The Sphinx's Lair

Because of the vaguely computer-related name, I can't help but read that like some kind of insane Clippy. "You look like you are trying to threaten some kidnappers!"

Jafe

heheh

Graylocke

(Not implying that oAlt is in any way a] insane or b] like Clippy)

Jafe

tried to make useful six-letter words in morse code from one dash followed by 12 dots and failed miserably... time for a new plan

oAlt

8:16 AM

Wahahah

Graylocke

heh

msh210

THESES &lit because THESES is — •••• • ••• • ••• in Morse and theses have, um, punctuation in them. #GreatC4Solutions

Jafe

hehee

Graylocke

hahaha

Jafe

i do a lot of geography-themed online quizzes and i've noticed a couple of things that are almost universally true

1) if a list of countries contains latvia or lithuania, it contains both

and 2) portugal is never the answer to anything

Graylocke

8:29 AM

Weird that to go from two theses to only one, you'd have to add exactly one dot.

@Jafe ... That sounds a bit like a challenge ;p

Jafe

or remove three dashes from the E :P

Graylocke

hahaha

touche

Jafe

9:07 AM

"arranged one" could be an anagram of ONE and "the other" could be an anagram of THE but there are don't seem to be any words where the ONE* is in front of the THE*

long story short, anagram indicators are everywhere

msh210

9:23 AM

oh... it's RANGED ("arranged one in front of the other"). The wordplay is RAN (dash... in some tense or other) + GED (twelve points, because that's what I got on my GED tests in total)

On a more serious note, I wonder whether perhaps "twelve" = XII, or C, from hexadecimal.

(XII seems unpromising.)

Graylocke

@msh210 <blinks> uh… that wasn’t the answer I had in mind ;p hehe

oAlt

Good thing I kept reading, almost thought that was legit lololol

Jafe

</blinks>

Graylocke

@Jafe thanks Jafe, I was having trouble reading my screen all of a sudden.

Jafe

hehe

Stiv

9:41 AM

I'm thinking 'dash' clues either 'en' or 'em' or even 'N' or 'M'. If 'twelve points' = SUED somehow, then ENSUED would just about be a possible parsing of the remaining definition part of the word...

Whatever the answer, I feel that pinpointing 'twelve points' holds the key.

Jafe

a touchdown is six points, is there anything that's worth twelve in one sport or another?

Stiv

Eurovision winning votes?

Double-six or treble-four in darts?

(or twelve in darts, of course - haha!)

Graylocke

Does anyone else feel on edge when it is their clue being discussed? Or is that just my constant self doubt? ;p

Stiv

Always

Jafe

DOZEN is twelve and contains two points (E, N)

Stiv

9:49 AM

Especially when people are way off the mark, and you begin to doubt whether you even know English despite it being your mother tongue...

Graylocke

@Stiv Well that makes me feel a bit better ^^* Thanks

msh210

"the other" can be "al" from Latin

IAL is a tempting word ending, but I don't see anything.

Stiv

12 points in typography are a PICA...

Almost a solution: EM (dash) + C (12 in hexadecimal) + EES (compass 'points') = ''one in front of the other" (i.e. someone up in front of an audience) but really it's a plural, so EMCEE would work for an enumeration of (5) rather than (6)!

msh210

10:06 AM

EMCEED can mean "arranged one [guest performer / speaker / whatever] in front of the other" which is what masters of ceremony do. But D is not a point afaict.

Graylocke

Nice but not the answer I had in mind…

msh210

Yeah, I was just thinking aloud.

Graylocke

It would be a direction in Zork! ^^*

msh210

true, but not a point, I don't think

Graylocke

hehe no…

Sphinx

10:19 AM

0

Q: No Time to Die, Period

Inside MI6's server farm in the middle of the night, the operator's eyes skittered frantically over an intercepted message: The development of our new APG code has been coming along nicely. Tomorrow you, under my supervision, will rig the random number generators – both mechanical and electronic...

AncientSwordRage

10:33 AM

something somethign ZODIAC?

msh210

Dash can clue PARR. But, again, I don't see anything....

AncientSwordRage

@msh210 or it could be a sprinkle of somethining in cookgin

twelve -> dozen, somehow reverse the first three and you get ZOD

Jafe

11:04 AM

"arranged one in front of the other" could be something like QUEUED

which has QED on the outside, although that's only three points ∴ instead of 12

Anonymus 25

11:18 AM

Is "dash and twelve points" perhaps Morse code?

Parcly Taxel

@Anonymus25 See THESES above

Jafe

if it's a morse code anagram there are a lot of ways to arrange one dash and 12 dots

msh210

12:46 PM

@Jafe Yeah, but if the dash if first then I think THESES is the only common six-letter word.

@Stiv There are some companies named Empica.

AncientSwordRage

12 point is also the number of points on a UK licence before you're banned from driving

msh210

. . . which can happen if you dash.

A "point" is also a dollar (in stock prices).

AncientSwordRage

@msh210 could dash also mean strike out? or Dash hopes?

msh210

1:02 PM

@AncientSwordRage dash hopes for sure; and by extension maybe it can mean to strike out or even be an anagram indicator

(but the literal meaning of dash hopes is I think to throw down. checking...)

hmmm

not "throw down"

AncientSwordRage

> The oldest sense is that in dash to pieces and dashed hopes. ~~Meaning "scatter or sprinkle"~~

msh210

Those are two separate sentences.

AncientSwordRage

ahh yes you are correct

msh210

dash AND = DAN ; twelve = C (hexadecimal) ; points = EE ; arranged one in front of the other = DANCEE (someone who is danced, i.e. arranged one in front of the other). This has simply got to be right. Never mind that DANCEE isn't a word, that doesn't matter.

Graylocke

>.>;

@msh210 I'm sorry?

I didn't mean to dash people's hopes ;p

I do like the idea that dancing is about arranging your partner around the dancefloor though.

msh210

1:19 PM

@Graylocke stand here, no wait, stand here

Graylocke

put your right foot in... now put your right foot out...

Jafe

dashee, dancee, prancee...

msh210

donnee?

Graylocke

cupid and comet and vixen?

oAlt

1:37 PM

blitzee

Anonymus 25

Last but not least, Rudoplh

Is that how to spell it?

Not so sure

Jafe

rudolph

oAlt

the red nosed reindee

Jafe

:P

Anonymus 25

;|

Graylocke

1:43 PM

rain, dear.

TakingNotes

reined ear?

msh210

A permille sign, a quincunx, a decimal point, and an ellipsis mark walk into a bar.

AncientSwordRage

@msh210 STOP STOP!

Rand al'Thor

2:13 PM

Ray N'Dir.

MikeQ

I wrote a brute force morse parser (a brute morse decoder, if you will) and I'm not recognizing any words other than THESES or DIESES, so maybe it's not morse

Unless BEESES is a word, the plural of bees

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor Rand Ear

@MikeQ I'd love to see what, I tried to write one a while back and failed

MikeQ

Easy with recursion. Loop over the next 1-4 characters to see if they're valid morse or end of input string, otherwise recurse on the remainder of the input string. Once you hit the end of the string, print. I also put an optional variable for max length, to filter out results that aren't 6 (or any other number) characters.

AncientSwordRage

@MikeQ ahh ok

I was trying that, but it was a 'does this work in a dev console javascript' thing

MikeQ

Any javascript program can be performed in 1 line of javascript, even if it shouldn't be

AncientSwordRage

2:24 PM

I tried finding all partitions of dots and dashes, but I didn't do a proper filtering by valid morse

do you have the code anywhere?

@MikeQ the fact that I shouldn't sort of makes me want to more

oAlt

2:48 PM

it's so tempting to make this clue a hidden-word clue, but then i would be exceeding my quota and more importantly it's also gonna add to the number of weak points in my crossword :P

MikeQ

3:07 PM

@AncientSwordRage I've uploaded the morse brute-force decoder to pastebin

Parcly Taxel

@Randal'Thor woop woop

AncientSwordRage

@MikeQ I'll have to look after work (no pastebin at work)

Sphinx

7:59 PM

0

Q: Can someone help me with this Kakuro puzzle?

Can someone help with next steps for this Kakuro? I solved most of it but there is an area I'm stuck on. source: Puzzle Page app

logical-deduction grid-deduction

Puzzling Meta

10:17 PM

0

Q: Is this media "treasure hunt" acceptable?

I have a come up with a list of license plates from movies and TV shows. They all show prominently in the frame for enough time to be read easily. The solution to the "puzzle" is just a list of the shows and movies they come from. I wonder if this is appropriate for the site, as it's not somethin...

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