The Sphinx's Lair

Omega Krypton

00:05

@Dmihawk yep!~

i wouldnt have joined if yall hadnt been that nice

Dmihawk

Hey OK! How you been?

bobble

@Randal'Thor, would you consider the MathJax here to be good? Would it be bad if I edited it out? (Trying to understand where you draw the line for MathJax in posts)

Sphinx

00:23

0

Q: Rotating through a word

Take the word no if you move the first letter to the end you have a new word on I consider that 1 rotation. What is the largest word that can be fully rotated, the most number of rotations?

Gareth McCaughan

01:10

@bobble I am not Rand but I share some of the same intuitions about typesetting mathematics; if it weren't for accessibility concerns I would say that one's good, but given the accessibility issues I think it's probably better not as MathJax. In my ideal world, screenreaders would be able to read that sort of trivial MathJax (either by making them smarter or by some sort of changes to MathJax itself, or both) and then I would (with some misgivings) want such things to be MathJax.

Bubbler

01:23

Can screen readers access spoilers?

bobble

I found this post, but it's old and I think they made some changes to spoilers since

49

Q: Spoilers are inaccessible to keyboard-only users

Several SE sites, including Science Fiction & Fantasy SE, support the tag >! for spoilers. This markup hides the text following the spoiler tag unless the user hovers the mouse pointer over the spoiler area. Unfortunately, if you browse websites by keyboard (e.g. due to mobility impairment), the ...

feature-request bug spoilers accessibility

Omega Krypton

01:59

@Dmihawk hurrying up puzzlecraft hoping to get a metapuzzle out before 2020 ends

progress is 3/11 + 0/meta

msh210

@Dmihawk "No words, text, numbers or symbols can be used"

Dmihawk

@OmegaKrypton oh nice, I shall look forward to seeing it!

Omega Krypton

and i got less than 20 days left with finals

1puzzle/2 days

reeee

Dmihawk

You can do it!

@msh210 haha "do as I say, not as I do"? :P

msh210

:-)

Omega Krypton

02:21

reeee

@Dmihawk almost blitz-ed the fourth one :D

Omega Krypton

04:31

any suggestions on how to hide four letters in a photo

Bubbler

like in steganography?

Sphinx

0

Q: Assemble lozenges

You have a large number of $60^\circ$ rhombi called "lozenges." Each lozenge has its edges marked with four distinct symbols drawn from an infinite alphabet. Lozenges may be rotated by $180^\circ$ or reflected across either axis. A triple of lozenges forms a "hex" if the markings can be matche...

mathematics

Omega Krypton

04:56

@Bubbler yus

Bubbler

Well, wikipedia article on steganography gives tons of ways to hide something in something else

Omega Krypton

rly lemme check ty

jafe

05:43

i think the c4 is some word for "crude people" minus first letter, plus Y inside HEN... but can't figure out what "decor of" or "rocks" could be doing in the wp

maybe it's a word for "decor of crude people"... no idea what that could be though

or maybe HEN is in the end and everything's inside R(-ock)S

jafe

06:18

aaand the last one makes no sense because "outside" would be used twice

jafe

06:35

it's not necessarily HEN though... let's not forget that all birds (and many other animals) lay eggs, and there are tons of short names for birds

oAlt

06:45

I don't even know where to start

msh210

06:58

I was thinking "decor" either is the definition or means "interior letters" (because decor is how the interior of a home vel sim. looks) or means "exterior letters" (because decor is how something looks).

Ooh, maybe because decor is the externals (looks) of internals (indoors), it signifies the outside of the inside, viz the second and penultimate letters. That'd be very tricky indeed.

jafe

so it'd be RD?

sounds a little too tricky to me

maybe it's an anagram of "decor of" and the dozen-or-so following words all resolve to a single letter :P

Deusovi

07:26

probably about time for a hint - any particular things you're looking to be confirmed/denied?

jafe

not sure, a letter would be fine for me

oAlt

07:46

Same

Deusovi

Hint: The fourth letter is S.

Sphinx

08:30

1

Q: The First No L Sudoku

Normal Sudoku rules apply. In addition no L-shaped tetromino can contain four consecutive digits (for instance you can't have r2c9=5,r4c9=8). The little killer clue indicates cells on the indicated diagonal must sum to 40 and may contain repeated digits. Source: Cracking The Cryptic, 10 December ...

sudoku seasonal

Rand al'Thor

08:49

@bobble I agree with Gareth and Bubbler: ceteris paribus it'd be better to use MathJax since that's how maths should be written, but given accessibility concerns and the lack of any formulae more complicated than "n" and "100", it'd be OK to not use MathJax, but it doesn't make any difference here since the whole thing is spoilertagged and therefore inaccessible anyway.

The OP of that main meta post you linked (about inaccessible spoilertags) is my co-mod on Literature; he works with accessibility issues IRL, so he's kind of a professional, and AFAIK he's still against the use of spoilertags on SE.

jafe

huh, didn't know screen readers don't handle spoiler tags

Deusovi

Sciborg (who also uses a screenreader) didn't mention that - as far as I know, theirs seems to work perfectly fine with spoiler tags

Omega Krypton

09:17

@Deusovi what is a screenreader

Deusovi

a tool that reads text on the screen out loud, for those with vision impairments

Omega Krypton

09:48

ah i see

oAlt

10:03

I think I'm looking at the wrong possibilities for the clue... Qat ain't being good to me this time -_-

msh210

10:16

@OmegaKrypton That helps to explain why you didn't know what a screenreader was.

Omega Krypton

@msh210 smirks nice pun bro

jafe

hah!

oAlt

10:29

heh

Omega Krypton

10:48

hih!

jafe

11:45

Jun 18 at 16:12, by Deusovi

For your grid, I'd probably start around here?

@Deusovi finally finished this after six months :) thanks again for the help!

Sphinx

0

Q: Cryptic crossword – identify the unusual clues!

Nine clues are not like the others. Solvers must identify the unusual clues and highlight the corresponding answers in the grid. To help with this task, the grid has two unclued entries which hint at what these clues have in common. To make things a bit more difficult, I have added other commona...

cryptic-crosswords

oAlt

12:19

oh boy

Omega Krypton

14:33

a patriot i see! @jafe

oAlt

14:44

heh

though it's kinda obvious i'm still half-surprised you didn't use "tampered"

Omega Krypton

tampered?

oAlt

Jun 18 at 8:27, by jafe

featuring a cameo of my home town!

(which was also in the crossword)

(@Ankoganit out of curiosity, have you watched Danmachi? :000 )

Sphinx

0

Q: What is the Present?

My (fictional) riddle-loving friend comes up to me and says, "Hey, bro, I gave you a present. " "Um, is this a puzzle?", you ask. "Yes.... But it's going to be a riddle", he says. You groan. It's going to be another of his crazy riddles. He gives you a piece of paper which says: I can mote. But...

riddle wordplay story

jafe

15:30

hehe i'm pretty sure that c4 was an outtake from this crossword

i think the word was the wrong length for the grid

jafe

15:41

"tampered" would have been a bit more obvious choice but also fine

oAlt

oh hahahah

matt

15:54

@jafe six months???

jafe

16:14

this crossword which mentions rome wasn't built in a day

bobble

was Rome built in six months?

Ankoganit

@oAlt nope

jafe

give or take

Deusovi

@jafe glad i could help! looks like a fun puzzle - definitely interested in giving it a shot myself whenever i get some free time

bobble

what is this thing you call "free time"?

5

oAlt

16:32

@Ankoganit i see i see

Ankoganit

@oAlt is it good?

The title kinda put me off

oAlt

@Ankoganit eh, i'd say 7.5/10

has its share of lows but i'd continue watching it

Ankoganit

I see

oAlt

@Ankoganit hehe it's the same case as i want to eat your pancreas

(well not in season 3, but it's still not what you think either)

Ankoganit

Huh

Interesting

oAlt

16:38

on another note, this subject's module was the last place i expected to see an xkcd comic (not that i'm a fan of it myself but just reminded me of y'all heheh)

it was this one in particular xkcd.com/1486

(further context: module was talking about the ideation step of the design thinking process, where one is expected to generate creative solutions to problems)

Sphinx

17:53

0

Q: Cryptic Family Reunion: Watching Your Belt (Fan-Made)

Inspired by the Cryptic Family Reunion Series by Jeremy Dover The answer to this puzzle is a list of eight 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 ...

knowledge cryptic-clues

Sphinx

23:51

1

Q: Currency connections

Two Forex traders are trying to communicate about their trades. They send each other images with a hidden meaning like this one: Can you work out which currencies they are trading?

visual steganography

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