The Sphinx's Lair

« first day (2257 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1682 days later) »

Sphinx

00:10

Q: Love-ins? A capital idea for a cryptic crossword

Across 1 Moves mass across surface of Earth 3 Carrot top inserted in faithless can for escapade 6 Empire head removed in revolution 10 Blurred as at end of day, perhaps start of it 11 A food riddled with holes. Wherefore? Say, albumen 12 Core belief recalled in church aloud 13 King, perhaps, wit...

crosswords

Sphinx

00:34

Q: What type of puzzles are the statue puzzles in Super Lucky's Tale, and what method should be used for solving them?

This question is about a set of puzzles in the video game "Super Lucky's Tale" (as well as its Nintendo Switch remake "New Super Lucky's Tale"). They are known as statue puzzles as they involve sliding statues around. Here is a YouTube video which shows all of the statue puzzles in the game and h...

visual puzzle-identification sliding-blocks

Q: Pattern recognition in IQ test

Does anybody see the most reasonable solution for this pattern riddle:

logical-deduction pattern

2 hours later…

oAlt

02:04

OH BOY

@JeremyDover Homophone of "cleaner ass" = cleaner wrasse

Deusovi

03:02

wow, it's been several hours and nobody's sniped the cryptic yet? that's surprising

...I have figured out why that puzzle has not been answered yet.

oAlt

03:22

ahaha

Deusovi

okay, I have a few ideas as to what's going on here, but I can't get any of them to work out

1 hour later…

Sphinx

04:35

Q: A mysterious thing I am

So you say now I am not what you used to say I was? You've kicked me out of the group you used to say I was a member of? Well, without me the other members of the group are eaten, ungrammatically. But say what you wish; it makes no difference to me. I was here long before you ever existed, and I'...

riddle knowledge wordplay

2 hours later…

Sphinx

06:11

Q: Your friend emails you a passage:

I received an email from your friend: From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Title: A passage Body: Today, i went to the pharmacy. I asked the staff, "How much is a bottle of alcohol? I has not much at home." The staff replied, "$10 per 100mL, not many money needed." So I decided to buy 2...

steganography

Q: Can a 10*10 binary puzzle have more than 1 solution?

I was trying to solve 10*10 binary puzzle and when I checked with the answer given in the book, the solution in it was different from mine. I did not repeat 1 or 0 more than twice in any row or column. Is it possible to have more than 1 solution in a binary puzzle.

calculation-puzzle solvability

1 hour later…

msh210

07:19

@Deusovi It's because I made the cells slightly wider than they are tall. It's turning people off of the puzzle. Sorry about that. It was an accident, and I realized it only after posting the puzzle.

Deusovi

ah yes, of course - that's definitely it

oAlt

07:46

AHAHAH

2 hours later…

Sphinx

09:23

Q: How do you force a win in 4x4x4 TicTacToe

I have read in the wikipedia page of TicTacToe that it is possible for the first player to force a win in a 4x4x4 board. I tried to find a strategy on how to do it online but failed. So, how do you force a win as first player in 4x4x4 TicTacToe?

strategy game tic-tac-toe

msh210

10:18

@Deusovi FYI:

@hexomino yes but I've just added word counts — msh210 20 secs ago

2 hours later…

Jeremy Dover

12:06

@oAlt Thank you for seeing through my juvenile pun. I hope to resume normal behavior now.

oAlt

12:52

hahahah

Hold on, i'm just putting the finishing touches on this one

Sphinx

Q: Looks can be deceiving

I am writing this because of the requirement of minimum 30 characters in the bod :). Nothing to do with the riddle.

riddle knowledge

oAlt

CCCC: Audible result of mule initially having a spasm in naphthalene? (8)

heh my turn to put up a clue with a surface similar to the previous one's

msh210

13:28

@oAlt a_ r_ o_ m_ a tic

oAlt

Yes indeed @msh210

msh210

CCCC: Carton of London scones? Start your day naturally: Eat yarrow heads (6)

(I don't think the yarrow actually has anything called a "head". In my defense, Peter Yarrow does. :-) )

(Peter Yarrow has nothing to do with the C4.)

oAlt

13:53

@msh210 I don't know how to process the definition part, but I see S_ Y_ D_ N_ E_ Y_.

msh210

@oAlt Do you, then? Interesting.

oAlt

a quick search yields a character from A Take of Two Cities, Sydney Carton from the novel "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. Further searching led me to Britannica confirming that this guy worked in London (forgive me, I have never read the book before).

ah, and I got a better understanding of the wordplay now. That's why I was so confused

"starts" acts on "scones", and "heads" acts on "your day naturally: eat yarrow".

@msh210

msh210

there you go

oAlt

CCCC: Discernment from Matthew is dominating within (6)

msh210

(And because it's a tale of two cities, one of which is London, I felt especially justified in referring to him as Carton of London. Though I think it's fair anyway.)

oAlt

14:01

ahh. Either way it indeed is still fair

msh210

_w is dom_

@oAlt ^

oAlt

yup

msh210

feels like a tennis match

CCCC: An Italian, opening shakily up: "Ciao! I go, no?" (6,5)

oAlt

14:13

Oh boy, I'm almost on a wild goose chase for this one

msh210

@oAlt I hope you catch it. They can be very tasty.

oAlt

I did

And the "an Italian" got me

Cuz i thought an Italian name was needed

HAHA

(GIUOCO PIANO)* @msh210

msh210

yep! your serve

oAlt

CCCC: Yours truly is piercing nearly stationary rock, perhaps (11)

In retrospect I think there's something I'd nitpick there, but I can explain my intentions later

msh210

14:33

"Yours truly is piercing" = oAlt is playing music very loudly. "nearly stationary rock, perhaps" = Rolling Stone. So oAlt is actually MICKPJAGGER in disguise!

oAlt

14:49

heh

3 hours later…

jafe

17:35

if it was "yours truly's piercing" that could be the def for BELLYBUTTON or something like that :P

oAlt

ahahah

1 hour later…

Sphinx

18:59

Q: Cryptic Family Reunion: Fanfare for the Common Man

The answer to this puzzle is a list of ten thematically related words or proper names or phrases. Each of these is clued cryptically, and the theme is to be determined. Since the definition part of a cryptic clue would give away the theme, these cryptic clues use a family member (e.g., mom, siste...

cryptic-clues

msh210

19:38

I'm trying to decide whether to post a hint to my puzzle (and, if so, what hint to post).

If anyone has an opinion on the matter, I'd love to read it.

bobble

I thought Deus would've got it by now

msh210

As did I.

Deusovi

20:06

@msh210 I have some ideas that I could talk about.

Maybe that would help?

msh210

20:35

@Deusovi I'm all ears.

Deusovi

so, it looks like a lot of these could be answered as normal clues rather than cryptics - which makes sense with the lack of a cryptic-crossword tag

I also noticed 20D, which doesn't exist in the given grid - I'm guessing that the actual grid is entirely different

I think there's still something more going on, though. while it does look like these are normal crossword clues masquerading as cryptics, there's still something off about several of them

like there's a wrong word in each, or something similar

msh210

@Deusovi If the actual grid is entirely different, then what could you possibly do with the given grid?

Deusovi

@msh210 Overlay it on the solved puzzle and extract letters that get shaded over, maybe.

that was my guess

msh210

Interesting. Well, I can assure you that there's no completely different grid to fill in. So I guess that's a hint. :-)

Deusovi

here are my clue guesses right now - not too confident in many of them, but it does seem like a suspicious number of these can be answered as normal crossword-style clues

hm, if there's no separate grid, that makes me even more confused about 20D

it's clearly intentional that it's there

msh210

20:43

@Deusovi A few of those look familiar to me from when I composed the puzzle.

Deusovi

and not only that, that the number 20 could be placed in the center of the grid

msh210

@Deusovi I don't think there's anything accidental in the puzzle. If there is, I haven't noticed it yet.

And . . . I think I've said enough for now.

Deusovi

21:44