The Sphinx's Lair - 2021-08-27

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12:53 AM

0

Q: Breaking the law

Across 2. Mary Jane is head over heels, pursuing pair of jazz musicians who play in a southern style (2,3) 5. A vote cast by the end of third round (6) 9. In Cabo, Peter missed out on short drive around a southern walkway (5) 11. A loud party has no end to tropical fruit (7) 12. Intellectually g...

cryptic-crosswords

2 hours later…

2:27 AM

Dumb q. What does (a>spear) mean and what is the difference between what Stiv wrote and what Jafe wrote?

2:44 AM

my dictator is (idi) amin, with head replaced with "spear" (so spear-headed)

stiv's dictator is min (aung hlaing) who is headed (preceded) by "spear"

Aha thanks

3:26 AM

A dictator (3.5 ± 0.5)

4 is A+MIN &lit. :P

3 is clearly A+HO &lit., a scathing take on Esko Aho's stint as prime minister

4:26 AM

Ah frick I messed it up

Hahahaha I didn't realize my intention for 3 was not a cryptic clue at all anymore :P

hehe

1 hour later…

5:38 AM

CCCC: Yes, Iron Man, who sets puzzles (4)

0

Q: How to make Rubik's Cube look like a dice?

I am wondering if it is possible to "solve" Rubik's Cube (the original with 3x3 elements per side and six sides) to make it look like a dice (each side showing a different dice pattern from 1 to 6, opposite sides sum up to 7). With "solve" I mean to use one of the well known solutions to solve th...

hehehe

6:30 AM

I love how that's the actual CCCC hahah

6:42 AM

@msh210 lol!

@msh210 Go on then, I'll bite :) JAFE = JA (Yes) + FE (IRON) = Man, who sets puzzles

huh, jafe's cryptic is still unsolved? that's surprising

hey, last week's one took 14 hours :)

6:57 AM

We were all busy chewing on the C4.

:P

I started and then got a fit of giggles at 26 across.

(And then had to go back to work >.>;)

7:11 AM

@Stiv I'm afraid that was not the intended solution

(just kidding)

1 hour later…

8:12 AM

Ha! Here's a challenge then - can you make a Schrodinger clue for two PSE usernames?

CCCC: A quartz floor discovered in archaeological excavation of old, European city (6)

8:28 AM

@Stiv D(an _z)ig

9:16 AM

@Stiv Puzzler cropped up in festival (3 or 4)

9:40 AM

@Jafe don't mind my comment (if ever you saw it before it got deleted), an oversight on my part

yeah i was just double-checking when i saw it disappear, no worries

@msh210 Yup!

@Jafe Ah, very nice :) One I spotted straightaway (for some reason...), the other took a little extra thought!

10:05 AM

@Jafe nice

CCCC: Rather coated in Aquafresh? Manufacturer is a European city (6)

A bit weak on the surface.

@msh210 DAN (rather) in GSK (aquafresh manufacturer) = GDANSK

10:22 AM

@Jafe yes, naturally

CCCC: European city's church boycotted Czechs involved with zinc (8)

gotta keep it going

10:47 AM

@Jafe SZCZECIN = (CZE(-ch)S+ZINC)*

Anagram indicator?

'involved with'

"Involved" indicates the anagram, and "with" means that "zinc" is also part of the fodder.

11:04 AM

@Stiv that's right

Proper spelling test, that...

"Z before E -- or after C."

11:22 AM

oh my gosh finally, that took a while

some harder clues in there @Jafe

CCCC: European city (southern Eire) beside river - one of great beauty (6)

@MOehm Ooooh, ok thanks, didn't understand for a sec

11:45 AM

@oAlt that's good to hear because i've been focusing on that!

i got the solver feedback for my puzzle that was published on magpie a while back, there were quite a few little things to improve but the most consistent thing was that the clues were too easy

so i've been trying to work on that (since last week's crossword)

also i sat on that email for like 3 weeks before i had the courage to open it :P

12:00 PM

@Jafe It's a horrible feeling. I'm about to start another round of submissions to literary agents for the children's novel I've been working on for the last few years. With every subsequent rejection (for which they never provide actual feedback) opening the next e-mail response became more and more stressful... After the nth rejection at the end of 2019 I didn't touch it through all of 2020. This year I've made a resolution to get it published one way or another.

I figured that lowering the word count could only help, so I've spent a considerable amount of time making serious edits to it this year - I've managed to cut 15,000 words! I'm now ready for one final read-through to be sure I've not mutilated the plot anywhere, and then it's time to press on again!

props for not giving up, that seems like a tough business to get into

2

I figured that what I really wanted from this whole experience was for my kids to be able to have a copy on their shelf and say "my dad wrote this!" It might not (i.e. almost definitely will not) result in a career change I would love to make, but I have to give it a shot and at the end of the day I'll have something to show for it either way (I've given myself a deadline, at which point I will self-publish so I can move on to other projects).

AncientSwordRage

@Stiv I really hope you're successful in your goals! Is this post By Brandon Sanderson encouraging at all?

i hope you find a publisher

AncientSwordRage

Also I know writing.SE has a chat

12:12 PM

how long have you been writing it?

Thanks. I had the idea just over 4 years ago, wrote it for 2 years just on the bus to and from work, submitted it places for 6 months, got very down about it for 1 year and have spent the last 8 months doing the re-editing.

I'm actually much happier post-edit (although the editing process is heartbreaking) - it's a lot tighter now, and several characters went entirely, but it's definitely an improvement.

@AncientSwordRage It's always encouraging to read/hear about experiences like this. The one I get regularly from friends is 'Even Harry Potter got rejected (insert number) of times before JK Rowling got a publisher interested...' I think if agents gave an actual reason for rejection it would be much easier to address whatever issue is lurking within, but for logistical/time reasons usually the most you get is a 'sorry, but no - GOOD LUCK WITH SOMEONE ELSE!' (emphasis mine)

Of course, every rejection still bums

AncientSwordRage

12:30 PM

@Stiv it would be great if they did that

yeah it's hard to imagine getting used to it

i bet dan brown still throws a fit every time he's rejected

then he takes a swim in his money scrooge mcduck style and feels a little better

AncientSwordRage

@Jafe hah!

From what I understand, HP got rejected because at the time, children's books seemed like it was about to fall apart as an industry. The market was flooded with low-quality stuff, and publishers didn't want to chance it. Today the challenge is that there are so many people submitting that it's just really hard to make yourself stand out from the flood.

AncientSwordRage

If it helps, Brandon Sanderson has a lecture series, lesson 12 is about getting published

@Mithical Indeed. Different times, different circumstances. It's especially crowded now that a lot of people had time during a pandemic to sit down and write the book they've always wanted to!

AncientSwordRage

12:34 PM

@Stiv people had time...? 😳

That's what it felt like to me - still working the whole time (even longer in fact) while creative friends on furlough paraded their successes on social media. Like I say, 2020 was a bad year for me!

2020 was a bad year, full stop

Indeed. But I'm determined to make 2021 a good one :) No use just lamenting the past - y'actually gotta 'do' to make things happen...

That sounds like a good plan. I really have to admire how creative and productive you all are. I think about creating stuff a lot, but I never seem to be able to actually "make things happen". The up side of that is that I never reach the point where I have to face rejection, of course.

1:40 PM

@MOehm You should definitely give it a go :) Maybe start with a puzzle!

@Jafe hehe

1 hour later…

3:00 PM

@Stiv Like others have said, I admire how much you've worked hard for this. (But I envy it as well, hehe.) Hoping for the best to happen to the novel. When it does come out, count me in as one of your first buyers :P

Haha, thanks - I'll end up doxxing myself in the name of advertising! ;-)

Oops hahahah

Oh, I've already created a folder "Puzzles" on my hard drive. I count that as progress ...

Heck yes

7 hours later…

10:12 PM

0

Q: Prove that π > 3

It seems that once in a while some politicians try to pass a law fixing the value of π to be exactly 3. The idea being to "make math simpler so that our children can get better at math". This has to stop. The area of a circle is given by A = πr², prove that π is larger than 3 by fitting 3 unit s...

geometry optimization dissection

1 hour later…

11:23 PM

apparently there's a town named Police in poland

fun fact: if you travel there by train you technically arrive at the Police station

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Aug '2127

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