The Sphinx's Lair

Sphinx

16:16

0

Q: A very tough "Brentwood Puzzle" buzzing around web?

Three men, including Gianni and three woman, including Sachi are in line at the BrentWood post office. Each has two different pieces of business to conduct. The first person is a woman. Carlos wants to send an overnight package. Lau is just ahead of Pimentelli who is the same sex as Lau. Gianni i...

logical-deduction

bobble

16:35

hey, 'borg!

Sciborg

Hello!

bobble

when will crossword be out?

Sciborg

I'm on lunch break but I will post when I get home :)

bobble

I eagerly await someone sniping me

Sciborg

Is Matt good? He peaced out of chat last night and seemed unhappy, I was worried something I said upset him

bobble

16:41

I think? Not sure. You can analyze his above messages for yourself.

Sciborg

I didn't mean to upset him, maybe he took my jokes seriously and thought I was mad :/

Did I say something out of line? Like was it the gender jokes?

bobble

I really don't know.

Sciborg

Hopefully he's good, I'll ask if he's okay when he pops back in.

bobble

We like you, matt!

Sciborg

We're your buds @matt

I'm still hella proud of you for submitting your first college app, that's such a cool thing :D

Anthony Ingram-Westover

16:52

Hindsight, I think my last puzzle is way too verbose. Oh well, hope people like reading. Already have an idea for fifth destination if the pilot puzzles aren't getting old

bobble

I have a link to a portal that I can obsessively check for any decision :) Trying to not look too often

Sciborg

Oh hi Anthony! I haven't seen you here before

bobble

@AnthonyIngram-Westover I've never tried them (not my type of puzzle) but they've always looked cool

Sciborg

Definitely don't keep checking @bobble, it drives you insane :p

Lukas Rotter

@Deusovi Could you please make this question a community-wiki?

Deusovi

16:54

sure, done

Lukas Rotter

Thanks!

Sciborg

By the mod powers that be

Lukas Rotter

Now I only need to pump up my bot account to 100 rep so it can edit stuff :P Otherwise I'll just use my main, doesn't really make a difference except confusion

*edit community wikis

Sciborg

If it's not called RotterBot I will be disappointed

bobble

How about RotterBotter?

Lukas Rotter

17:00

sorry to disappoint, I was going for "FTC_Bot" :D

Sciborg

RotterBotter

Brilliant

bobble

By the way, did you think of some cool title for the crossword?

Sciborg

Ooh, not yet. Suggestions?

bobble

what's the theme?

or is it a secret? spooky music

Sciborg

it's a secret, dun dun dun

bobble

17:03

If it's a secret, you can use the title to hint at the theme

matt

@Sciborg that was bobble, not me

also yes i am perfectly fine :)

bobble

matt's back

matt

yes

Sciborg

I'm glad you're good, I was just worried maybe you had a bad day or needed to talk. We're always here :D

bobble

(maybe in a different room, though)

matt

17:04

thanks :)

Sciborg

(in a different room yes, but still here!)

Ankoganit

Let us know if anything's the @matt-er

matt

@bobble yyyyeah

@Ankoganit heh

Sciborg

@Ankoganit I can't even be mad because that made me laugh IRL

Ankoganit

(I'm only half-sorry)

Sphinx

17:06

1

Q: My suffix is the wife, My infix is the opposite sex

My prefix is in delight. My suffix is the wife. My infix is the opposite sex. My whole will not object.

riddle word affix-riddle

bobble

I have Big Honkin' Physics Final Project, will be leaving to work on it.

Sciborg

Good luck :)

Mithical

@Sciborg binary is for computers, not for humans

Sciborg

@Mithical truer words never spoken

matt

just imagine ternary genders

hey i should add that t my- no

Mithical

17:07

@Sciborg funny, mine usually just goes "no"

Sciborg

Ah, I like to think of my gender more as "all of them"

Mithical

Sciborg

Legendary post

The affix riddle up there is actually kinda relevant, funnily enough

matt

affix riddle? what affix riddle?

Sciborg

The one Sphinx just posted, I forgot you might be blocking the bot

matt

17:12

indeed i am

not that i like affix riddles - i dont

Sciborg

They're usually not my taste either, but they're fun to make and a good beginner puzzle

matt

also my englsih teacher just gave us all a TiMe MaNaGeMeNt dAiLy ScHeDuLe /s

Sciborg

I think it is a bit overused on Puzzling SE sometimes :p

matt

yes

seems like they are made just to Earn Stonks

sometimes

Sciborg

There was a discussion on my meta post about them where someone (I think Stiv) pointed out that many of them are less interesting puzzles, and more "let me think of a word and then break it into arbitrary pieces"

matt

17:15

I 100% agree

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Are affix riddles the "my prefix is... my infix is..." etc?

matt

yep

they're also quite boring to a lot of people

Sciborg

Yeah. They are very common on the site

I don't at all mind if people like them, I just don't like them much myself. I have my filter set to ignore the tag.

matt

Thought Exercise: imagine if we had a ternary gender system

as in like, humans

Sciborg

Many world cultures already have third genders

matt

17:18

how about 137 genders?

how bout dat?

Ankoganit

That's an oddly specific number

matt

yes

will be back shortly

Sciborg

I mean, there's a wide array of gender identities that people identify with, probably there are a lot out there. Not a big deal.

Lukas Rotter

The number 137, according to Lederman, "shows up naked all over the place", meaning that scientists on any planet in the universe using whatever units they have for charge or speed, and whatever their version of Planck's constant may be, will all come up with 137, because it is a pure number. Lederman recalled that Richard Feynman had even suggested that all physicists put a sign in their offices with the number 137 to remind them of just how much they do not know

Sciborg

@LukasRotter Today I Learned

Lukas Rotter

17:21

Wolfgang Pauli, a pioneer of quantum physics, died in a hospital room numbered 137, a coincidence that disturbed him

ok I'll stop. I just love Wikipedia pages for numbers :)

Sciborg

You're good, numbers are fun :D

Anthony Ingram-Westover

I could never wrap my head around physics, beyond the basic intro courses. Skipped it entirely in college

Natural sciences as a whole, all computers for me. I prefer being the master of my science, not the other way around.

Sciborg

I tried majoring in physics when I first got to college, and then learned the hard way that it was a poor life choice for me. So I switched to computers too.

That worked out wayyy better.

@LukasRotter Serious question, what's your favorite number Wikipedia page?

Anthony Ingram-Westover

My husband was meteorology, so he had a lot of physics

Sciborg

Ahh, that makes sense. Weather patterns and simulations probably involves a lot of physics.

Lukas Rotter

17:27

Good question, I don't think I have one. Let's just go with 42, I guess :D

Sciborg

@LukasRotter This is a valid decision and I support it :p

I love the one for 22 solely because there are like twelve different songs named 22.

John Dvorak

not 22 songs?

Sciborg

Specifically there are seven

But I just love the sheer number of singers who chose that extremely specific number

Anthony Ingram-Westover

@LukasRotter Any plans for a second hint to the pickle puzzle? I go back to it pretty regularly, and need closure

It's closing in on the highest rated non-answered puzzle

Lukas Rotter

I'll drop a hint right now

not particularly proud of the actual puzzle-content of that puzzle, I must admit. Especially since it hasn't been solved yet - probably way too obscure

matt

17:54

i have returned

msh210

@LukasRotter How do we know? A seance?

Lukas Rotter

Almost

In 1958, Pauli was awarded the Max Planck medal. In that same year, he fell ill with pancreatic cancer. When his last assistant, Charles Enz, visited him at the Rotkreuz hospital in Zurich, Pauli asked him: "Did you see the room number?" It was number 137. Throughout his life, Pauli had been preoccupied with the question of why the fine structure constant, a dimensionless fundamental constant, has a value nearly equal to 1/137.[15] Pauli died in that room on 15 December 1958

John Dvorak

137 = 11^2 + 4^2. There are four large dimensions and 11 total. coincidence?

Lukas Rotter

I think not

Avi

137 was An Imposter.

matt

18:35

ah yes the fine structure constant

Stiv

@LukasRotter Can I give you my theory I've had since the beginning for your puzzle? I feel like the first step results in ",dcX-" which is what you obtain from the nth character of each line including spaces. Then knowing that what we need comprises 3 lowercase letters, 1 digit and 1 uppercase, to me this screams out that the cipher depends on KEYBOARD LAYOUT.

After all, the dash is just to the right of the digits and the comma is just to the right of the last row of letters - it would be possible to shift each back along the keyboard a bit to create lower case letters from the comma, d and c; an uppercase letter from the X; and a digit from the dash. However, try as I might I couldn't find the right shift.

'One time' indicates 'one-time pad' too.

'Pickle in front of everything else' might imply that PICKLE are used as the first letters in the key.

That's what I've got, but no further - could be a total blind alley.

Lukas Rotter

It has nothing to do with keyboard layouts

Anthony Ingram-Westover

I think the ,dcX- is the key, since that's what comes right after "the key for a filling life". I was thinking Pickle was the plaintext or cyphertext, and we are solving for the other, but the number of characters don't line up

Stiv

@LukasRotter Well, at least I can lay that one to rest - been at the back of my mind for a month! :)

Lukas Rotter

Regarding the ciphertext, I will say that I did something which might be considered evil, but I attempted to make it clear what the ciphertext is with a clue and the additional hint #1

(although the initial clue is questionable)

Stiv

18:50

I think my problem is I can't process what 'alphabet' we have to use if it involves punctuation, numbers and letters. If it's a whole swathe of ASCII (which is all else I can think it might be) then how on Earth do you go about cracking that??

(That's a criticism of me, not the puzzle BTW)

Lukas Rotter

If you have the right ciphertext, key and alphabet, there's no need for cracking :)

(with that I of course mean everything mentioned above should be deducible from the puzzle alone. Cracking a 5-letter cipher when its expected result is a random string of chars is arguably impossible in itself)

Stiv

I mean, I get how Vigenere decryption works normally, but because I've only ever used it with letters A-Z my mind doesn't extend beyond that to accommodating punctuation marks whose only natural 'sequence' must surely lie within keyboard layouts or ASCII.

And it's a WIDE range of ASCII we'd be dealing with, spanning characters 44-100 (comma to d).

That's a heck of a big alphabet.

@LukasRotter This makes me feel that your ciphertext is either 'propaganda' or 'fluff', given the direction towards the footnote

Lukas Rotter

How would the initial parts of the note fit into this?

(your previous comments)

msh210

@LukasRotter Okay, so he had noticed the room number. Maybe he was disturbed by the fact that he was in the room. Maybe even he was disturbed by the fact that he would die there. but how do we know he was disturbed by the fact that he did die there without a seance?

(Okay, I'll quit my excessive pedantry.)

(For now.)

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Visible Spectrum makes me think of light wavelength, but that could be just because I made a puzzle around visible light wavelength

Stiv

19:03

"For one time..." = one-time pad (Vigenere)
"...we operate..." = operators like punctuation marks included in the alphabet
"...in a larger visible spectrum..." = a large alphabet, like ASCII
"...with Pickle in front of everything else..." = unsure
"...The base range isn't the standard, but it's still standard." = the 'S' in ASCII *is* STANDARD.

Anyway, just laying down these thoughts in case it helps anybody else get closer to an answer or rule out a path. Food calls!

Sphinx

19:59

0

Q: riley is depressed

I take my prefix because I am my infix. I am nobody, that's why I feel my suffix. I will never get up, I'll lie with my whole.

riddle word affix-riddle

bobble

20:19

I got a drive-by downvote for my bobblie statue park :(

First time for me on a proper puzzle, and it's for something I'm quite proud of and worked on for a while.

Well, no use moping.

jafe

it's on HNQ, so there are going to be drive-bys

probably up more than down :)

bobble

It stands at +16/-1

Sphinx

0

Q: What must we remember in October 2020?

Who wears the olive wreath with who lives in the trash they do a ballroom martial art and you heard it more than once

riddle knowledge

bobble

@Voldemort'sWrath, please note that I edited out the MathJax in this puzzle before you added it back in. It's completely useless (just keyboard characters) and requires more work by the webpage to render. I'm not going to get into an edit war, but I've rolled back your edit. Feel free to discuss this with me here.

Sphinx

20:48

0

Q: Carcass Walking: An introduction

Carcass Walking is a grid puzzle inspired by the board game Carcassonne. The objective is to place the given cities into the grid, connect them with roads, draw one river across the grid, and find places for the given number of cloisters. The river (blue squares) runs from one edge of the grid t...

grid-deduction

Voldemort's Wrath

@bobble Sorry, I didn't realize you had edited it out. TBH, it makes the post look better (and MathJax really should be used for equations). It doesn't really add that much to the load time either. It's not a huge deal, so I'll leave it be. :):)

It just doesn't make sense to me to actively edit it out.

bobble

By that logic, I should use fancy fonts for all writing/typing because "nice fonts really should be used for proper words". But I don't, because leaving things simple makes it easier for everyone.

matt

21:04

indeed

Voldemort's Wrath

But they're mathematical equations

Would you rather see: 5+5=10

or

$5+5=10$

well it doesn't work here

but you get my point

bobble

They're numbers and + and =. Regular work perfectly fine

Voldemort's Wrath

there's no real reason not to use mathjax though

jafe

i'd say both ways work perfectly fine and don't edit in one way or the other

bobble

And I prefer the first one because my brain doesn't have a little mental bump when the font switches and the numbers get more complicated

Voldemort's Wrath

21:07

Mmm... I would say I prefer MathJax, but I guess that's opinion.

matt

i'm in favor of mathjax when you can't ascii-fy it

2^3 is fine but not sqrt(7)

but i use sqrt(7) when mathjax isnt available

Sid

Hello all. Would like to thank whoever helped me out with my earphones problem. It's solved now and everything works amazingly well.

matt

nice! :)

bobble

glad to hear it!

matt

(random idea, completely optional) hey bobble ... why not you try drawing your own bobblecrown?

bobble

21:14

I have no artistic skills, you do not want to see my drawings.

plus, currently catching up on Last Week Tonight

matt

i never said it had to be a great drawing

just a drawing

Avi

2

Buckle up folks, it's Halloween time!

bobble

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Avi

Jack o' Lantern eyes too

Sid

(Completely off topic) I am curious to know who do you guys think is winning the US Elections? I am personally not an American and so I am interested to know which side the election wind is blowing.

Avi

21:19

Everybody but the US

:<

bobble

The media, as of right now

Anywhere that allows political advertising

Sid

Loool. I still don't understand how crowd-filled election rallies are allowed to be conducted amidst a pandemic

bobble

Because if anyone tried to ban them, Trump would cry foul

Plus, individual venues may pull out, but they can always find somewhere willing to host

matt

@bobble that scream wow

@bobble trump is in the vast majority of r/facepalm posts ... that says it all

he has covid and is still denying its existence

Anthony Ingram-Westover

21:46

I'll say who I definitely hope is winning, but given everything I have zero faith in this being a fair election

Strictly speaking I'm on a work computer and can't legally say anything about a particular political candidate, so I'll just imply heavily :)

matt

hmm

bobble

you may be interested in Puzzling's short-lived politics chatroom

matt

very short lived, yes

Anthony Ingram-Westover

We aren't allowed to discuss politics at work due to the Hatch Act, but that doesn't stop two of my co-workers

matt

hm

bobble

22:00

currently editing out MathJax used to format a numbered list of names. Really? That's not even equations!

matt

i hate that

(i.e. when there's unnecessary mathjax, not when you edit stuff)

Sphinx

0

Q: Does it exist a way to find the placement order of three people in a certain competition from a set based on their final scores?

I've found this riddle in my Logic and Reason book from 2000's, the topic belongs to ordering information. From the looks of it seems to be an adaptation from a reprinted version of Martin Gardner's 70's book of Puzzle Carnival. The puzzle is as follows: Marina, Sakura and Hina were finalists at ...

logical-deduction word-problem find-the-order

bobble

also mathjax used to say "100-m sprint"

matt

WHY

question link so i can see this terribleness?

bobble

here

don't start editing, since I am already fixing

matt

22:04

WHY DID THEY DO THAT

bobble

I've left in the mathjax for variable names, and the table, but not much else

matt

PSA: mathjax is for math

bobble

and also tables, if you really want

matt

tables are not math

they are furniture

bobble

But you can't make decent tables without mathjax or codeblocks, and neither is a good option

matt

22:08

can you still make tables though?

bobble

I can make tables out of clay

and I can hammer pieces of wood together

in a vaguely table-like shape

matt

ooh yay hammers

bobble

added oxford comma hehe

they put periods after every question mark. Seriously?

My edit is in: do you think it looks better?

matt

22:32

YES

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Always add an Oxford comma

bobble

If you don't, then bad things will happen: explosions, bad people and booming

Sphinx

22:51

0

Q: Clue within a poem-answer is most likely a word

good morning players- it’s finally here tonight the sole survivor will be crowned the nerves are building, the tension mounting with lies and paranoia abound the time has come to say goodbye to pandora and finish up our sixth season who can you trust and who do you cut they’ll cut you if you’ve g...

enigmatic-puzzle rhyme story steganography

Gareth McCaughan

23:01

CCCC: Shanghai brothel in which Mandy lies back after stripping (6)

My apologies (1) for how late this is and (2) if anyone is bothered by its risque-ness.

matt

@bobble you forgot the oxford comma lol

bobble

the point was how without the comma things can be misinterpreted

matt

yes

oAlt

23:51

@Sid I have no idea either, and I haven't checked the news in a while. The only thing I know is that rapper/songwriter Kanye West is legitimately running for president as well (you read that right), but I'd clearly assume that he's going to be the least voted, assuming people are sane enough.

Deusovi

a dangerous assumption

Bubbler

assuming people are sane enough

oAlt

oofie

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