithm consults the evil spirits

Beastly Gerbil

10:56 PM

True, but the amount of answers also is a huge determing factor

jafe

that is true

Beastly Gerbil

Which if I remember correctly, the algorithm changed to favour more answers a few years back

jafe

it's probably more relevant to other network sites

humn

@Mithical , a labo(u)r of love! At least it has been admired even if not solved.

Beastly Gerbil

That's true, we're a big exception in this network, and we can't expect site-wide mechanisms to be tailored to us (unfortunately) :P

Mithical

10:59 PM

@humn It's been mostly solved. Slightly disappointed that nobody has gotten all the references, though.

humn

Yeah, @Beastly G, i feel lucky that SE supports our existence at all.

@Mithical , not even Rand al'iterature

Beastly Gerbil

I know the site was quite a big 'ummmm?' at the start but hopefully the doubtors have accepted the differences because the site has most certainly turned out well. Definitely one of the more fun communities and we even graduated! :P

humn

Which reminds me, has "this site is dying" been discussed here yet? (picture to follow:)

Beastly Gerbil

@jafe I feel content and proud of myself for having solved a single one of your cryptic clues lol

jafe

i was so tempted to comment like "nope, still alive, no thanks to you"... but "be nice" and all that

Beastly Gerbil

11:05 PM

I mean: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/54139695#54139695

Definitely says otherwise

jafe

exactly

@BeastlyGerbil just posted 78 more opportunities :P

Beastly Gerbil

@jafe I'll leave them for deus to solve, he'll be very happy seeing that posted :P

jafe

oh, i'm sure he's 59/78 right now

Mithical

What's Deus doing out of his honeypot

3

Somebody put him back

Beastly Gerbil

What I find crazy is there's just under 50'000 users on the site... and thats just people that have been lucky enough to find the site through whatever means, and liked the site enough to create an account. What if the for whatever reason, the whole world new about the site. There must be people out there who could make things we've never seen before and post answers before the puzzle is even posted, they just don't know the sites here.

Granted, the site traffic would probably not be fun to deal with

jafe

11:13 PM

also, people who like a certain type of puzzle... but there's already a better site for that puzzle type out there

Mithical

@BeastlyGerbil so you're saying i'm not good enough for you. got it. i understand

On a more serious note, any site is only ever going to have a small fraction of possible experts.

jafe

@Mithical nope, you're awesome

Beastly Gerbil

@Mithical not at all :P but considering only 0.000007% of the world population has an account, and we already have some incredibly makers and solvers on the site, there must be some crazy puzzlers out there

jafe

i'm almost certain you just calculated that percentage

Beastly Gerbil

Calculated off the top of my head I swear closes google tab

Sphinx

11:16 PM

4

Q: Zany misunderstanding

Grid in plaintext Across 1. Top metal band has a trademark for honorific title (7) 5. Smear fellow according to Spooner's scheme (6,4) 10. Money paid for releasing Welsh footballer, reportedly (4) 14. Crowd plunders hiking equipment (9) 15. Optimistic visionary shown by you to horrible pain (7)...

cryptic-crosswords

jafe

hehehe

humn

somebody say it: .... 87.4% of all statistics are ...

... made up on the spot ...

Mithical

@jafe ^.^

humn

And another thing: Any encouragement for moving the meta post about puzzling tools to the main site?

32

Q: A collection of Puzzling Tools

This post is a community-wiki compilation of useful puzzle tools and websites. If you find some useful source, please edit the according answer post to add it. Also add a short description, please. Categories below: Cipher Tools Word Tools Number Tools Graphic Tools Puzzle Tools Geograp...

support faq search

Mithical

....no, it's not a good fit for the main site. It's an open-ended list question. Much better off on Meta.

humn

11:22 PM

how do meta-shy users find it?

Mithical

Add to that the fact that a question older than six months can't be migrated and it start to paint a pretty clear picture.

@humn Links? It should also show up in Google results.

humn

hmm, @mith, i guess it's also mainly a list of links itself, which can go stale.

Mithical

Indeed

humn

Follow-up question: How about a post on a di(c)e-puzzle solving technique or two? I'm dying to start something like that. Meta?

Mithical

D'ARVIT I lost track of time again

Aaaaand it's 2:30 in the morning. Good night, folks

humn

11:26 PM

Goodnight Mith's brain!

(and, late, Stiv's brain)

. . .

Beastly Gerbil

I am very confused

Ok right account

Sorry about that, I’m logged into the app as me, but somehow the chat as the other account..?

What I mean to right, on THIS account lol was ‘Well then... I’m trying to log into chat on my phone I accidentally logged into a sock puppet account I once used when I was 13 which got me banned for a month... (hides head in shame) I have now requested in the help centre to get it deleted, would have already if I hadn’t forgotten about it lol :P’

But stack exchange said no lol

jafe

yikes

Beastly Gerbil

Well that was an embarrassing mess

Finally got rid of the axxount

And with that shame now with me I think that’s also my cue to sleep, sorry about that :P

humn

11:42 PM

! Knowing that you've been banned makes me like you even more, @Beastly G.

(Like Rand al'f'instance)

Beastly Gerbil

@humn innocent 13 year old me didn’t even consider the fact I could be banned, let alone that it was morally wrong lol

humn

And it didn't stop you!

Sweet dreams, furry post-pubescent rodent brain . . .

Beastly Gerbil

Thankfully :P I can’t remember what I did to be banned for a week before, all I know is that if I get banned again it’s for a year (scary)

But I’m not planning on breaking any rules soon :P

merrybot

And wodo I find but the one that interpreted a 16 segment display as binary? :)

*whodo

I can't type

ah come on space bar!

Beastly Gerbil

Silly young me

merrybot

11:47 PM

*who do

Beastly Gerbil

@merrybot for some odd reason I have a tendency to look at something, and go BINARY!!! I still don’t know why lol

merrybot

@BeastlyGerbil Strange.

I can just imagine you screaming BINARY! aloud lol

oh and somehow I got 93 rep in half a month. How exactly, I don't know.

I gave my teachers the puzzle, none of them could figure it out. The closest my science teacher got was as[]x.

merrybot

If you translate "Beastly Gerbil" a bunch of times you get "standard lightning." ?!?

Beastly Gerbil

I always knew I was standard

humn

@merrybot , ---- / -.. --- . ... / -. --- - / ... . . -- / - --- / - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - . / ..-. .-. --- -- / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .

Don't look, Beastly Gerbil eyes, but Morse code is . . . . shout it! . . . starts with a "B" . . .

merrybot

11:56 PM

A ---- doesn't exist in Morse code so my thing rendered it as a #. *Nice try.

@BeastlyGerbil -... ... - .-.. -.-- --. .-. -... .-..

QW++ nrsdyau hrtnoa

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