The Sphinx's Lair

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Sphinx

01:15

This will be a "DIY" puzzle. Your goal is to prove/disprove if it is possible to complete this task or not. Bob wants to draw out a pipe system. There are three houses that lack: Water, Gas, and Electricity. He wants to supply all of these houses with those three, basic necessities. However, due...

pencil-and-paper-games

Avi

01:26

ok so this has nothing to do with "big" or "mission"

but, FORE-CLOSURE?

maybe "Big bore" as in tunnel bore?

2 hours later…

Sphinx

03:19

Q: Finding missing number from a table

This is a brainteaser I recently encountered: Find the missing number in the table: $$\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|} \hline 26& 6 & 5 & 4 \\ \hline 13 & 3& 2& 5\\ \hline 25 & 7 & 3& 6\\ \hline 25 & 5 & 4& x \\ \hline \end{array}$$ I want to find $x$. I've tried many things, including the following: Lo...

mathematics logical-deduction

msh210

03:52

@Avi I'm afraid not.

bobble

04:22

My crossword is going to have a bucketload of clues (98, to be exact). There's also going a bunch of empty lines between them for formatting purposes. How should I format when I post - plain text, or inside ``` to allow for scrolling?

or something else?

(I'm starting on my draft of the post, so presentation is suddenly very important, while before I was focusing on just making it valid)

3 hours later…

msh210

07:20

@bobble I think using markdown would make it easiest to read for the most people. Clue, blank line, clue, blank line, etc. Each clue can start with a boldfaced number

Like puzzling.stackexchange.com/q/100079/93

(except I use line breaks instead of paragraph breaks)

1 hour later…

jafe

08:49

@msh210 i think the c4 is WELL+ENDOWED, which is one of the meanings of "big"

1 hour later…

msh210

09:53

@jafe Yes, indeed.

1 hour later…

msh210

11:13

@Deusovi I'm glad I can finally put that to rest.

(the love-ins puzzle)

Deusovi

me too - I honestly had no idea what was going on with that last entry

msh210

yeah - as I said in my last comment there, I think I made that part of it unnecessarily tricky

(in terms of the square coloring)

2 hours later…

teed

13:14

should i reveal the answer to my puzzle?

Gareth McCaughan

No.

msh210

14:13

@teed I've no idea what puzzle you're referring to, but "no" is generally a safe answer to that question. :-)

Gareth McCaughan

Well, if something's sat unsolved for a month despite getting as much attention as it's reasonable to hope for, and you can't think of any way of providing further hints, maybe telling everyone what you had in mind is the best option. But that's not the situation here by any means.

Sphinx

Q: 0000000000000001

00000010 100100100101110101000101101 10110001011000110111 111111000100110010011001100110010 1000001 1000 1011011010000 1001001 110 10100000100100001100 111111111101000001101011101101011 10000100011111 1100000010001011101101011010001000100010 1010101111001101010011000100101100111001 1010100101111...

cipher

Deusovi

15:02

If there's no way to hint at the correct idea any more than you already have, then it might be a good idea to reveal it in a "canonical" answer. Up to you if you feel like it's reached that point.

Gareth McCaughan

15:25

The question's only been there for a couple of days.

Even if teed is confident that there's no further hinting that can be done, it seems worth waiting to see whether someone suddenly has a clever idea, or someone comes along who hasn't looked at it yet, etc.

And in fact it's clear that it's possible to give more hints. (E.g., of the form "X's floor number is Y". I'm not saying that would be a good kind of hint to give -- I don't know -- just that it's clearly not the case that there are no possible further hints to give.)

jafe

CCCC: Famous lines were drawn here – on women's bosoms – to show South American fishers? (5,7)

bobble

I remember the last clue with "bosom"... that one took a while

Sphinx

15:41

Q: A man unties you in a dank, grody room. You have 5 choices

A man unties you in a dank, grody room. He pulls out a chair and asks you some personal questions. He then offers you a choice: Stay in this room for the rest of your life, or take a chance on your life to leave. He also releases a cage full of anthropods. You take the later choice. He tells you:...

logical-deduction meta-knowledge

1 hour later…

bobble

17:10

It occurs to me that I should apologize for asking for so much help for one crossword :) Thanks to everyone who's answered my queries!

Sphinx

18:09

Q: Largest range of consecutive integers that can be formed

Using a 10-element multiset of $\{1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100\}$, what's the largest range of consecutive integer values that can be produced (note that $0$ isn't counted)? For example, I could take ten ones to get a range of $1$ to $10$, which would give me an answer of $10 - 1 = 9$. I can't seem t...

mathematics logical-deduction

2 hours later…

Sphinx

20:13

-1

Q: Mathematical sequence puzzle

Bob is trying to crack a puzzle. He finds this numerical sequence: 9056, 528, 64 What should he input after 64? First to get it right wins.

mathematics pattern

msh210

21:01

@jafe Nazca + boobies :-)

jafe