The Sphinx's Lair

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Anonymus 25

00:01

Not going to lie, just had my worst nightmare: All of my Puzzling rep dissapeared!

Bad dreams

Stevo

oh no...

i just had my worst nighmare ever...

I was a rogue planet and I crashed into the sun...

1 hour later…

Sphinx

01:24

Q: The soundtrack to my life; track eight

I'm looking for a song, but I can't remember the words. I partially remember the lyrics to a few songs that played around it on my mixtape growing up, but that's about it. Can you help me? Gardens, new cars, and a house up in the hills. Oh May, do you want to get married, or run away? Now I'll g...

Stevo

yes, i know sphinx

Taco タコス

Night all! 🙃🎧

Stevo

bye!

im not going to try. Its probably a music track ive never heard before

Taco タコス

@Stevo I doubt it :)

Stevo

oh.

well

i am not a person who listens to music. EVER

Sphinx

01:48

Q: Always six of us

The answer to this puzzle is 12 letters in total. Here's some info: 2 each

enigmatic-puzzle visual

oAlt

02:12

@Sphinx how did I not see this earlier lol

Anonymus 25

03:06

@JeremyDover Aparrently humn was the first person to say Fanning in this chat

Stevo

ok?

A contributor says some algebra have spelling errors and have a con in it (7)

ouch

wait, does that work?

Deusovi

03:24

"spelling errors" seems... insufficiently precise

Stevo

exactly what I thought. That doesn't work.

Deusovi

because you need to stretch it pretty far to justify what you're doing here

and also, "says some" is unused

Stevo

uh why did I even think of that answer to make a cryptic

@Deusovi says is unused.

Deusovi

okay - you can't have unused words

Stevo

@Deusovi exactly why I said it didn't work...

Deusovi

03:25

and if you're using "some" to just take some arbitrary nonconsecutive subsequence of letters... yeah that definitely doesn't work

Stevo

palm face

msh210

I thought this C4 would go faster. So hard to gauge sometimes.

Stevo

03:44

I really suck at making tables.

5 hours later…

Sphinx

08:35

Q: How to derive the approach for the problem?

The question is taken from the book Puzzle Mania. I have with full certainty taken their permission for reproduction of the problem. obQuestion: "5 children A,B,C,D and E were born in different months January,February,March,April and May not necessarily in the same order. Each of them weighed dif...

logical-deduction calculation-puzzle

1 hour later…

AncientSwordRage

10:02

@msh210 the surface has made me think of some many different possible answers

Anonymus 25

Is "supply depot in Scotland parsible as Scotland in "supply depot"?

AncientSwordRage

I have one more guess, but I haven't got the wordplay right, and I'm not confident on the def... but it fits the hints

Jafe

11:03

let's hear it :)

AncientSwordRage

11:22

@Jafe The half-guess/#justforfun is: Def: abominably, wordplay: a bomin(-g) abl(a)< (suppl)y

I don't know which of the words are indicators, or how they work ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Jafe

boming = sinking?

AncientSwordRage

Also Abominably means 'terribly' which is only a partial match

@Jafe oh, well I forgot how to spell bombing apparently

back to the drawingboard

Jafe

oAlt

@Anonymus25 nope, "X in Y" doesn't work as "Y in X" (I haven't seen any instances where "in" can mean "surrounding"/any other containment indicator)

Also I'm still holding on to the idea that "sinkin' slowly" means that the answer also ends in IN... I hope

Jafe

i think the hint could mean that the -in word ends at index 6 and the four remaining letters are clued by "slowly"

AncientSwordRage

11:28

@Jafe that makes sense, but then it means the def is at the start?

Jafe

yeah

AncientSwordRage

somethign like ASSIGN???? (assignment?)

Jafe

the hint says that no word needs to be read oddly

only taking the even letters, the clue becomes "upy eo n ctad s ikn lwy"

which is clearly grammatically correct welsh, so scotland must have been a red herring

AncientSwordRage

DISPENS(-E)ING (in scotland (pennines??)-> dis pen s (-n)in(-es) g)?

@Jafe I think you insulted somebody's mum in welsh just now

Jafe

heheh

M Oehm

11:39

Or the -in word is a compound verb like "goin' down" and the overall meaning is slowly.

But that would leave awfully little space for the supply depot in Scotland.

Jafe

@AncientSwordRage not convinced but this gave me an idea for another clue which i'm definitely stealing

AncientSwordRage

12:07

@Jafe nice

DISPENSARY (ARY from (t)A(r)RY ?) But I can't see any other wordplay

unless " sinkin' " -> "s 'INK IN' " -> " s PEN ", but that sort of violates the 'not read oddly' hint

SUSTAINING -> SUS T(r)AIN ING ? Again even shakier wordplay/def matching

Also I've definitely tried to use HIGHLANDS and LOWLANDS in place of scotland, but gotten no where...

Jafe

also the sixth letter of sustaining is I

AncientSwordRage

@Jafe good catch

USTAININGS? :p

TARTAN and SPORRAN crossed my mind

AncientSwordRage

12:30

#justforfun: CON TENT FUL? sCOtlaNd (-dalts< -ST LAD?) + TENT + FUL(-GENT) ???

#justforfun PORTENTOUS: POROUS (sinking slow) with TENT (depot?) inside? Scotland vanishing would be a very bad portent D:

I'll stop before it stops being fun :p

Sphinx

13:01

Q: Two numbers missing

In the following diagram can you fill in the two missing numbers (represented by the question marks)? Please explain your answer. Please pay attention to the tags.

riddle knowledge enigmatic-puzzle

msh210

13:31

C4 hints: (1) None of the words in the clue needs to be read oddly. (2) The sixth letter is N. (3) I think it's a ddef.

Anonymus 25

JSALISBURY instantly came to mind for some reason

Jafe

it's inchin' down

msh210

13:46

@Jafe it is indeed

Would you call that a ddef?

(I wasn't 100% sure, hence the hesitancy in my 3rd hint.)

Jafe

not sure

maybe not because one def is for inchindown and one is for inchin' down, but then again there's not a separate wordplay term (that i know of) for changing whitespace

msh210

It is valid, though, right?

(I mean, I don't see anything wrong with it. Just double-checking.)

Jafe

yeah

msh210

okay, whew

Jafe

CCCC: Maybe an indication that one is on a tropical vacation, absolutely in no hurry at all (9)

Sphinx

14:14

Q: Extremely Difficult IQ Matrices

Here are six different matrices, can anyone crack them? https://ibb.co/sR4t8ng

pattern

msh210

14:56

ooh, I have an idea: instead of constantly pinning and re-pinning the explanation of what the C4 is, each C4 entry can link (its first four characters) to one such message

AncientSwordRage

15:12

@Jafe I suspect: HURRICANE, 'I CAN' in HURRY, hurr(-y for no 'absolutely') ican (absolutely ~ I CAN) e (AT All i.e. every one)

I feel like something is off here

msh210

I'm not seeing how the wordplay would work exactly, but that looks like a very promising idea.

AncientSwordRage

15:43

@msh210 it's too close not to be...?

1 hour later…

M Oehm

16:54

@Jafe It's LEI + SURELY.

AncientSwordRage

17:06

@MOehm THATS MUCH BETTER

Ughhh I looked up LEI (flower garland... trying to get it to fit) and thought... too short!

M Oehm

Than a hurricane on a tropical vacation? You bet! :)

AncientSwordRage

@MOehm I don't, but I still agree

My backlog is filling up, I need to solve one soon....

Avi

@Sphinx oooooh

this looks promising

if only I had less HW ;-;

Sphinx

17:29

-2

Q: Find the missing number in the table

Unfortunately I do not have the exact source. My friend came across this question while going through a mock test and sent it to me.

mathematics

Avi

17:42

Does anybody here speak french?

M Oehm

Un peu.

Avi

onetimesecret.com/secret/1mg0b9nsahycm1wvowvofxrlphhdx7e

M Oehm

(Well, "speak" is a bit much, but if I can look things up and reactivate my school French, I could perhaps help.)

Avi

Just need the one phrase since I don't want to butcher it

with google translate or something

although it does seem to have avoided butchering it

according to my limited understanding of pipes, tests, and masculine/feminine "the"

M Oehm

@Avi Okay, j'ai repondu.

Avi

17:53

Thank you!

2 hours later…

Jafe

19:51

@MOehm that's right

M Oehm

CCCC: Raw fish with soy sauce, sweet and sour starters -- I am in Hawaii! (7)

msh210

20:26

@MOehm s_ a_ s_ H(I'm)I

Nice clue. Does this mean we're on a tropical-vacation sequence now?

Jafe

20:37

i'll pack muh bags!

msh210

Are we gonna follow Gladys's route?

1 hour later…

Sphinx

21:57

Q: Squares in a quadrant: How big is the pool?

The local council is building a new pool complex. A one hectare ($100\times100$m) block of land has ground suitable for pool-digging, but a local ring road runs through it, leaving only an exact quarter-circle available. They want a children's wade pool and a deeper adults' pool, both square. The...