The Sphinx's Lair

AncientSwordRage

01:23

@msh210 is it LAYER? layer as it's usual bound def but also Wood-layer: (Bot.) A young oak, or other timber plant, laid down in a hedge among the whitethorn or other plants used in hedges.

I'm not sure if "wood, perhaps!" Allows that serving part

Sphinx

01:47

0

Q: How to solve this problem on overlapping?

Doubt: In cases of problems involving order and ranking where there are two indices namely left and right there is a particular chance of overlapping. Let us take an example to justify this: "Ranjan is 16th from the left end and Vineet is 10th from the right end in a row of boys. If there are eig...

msh210

03:39

@AncientSwordRage C4 hint: The fifth letter is K.

Jafe

04:15

@msh210 i think it's S_+TEAK (&lit.), which can be cooked over wood

Amoz

04:45

Does 'put over' simply clue concatenation? I had erroneously ruled out steak and any other combination of S + tree as I thought I had to account for them

msh210

@Jafe that was indeed my intention

@Amoz yeah, but only in a "down" (vertical) clue

Amoz

Oh that makes more sense

Jafe

05:01

CCCC: Person involved in traffic accident – beginner with "learner driver" indicator – punctured animal in headlights? (6)

Sphinx

06:18

0

Q: Encrypted Pentopia

Rules of Pentopia: Place some pentominoes into the grid (not necessarily all of them) so that they do not touch each other, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow denotes all of the 4 direction...

logical-deduction grid-deduction

oAlt

06:58

Darn, athin's puzzles keep getting more unapproachable with every post :P (Kidding)

Stiv

07:15

@Jafe Oh, I really love this one! DEALER (Person involved in traffic) = DE(A + L)ER i.e. animal in headlights? = DEER, punctured by A(-ccident) and "L" (learner driver indicator)

Jafe

that's right!

athin has plenty of puzzles that are too hard for me but these last two have been pretty approachable imo

Stiv

Great deception on the wordplay/definition split!

Jafe

hehe thanks

Stiv

CCCC: Raise a large, wild dog (6)

msh210

07:49

@Jafe nice :-)

@Stiv jack a L

Sphinx

0

Q: Rock climbing at the Tokyo Olympics

The idea for this puzzle came from my friend Jan. The puzzle is based on real world events from the Tokyo Olympics. The Olympic rock climbing preliminary round has 20 climbers. Each climber competes in 3 separate events, where they rank from 1st to 20th. The final score of a climber is the produc...

mathematics optimization

Stiv

08:08

@msh210 Yup - back to you :)

Sid

09:45

@Stiv why is DEER = Animal in headlights?

Stiv

It's an expression - "Like a deer caught in the headlights". It's also used with rabbit instead. It implies a sense that you see something bad coming but you're frozen still and can't do anything about it.

Sid

Oh. TIL

John Dvorak

09:58

TIL rabbits do that as well

AncientSwordRage

@Sid Some animal's predator response (i.e. their response upon seeing a predator) is to freeze still, because they're used to being partially camouflaged... but the car isn't a predator nor is the deer hidden from view

John Dvorak

Some animals like to play dead, because predators don't eat carcasses. Also doesn't work with cars.

AncientSwordRage

@JohnDvorak yeah cars struggle to play dead

John Dvorak

No, I mean, cars do drive over carcasses

AncientSwordRage

@JohnDvorak :p

I know what you mean :)

Jafe

10:16

cars drive over carcasses but avoid hitting live animals, so if you're a carcass on the freeway the winning strategy is to play alive

thought i had solved the pentopia but the final step gave me a second F piece... ugh, back to square 1 i guess

John Dvorak

Hate to break it to you but if you're a carcass on a highway, you've already lost.

AncientSwordRage

10:40

@JohnDvorak shame a carcass can't read maps

Anonymus 25

10:55

@JohnDvorak What's a cass? :)

AncientSwordRage

@Anonymus25 it's short for Cassowary

Anonymus 25

Ohhh TIL

AncientSwordRage

"it's a car, Cass o' wary one"

oAlt

11:08

@Stiv TIL, just like Sid. Lol

Sphinx

12:50

0

Q: Organs of the Enterpeton

An enterpeton has arrived at the bathhouse. Enterpetons are strange reptiles with exposed organs. Four of these organs can answer questions, and follow certain rules. These organs are: the heart, which says yes if the answer is yes, and answer randomly if not; the gallbladder, which says no if th...

logical-deduction story liars

0

Q: Variant of blue eyes puzzle

There are a total of 200 players assigned to either A or B at a certain venue. There are actually 100 of each, but the players don't know that. They don't know which one they are. Of course, there is no way to exchange information with others. If you are logically certain that you are A, you leav...

riddle blue-eyes

oAlt

14:13

Ooh, two puzzles have the same answer ("double vision")

I can't link at the moment but I can later

Oops, well, I think one more step and I'd make this accidental spoiler (there might be people here who haven't solved them but want to) even worse... I'll choose not to link them :P

Sphinx

14:29

-1

Q: Which Piece is Which?

A patron at the bathhouse has dropped a chess set, and you have to pick up the pieces. All the pieces are circular tokens, with something painted on the top. The box has 5 slots for the pieces, each with a different label. These labels are: Ruler, Advisor, Wizard, Rider, and Fortress. The pieces ...

riddle story

msh210

14:55

CCCC: Jimmy Morales perhaps is right regarding exercise. Primarily, he's a sort of doctor. (11)

oAlt

15:29

Nice surface

msh210

Thanks.

Chris Cudmore

17:37

This Bathhouse series is really poor.

Beastly Gerbil

17:54

Just an over-enthusiastic new user, they should learn quite quickly

Amoz

Next fortnight challenge: bathhouse puzzles

3

samm82

19:33

If I wanted to ask a specific user for help with creating a puzzle, would it be better to ping them and ask here, create a separate room with the two of us and ask there, or something else?

Mithical

A ping here asking if they're interested would be a good first step, and then a separate room for actually working on it if they agree seems like a reasonable next step.

samm82

Sounds about right :)

bobble

Unsolicited room invitations run a greater chance of annoying the other user

samm82

In that case, I loved your Where? puzzle @Stiv and am working on my own, but I'm not sure about a couple of things and wondered if you'd be interested in taking a look at it (no pressure, of course!)

bobble

If you want to privately collaborate (e.g. so there aren't spoilers for other users) then you would either need to rope in a mod (they can make private rooms) or trade links/emails for outside contact

And it seems you've succeeded in summoning the friendly neighborhood Stiv

Stiv

19:40

@samm82 Ohp, ears are burning...! Yep, happy to take a look and answer any specific questions you've got. I've done quite a few of these so hopefully I won't make a hash of it!

samm82

@bobble I was trying to weigh the pros and cons of sending a message to a general chat that only applies to one person vs. randomly inviting them to a room lol

bobble

You're talking to someone who randomly wanders into other rooms just to ping someone who isn't available elsewhere

samm82

@Stiv Fantastic, thanks so much! Now to rope in a mod... are mods' names in italics, with diamonds, or both?

That's a power move if I've ever heard of one XD

bobble

Diamonds. Italics are Room Owners

Stiv

@bobble Is there an unfriendly one?! Maybe he and I need to have a duel one day and settle this once and for all...

samm82

19:42

His name is Vits

bobble

puzzling.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators are the Puzzling mods, but any mod could make the room for you

Stiv

Dangit, Vits...

samm82

Hmmm, would @Mithical be able to make a room with Stiv and I?

Mithical

Oh, that's right, I can do that again.

bobble

Mith has recently been re-diamonded!

samm82

19:44

Oh congrats!

Slate

♦

bobble

Slate has recently been CM'ed

samm82

Right, I saw that in meta - congrats as well!

Slate

Oh, thanks!

bobble

bobble has recently been forgetting to exercise...

Mithical

19:47

@bobble :(

bobble

look, I got too into studying ochem

Mithical

The closest thing I've studied to ochem is my coaching certification course, I'm afraid, so kudos for that

msh210

20:01

@Mithical I'd think some high-school science course would be closer.

Mithical

Sure, but since I never went to high school I didn't have any of those.

samm82

touché

msh210

@Mithical I thought you "went" to high school via homeschooling.

Mithical

Mmmm.

msh210

Nnnn.

Slate

20:09

Oooo.

Sciborg

20:25

Ppppppp.

Jeremy Dover

If you're going to p all over the chat, please clean up after yourself. :-)

4

Sciborg

Gahh, sorry :p

msh210

20:48

@Sciborg And there you go again.

Sciborg

Patently permit me to proliferate a peppering of picturesque purified p's past the palatial puzzling portfolio, my pacifistic pal?

bobble

12

A: Community VP Questions: What's the best of Stack?

My all time favorite Stack Exchange answer was posted by tchrist on ELU. The question is asking for a name to describe a body of water that is large enough to have a reasonable chance of containing fish and, therefore, be suitable for fishing in. The answer is a delight to read: A piscary is a b...

Sphinx

1

Q: Company brands and logos : Some are not right

A friend of mine, who is a student in the area of Brand Marketing, sent me an e-mail: Hey I am working on a a Class Project that relates to Logos and Brands- what makes them so attractive. I have created a collage of several Trade Marked logos (by cut and paste from the Net) and product brands of...

knowledge visual rebus

Sphinx

21:26

0

Q: My prefix reflects the sun, my suffix was born to run

My prefix reflects the sun. My suffix was born to run. My infix is a dilemma at hand. My whole cannot live on land.

riddle word wordplay rhyme affix-riddle

Sphinx

21:50

1

Q: Existence of index-uniform Hashi puzzles

On the left, we have a starting configuration for a game of Hashi, and on the right, its solution: That is to say, the goal is to make connections (planar, and traveling only in cardinal directions) from each node such that the total number of connections at each node is in accordance with the n...

mathematics logical-deduction visual graph-theory

Sphinx

23:04

1

Q: Word Wander - Connect the Words

A Word Wander, also called a "Synogram", is a word puzzle that requires you to connect the first and last word by following a certain pattern. Each word down the puzzle must be either a synonym of the word above it or a fragment of that word, in an alternating sequence. The words to the right of ...

word wordplay

0

Q: Not an affix-riddle at all

Slice my neck, that's quite epic. Slice my thigh, that's quite demonic. Slice my waist, you shall have a kill. Slice all three, that's an overkill. What am I?

riddle mathematics rhyme

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