The Sphinx's Lair

12:03 AM

"barkeep, a glass of drinking-alcohol, please"

ASTI is a fizzy drink you could remove AS from but it's too short to make anything useful i think

bobble

@Jafe this would be more likely to be said by a drunk person, so checks out

Gareth McCaughan

12:24 AM

I will now reveal that my conjecture was the same as Jafe's; but the centre of DRINKING-ALCOHOL is G which is only one letter and the centre of DRINKING-ALCOHOL'S is GA, and TIGA is not a word. I don't like "D (source, in snooker)" but the rest of msh210's parsing seems reasonable.

2 hours later…

2:17 AM

CASSAVA can be a source of drinking-alcohol, and CAVA is a fizzy drink, but that would be losing another S instead of just the AS?

of course, i don't think the correct parsing is going to be close to that one because i highly doubt "drinking-alcohol" is meant as a unit

3 hours later…

Q: A Clear and Crescent Danger

5:02 AM

I was putting up a poster at work the other day when I looked at it and saw this: What word was the poster trying to convey? And for bonus points, where do I work?

2 hours later…

7:12 AM

@bobble I think this is FONT - F(-a)NT(-a) (Fizzy drink without A's) containing ('drinking') (-alc)O(-hol) = source

(Just back from holiday...)

welcome back!

as = a,a is pretty clever

2 hours later…

Q: What are these two athletes talking about?

9:35 AM

Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon are currently the two drivers driving for Alpine Racing Team in the 2021 Formula 1 season. Earlier today, Fernando and Esteban had this conversation in clearly coded terms. It has since been determined that this is indeed real and they were not hacked. To make it...

cipher real

Q: Can you make a puzzle that looks correct until the very last piece?

10:00 AM

Lately I've been enjoying a little game called Flow Fit: Sudoku. It's basically sudoku meets jigsaw. You need to place the pieces into predetermined slots, and numbers cannot repeat in the same rows/columns. If you make a mistake, the game alerts you immediately: And I've been wondering - is it...

sudoku

Q: Mensa online IQ test question nº 35

10:50 AM

http://www.mensa.fi/iq/index_2.html what is the logic? I have no idea for this :/ any hint?

logical-deduction

11:17 AM

@Jafe the whole thing is genius

2 hours later…

12:50 PM

I managed to make a unique 10x10 fillomino with only two numbers!

Watch my glory: puzz.link/p?fillomino/10/10/-63zzzzx1

1:08 PM

@Anonymus25 Hint please ;-)

1:34 PM

I am using my new found powers to post meta questions

bobble

@Stiv correct!

I was worried that as = "a"s was unfair

@bobble It's mega smart

you're over here being all 'grid deduction' and then drop an absolutely boss cryptic here :D

@Stiv Only two Borders are needed :p

hehe

@Sphinx this is surprisingly hard

@bobble Aha! I'd been trying to think of a drink containing AS for a while, and it just took a little while to break down 'AS' in a different way...

1:45 PM

@Stiv Nice! :D that's just hella smart

@Sphinx close are needs details?

bobble

The clue was intended to fall quickly as soon as you interpreted "as" correctly

It would've been easier if it was capitalized as As

Out of context, that is quite funny

As As

opinions on double-def clues using the names of two persons with the same name?

@bobble I can see that, but what I like is that it's very well hidden

1:52 PM

eg. "The Rock is Magic? (7)"

yeah definitely better with "as" in lowercase

anyway, i'm torn between options a and b:

a) valid double-def, just less interesting because "two separate people have the same name" is not as interesting as "one word has two separate meanings"

and b) not a valid double-def because it's just two examples of the same definition

@Jafe the latter maybe?

Bunny apostle (5)

Is the above an example?

Perhaps "Pope Bunny? (5)" works better though

hm somehow "bunny apostle" feels more correct to me than my example

(answer's PETER, i think)

thank you for nitpicking @bobble :D

2:07 PM

CCCC: Flood exposed by surprise ending (finale of Jonathan Creek) (6)

(SPOILER ALERT) (for the episode, that is, not the CCCC....)

@Stiv link broken :(

to flood is to _E+_N+GULF, but i think a gulf is different from a creek?

@Jafe What country am I from?

the UK? hmm

@Jafe click the IMDB link

Jonathan Creek is a TV show/character

2:15 PM

@Jafe Apologies, I was being oblique. You're bang on - in British English the two can be synonyms.

wiktionary: CREEK 1. (Britain) a small inlet or bay [...]

TIL!

Over to you :)