The Sphinx's Lair - 2020-12-28

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12:19 AM

@bobble A pity I can't give you a second upvote as an extra apology ;p

12:31 AM

@bobble you will get a virtual hug and/or cookie

12:57 AM

lolll

hugs here :3

:p

1 hour later…

2:23 AM

0

Q: Two Chess Problems To Kick Off The New Year

Here is a pair of chess problems to kick off the new year. Your task is to solve both problems and work out what they have in common. Left: Both sides cooperate to reach the position shown after White’s tenth move (starting from the usual position) Right: Both sides cooperate to checkmate Black i...

2:52 AM

Why is my riddles answer on the threrun post of the FTC downvoted? Please explain! My 2 other answers were recieved well

I guess it's because it's way too broad, and people don't think you're understanding what a riddle is (which I agree)

Also it's too easy to have a low quality FTC entry

Gareth McCaughan

I guess those two things plus maybe some people just don't like riddles much. (They can be too guess-what-I'm-thinking-y.

3:29 AM

Can confirm - I am a downvoter, and I think that there are enough low-quality riddles, and the [riddle] tag in general is not something we need to encourage people to post in. FTC themes are supposed to be things that people normally wouldn't make puzzles for

3:45 AM

anyone got a way how to hide a cryptic clue in an image?

Turn into braille and hide in pixels?

OwO 61 characters * 6 = 366 pixels

ok nvm got it

(this was the last place I expected to see an "OwO" :P )

@oAlt lmao u play owo bot as well???

I'm afraid I don't know what owo bot is, but I am aware of that emoji and its variants

3:57 AM

ah okay

4:26 AM

@msh210 i believe the answer to the c4 is ONE (i) under STALL (stand) for STALLONE (rocky)

4:43 AM

Dangit! I considered that sneakiness, but I was too lazy to check each possible word that showed up... and I kept pursuing the "synonym of 'with many rocks'" path ;_;

Dang!

Very nice :)

2 hours later…

6:33 AM

@jafe yes, indeed

6:44 AM

CCCC: Dirty cop put God in prison? (8)

2 hours later…

8:41 AM

@jafe what do you rhyme with?

@Avigrail Do you rhyme with gravy and ale?

I rhyme with a lot of things

I just read that riddles are still under attack. After all this time!

@Avigrail see chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/14524?m=52902655#52902655 et seqq

Ah thanks (Y)

2 hours later…

10:30 AM

@jafe I believe the def is Dirty Cop, because it probably mean to put God in a synonym of prison.

10:50 AM

that's the obvious parse :P

2 hours later…

12:28 PM

@jafe: CALLAHAN = ALLAH (God) in CAN (prison). I feel lucky!

Dirty Harry's last name, for those who don't get the reference. Dear lord am I old.

@JeremyDover punk

But you should be asking yourself: Did he solve six clues, or only five? To be honest, in all this excitement I've forgotten myself.

12:50 PM

@JeremyDover I've never seen that film, so the name puts me in mind of James Callaghan (1970s British prime minister) instead.

My wife and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix, and noticed they completely skipped over Jim Callaghan's existence. Even Douglas-Home got a brief mention! Who did Callaghan irritate that much?

1:18 PM

@JeremyDover that's correct, of course

1:44 PM

CCCC: Strait-jacket for Ms. Fanning? Getting high, stark naked at premieres after driving right into father (11)

0

Q: The same word (I think) over and over?

I saw a man seemingly lost Me: Hi. Are you looking for something? Him: ____ . Me: Go to the Federal Triangle ____ street. Him: Do you know the address? Me: I think it is ____ street. Him: O yeah. The Federal building with the IRS office. Me: Yes. It also houses a HUD office, ...

word knowledge wordplay

2 hours later…

3:37 PM

@JeremyDover nice surface

3:52 PM

@JeremyDover DA(Right)D + A_ N_ (ELLE) S_ <

Wow, nice clue.

Gareth McCaughan

Neat!

4:47 PM

0

Q: Can boys be mean too? YES!

Recently, I found this question: Girls are Mean! which I wanted to strike back at with twice the amount of swords... And here's the story. Hello, I am Dr. Bonn and I am willing to find out if boys can be mean, too. So, I walked around the street looking for a boy-girl pair, and at almost the end...

5:12 PM

@msh210 Of course, you got it!

Prince North Læraðr

5:31 PM

Wait, what was the word?

Gareth McCaughan

DARDANELLES

name of a strait

5:58 PM

Is insulting other (non-specific) users allowed if it's in one's profile page?

Prince North Læraðr

Urm... I don't think so. Why?

You mean the insult is in the profile page or the consent to do so?

there's a user who's calling readers of their profile page "trashos" with no "real empathy"

was wondering if that's allowed or flaggable or something else?

Good question. I gues it depends on the seriousness of the insults.

That's the extent of the insults - "trashos" and a bunch of complaining about people not having empathy

6:01 PM

You could always flag it and let the mods decide

After all that's their job :)

Gareth looks like he could use some work

I'm hesitating because I know some stuff is allowed in profile pages but not anywhere else (e.g. self-promotion), wasn't sure if there was an exception here

From my understanding flags can be used if not sure

also how would you flag a profile page?

or should I just use a mod flag on some random post?

Fair question

Have you tried to ask google?

is that a joke?

(honest question)

6:04 PM

No, I was about to ask google and wanted to save myself the trouble :D

I can see if I can dig something up on main-meta...

I bet there have been people before asking the same question

72

Q: Flag abusive users

I think the community does a great job policing questions/answers, etc. and the community has some good tools available to do this. Between flagging questions with some reasons behind it and editing posts, closing them, and deleting them, the only thing that seems to be missing to me is the abil...

feature-request status-bydesign moderation abuse flags

found it

(Y)

what does that mean?

6:09 PM

it means thumbs up

In some chat programs you can type (Y) and it gets automatically converted to a thumbs up emoji

why

^

I mean, why does "(Y)", of all things, get converted to that emoji

I have no idea :D

There seems to be a consens across different software though

consens = consensus?

6:11 PM

Yes consensus :D

morning folks :)

mornin'

Prince North Læraðr

Morning!

hope everyone had a good festive period?

6:27 PM

I got a bunch of craft things to do, my sister got a bunch of video games, so we've been good :D

nice :)

Prince North Læraðr

@bobble Ooh, your sister is a gamer? :P

she doesn't like all kinds of games, but she likes Minecraft, a bunch of Pokemon games, some puzzle games, etc.

I'm actually going to pop out to do some of those craft things. I have a wooden owl to build...

Prince North Læraðr

See ya!

6:56 PM

@Dmihawk "had"? it's still Kwanzaa

hope everyone [had/is having/will have] a good festive period!

@msh210 better?

Thanks, I'll bear that wish in mind for the upcoming Purim.

(which will be February 26th, to save you Googling)

:-D

I already Googled :P

@Dmihawk I'm slow on the draw

I was curious to learn about Purim, not a term I had heard before

7:05 PM

(I have a C4 prepared but am not happy with it, so am trying to think of another. Thinking is not my forte; please pardon the delay.)

7:31 PM

hahaha oh the English language is a fickle beast! :P

a singular letter makes the difference between offering to restock one's 'pantries' and 'panties' and boy, do those two have very different meanings

fortunately the recipient of my message was both understanding and had a good sense of humour (;-_-)

:-)

Okay, not the most… believable surface, but

CCCC: Ms. Fanning, getting high on iron, finally takes time for chat (7)

1 hour later…

9:10 PM

Wooden owl is built, and I think I managed to keep the wood dust to a minimum. Though my pants and socks and the ground still got covered...

care to share a photo?

sure, let me take one quick

user image

oh wow :o

that looks awesome

the back is really complicated, as are the sides D:

Prince North Læraðr

Aww

9:21 PM

the instructions just said "put these pieces with those pieces", but the only picture provided was a shot of the front

so I may have put some things together wrong

looks pretty owl-like to me :)

so yeah, built that thing while bingeing some Harry Potter podcasts

I'm simultaneously surprised there are Harry Potter podcasts, but also not surprised

I caught up on the whole backlog for one so I'm working my way through a different one to allow the first to release more episodes

do they focus on any particular aspect of the Potterverse?

9:26 PM

well the one that I'm currently listening to is a chapter-by-chapter re-read, focusing on politics

oh ok, interesting - in-world politics or parallels to real-life?

my first one was sorta a catch-all, anything related to HP goes, but with a more newsy focus with variable main discussions after news (sometimes those main discussions were about news)

hang on, looking up the chapter of the last episode I listened to

So the last episode was on Chapter 37 of Goblet (the last chapter), focusing on the Politics of Truth. Which basically ended up being how truth is used as a tool (or ignored for political reasons), both in the book and with parallels in real-life.

and also how people have different truths

hmmm, I shall give it a listen as I apply for jobs

they're somewhere in the Order of the Phoenix right now

you could start from anywhere, really

they also have a bad habit of tangenting hard on random things, but the tangents are usually interesting so it's fine

but sometimes I'm worried that people will hate me, 'cus you know, anxiety, woo! <- totally feel this

9:38 PM

how often is sometimes?

the vast majority of my adult life?

i do not hate you

:)

9:51 PM

0

Q: Hurry up and answer

In one sense, I might describe a room, Or part of a play, originally French. In another, I'm used for comparison, Perhaps to improve by a factor. Almost, I'm a tag on this site, If you've got me down to a tee. What am I? Identify me.

1 hour later…

10:57 PM

@Dmihawk, did you like the episode?

yeah I did, I'm not usually one for podcasts, but this appealed to me :)

:D

11:14 PM

Hi Bobble and Kiwi! :D

hi!

How has your day been going?

i made an owl

and listened to HP podcasts

and solved puzzles

I saw it!!! It's adorable

and didn't tic :D

11:15 PM

Yay :D

Sounds like you had an awesome day

recently my tics have been mostly nighttime stuff, which is better than full-day I guess?

Probably a bit better, yeah

have you been having a good day?

Yup, I've been on the phone with friends and family all day and it's been really nice to catch up :)

@bobble nice

11:23 PM

I have also gotten one step closer to becoming a Cat Parent and gotten permission from my landlord, which is wonderful

have those friends and family been inducted into the Grid-Deduction Society?

No, I'm too shy to attempt to explain grid puzzles to them :p

poor little birdy

I realize I've been forgetting to ask - SHIELD updates?

Oh yeah!! We haven't discussed in a while - we started skipping around a bit but we watched 13, 14, and 15.

why skip around?

11:29 PM

Partner watched a couple without me and he got to the Big Twist, but I forced him to go back and watch these ones with me :p

i'm determined to watch them in order

in order is good

Tahiti was wild

it's a magical place

Poor Skye

hey {bobble, mick}!

11:33 PM

Hey Matt :D

o ho, if you think that Skye's been through Stuff now it just gets worse later

she and Fitzsimmons are the show's favorite characters to give trauma to

Yeah

what does your "Therapy Needed" graph look like now?

Exponential growth with limit infinity

~~what specific polynomial is it~~

11:36 PM

The Polynomial of Pain

oh no :(

Exponential > Polynomial

^

ok fine fine

:p

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Dec '2028

The Sphinx's Lair

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