The Sphinx's Lair

Jafe

00:17

@msh210 this is IRRE (first letters of "is right regarding excercise") plus DENTIST (he's a sort of doctor) = IRREDENTIST, referring to Jimmy Morales wanting to claim Belize's territory as part of Guatemala

bobble

01:09

Can someone sanity-check this massive edit of mine to see if I lost any information?

Amoz

01:41

that is dedication, I'm sorry I don't think I'm up for that

but I do have a similar request if anyone will be willing to help check my sanity

I did a reverse image search for that red pointy logo in drd's brand puzzle and no hits come up

Am I crazy/unknowledgable or is that the 3rd error... e.g. it's not a real company?

But anyway Bobble it certainly looks better, I'll read it and inform of obvious problems

It seems to check out. If there was a secret message encrypted in the prior block of text, it has been obfuscated. Just kidding.

bobble

02:00

@Amoz do you mean the Tesla logo? carlogos.org/car-brands/tesla-logo.html

Amoz

THANK YOU obviously I don't own a tesla : )

bobble

And thanks for checking the edit!

Amoz

I still wonder if this is really 'universally recognizable', would anyone say yes? i've never seen tesla ads on tv etc

bobble

I live in a middle class area where some people get Teslas just to flaunt that they can, so I've seen plenty

And puzzles don't have to use universally recognized things; it's perfectly fine to have something that might be a bit more obscure :) though it can frustrate solvers lacking the requisite knowledge

Which is why I never try any of the puzzles like that - I'm too culturally ignorant

Amoz

In this case the context was these are supposed to be well known logos; your linked page even says "widely regarded as one of the fashion and most popular car logos ever designed" so obviously I'm just out of the loop

bobble

02:08

Keep on mind that's a site for car people, who would know and care about car logos way more than usual

Amoz

I'm with you on culturally ignorant

ok here's my theory

the O in Canon is supposed to be tilted... but this has not always been true, but I think the OP implies we should be matching current logos

2 mins to shoot me down, else I'm going for it to post the answer

also I spent way too much time staring at that picture : )

Jafe

02:23

"It has nothing to do with: [...] [whether] they are current logos or not ..."

pretty sure past logos are fair game based on that

bobble

also, if anyone sees that their profile page's badge display changed, don't panic - it's an update: meta.stackexchange.com/q/366800/1017231

Amoz

I think since the rest of the logo is the modern form that is an error, it's the old O but new A as far as I can tell, but it's awfully grainy

samm82

02:48

Is the white "f" on the blue background Facebook? It looks pretty different to all the Facebook logos I've seen, most obviously the "f" is too far to the left and the font looks different

Amoz

It is unusual but that version does appear on Google

samm82

Hmm... In any case, the "errors" you pointed out seem too intentional to not be it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

oAlt

03:48

@Amoz same thoughts as samm82, but huh, that's interesting

bobble

What to do with MathJax codegolf open-ended puzzles? Should I sweep them up in closure? (I'm a bit reluctant to do so because of the poster involved, and being unsure if this is puzzly enough)

msh210

04:29

@Jafe it is indeed. Nicely found

M Oehm

Nice misdirection, too. I was looking for something along the lines of (exp)resident.

Jafe

i looked up jimmy morales and was like "president of guatemala? that can't be it"

CCCC: Say, Reverend Spooner's nocturnal insect family? (3,2,3,5)

the longer i work on a crossword the better it gets and the less i like it

bobble

there is an idea called taking a break to write the intro

Jafe

04:46

nah, that has to be last minute

diamonds are formed under pressure

Mithical

05:02

Pretty sure they're formed under words...

matt

05:18

wow i haven't been in here in a while

Jafe

@matt welcome back!

matt

:]

i have 99% moved to discord lol

Stiv

07:04

@Jafe MAN OF THE CLOTH (Reverend) - Spoonerism for CLAN OF THE MOTH!

M Oehm

(Where Rev Spooner is his own indicator and fodder ...)

msh210

07:24

@Jafe beautiful. Again with the tricky dividing line.

Jafe

08:19

hehe thanks

that's correct, of course

Stiv

08:49

CCCC: Onset of ache in one leg for mythological figure (6)

Gareth McCaughan

@Stiv Answer to your CCCC is ICARUS = A(-che) in I CRUS.

Stiv

@GarethMcCaughan It is indeed :)

Didn't get distracted by the Achilles reference?

Gareth McCaughan

Nope. I didn't even notice it, possibly because my brain's fairly good at ignoring surfaces in cryptic clues by now.

I read "Onset of ache" and thought "A", and "in" and thought "A inside something", and "one" and thought "A inside I-something", and so forth. I'm more likely to be distracted by easier parsings than by the surface. I think.

Stiv

Good internal programming! Well solved

M Oehm

Déformation cryptique ...

Gareth McCaughan

09:03

heh, nice term. There are people who can't see a word without thinking of all its anagrams, but I think that's more Scrabble than crosswords.

M Oehm

Sometimes you see a fragment of a sentence somewhere and think it might make a good part of a cryptic clue. But in general, it doesn't work out.

For what it's worth, I scanned Stiv's clue pretty much the same way you did and even got it, but I had to learn about "crus" first. English has so many useful words ...

Stiv

I did wonder who would know about the meaning of 'crus' - I work in cancer research and a large part of it is spent interpreting CT scans, where a 'crus' is an elongated 'leg-like' structure inside the body (there's a couple by the diaphragm, particularly). It's one of the areas we commonly check for the spread of upper gastrointestinal cancer so it's a common word for me these days but I had never heard of it before this job.

Gareth McCaughan

I knew about "crus" but had forgotten I knew and had to look it up :-).

M Oehm

I had heard of grands crus. :)

Gareth McCaughan

Ha. (Entirely different word, of course.)

M Oehm

09:20

Yes, of course. I'm neither an anatomist nor an oenologist, so I'm not really familiar with either meaning.

Desura

Hello,
I'm sorry if it's forbidden, but I want to promote the Online World Math Contest taking place this month.
This contest is opened to everyone, any age, from anywhere. The problems will be translated in 9 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Russian and Arabic) and participants will be separated in 7 categories according to their age.
You can register (deadline for registration : 21.08.2021) or look for more details here : https://fsjm.ch/en/competitions/owmc/

If you want to train for this contest, you can look on the "Archives" tab of the website (fsjm.ch/en/archives), all the previous contests are available there !

At the end of the contest, there will be individual rankings for each category and a ranking between different countries. Winners will be rewarded with a diploma !

Best regards !

Sphinx

09:40

0

Q: What's the next logical step for this Kakuro?

The puzzle is small but frustrating. Here's what I've deduced so far: In the 36 row, there are two missing digits which sum to 9, these must be 1+8 so the remaining empty cells are 2,3,4 In the 36 column, same thing but it could be 3+6 or 4+5 missing. There must be 1 and 2 somewhere but can't n...

Jafe

12:59

ooh, new ucaoimhu con cryptics

better clear muh schedule till september

Anonymus 25

Quick, easy, and quite funny cc: Incredible cryptic crossword making PSE user takes away jaw's end to iron

Jafe

hehe

Anonymus 25

Numeration: 4 ;)

oAlt

13:33

Hahah

Sphinx

13:45

-1

Q: The Eight Spirits

After your ordeal with the enterpeton, you need the toilet. Unfortunately, your ability to urinate has been stolen by one of the octangular spirits, a set of spirits that follow strange rules. The rules are set out below: Spirit Yes Unknown No Sky Yes Yes Yes Swamp Yes Yes No Fire Yes...

logical-deduction liars

bobble

@Desura this stuff is fine in chat, just don't take it onto the main site :) Sounds cool!

Desura

14:17

Thanks :)

Gareth McCaughan

19:11

CCCC: One in terrible danger of dying finally becomes religious (10)

msh210

19:38

@GarethMcCaughan godfear(i)n* _g

nice clue

Gareth McCaughan

@msh210 Yup. (I wanted to use the CI insertion in DOG-FANCIER to do something about 101 Dalmatians, but I couldn't get it to work.)

I also can't shake the feeling that there's a more elegant way to structure the end of the clue. I wondered about "One in terrible danger of finally becoming religious" but decided that was worse, or about finding a way to make it end "... say the pious" but decided that was no good because godfearing (adj.) can't mean the pious (noun phrase), but it feels like one could do a little better somehow.

msh210

I think it's good as is.

M Oehm

19:55

Yes. I like it, too.

Sphinx

20:19

0

Q: Climbing scoring puzzle inspired by today's olympic event

Necessary information. The sport climbing consists of three disciplines: speed climbing, bouldering, and lead climbing. In combined events, the disciplines come in this order, and the combined score of an athlete is a product of his/her standings in all three disciplines—with the lowest score ran...

mathematics sports

Sphinx

21:58

0

Q: Cryptic Crossword: Parallel Universes

This is my first post! Feel free to let me know of any points of constructive criticism you have. Cryptic Crossword: Parallel Universes What you see before is not one puzzle, but four: each from an alternate universe. Although the machinations of destiny have caused each of them to differ greatly...

pattern cryptic-crosswords

Sphinx

22:23

0

Q: A veritable chameleon

What's brown, then black, then bright, then white? The solution to this riddle is one word. (There are five answers that would be accepted; all are very similar)

riddle

bobble

If you see profile-page changes, don't panic: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/368285/…

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