The Sphinx's Lair

8:16 AM

CCCC: "Water is in bread," reveals Yorkshireman. (4,4)

Q: Beginner cuber question about why centers seem flipped from guide despite centers not moving in relation to each other

8:42 AM

I've been struggling with the first step of the beginner Rubik's cube solving algorithm with one simple problem. I am able to get the top face as all white, with blue and orange center pieces adjacent to each other. However, in the guide, in order from top, left side, and right side, the colors a...

rubiks-cube

1 hour later…

logical-deduction grid-deduction

10:02 AM

Q: →Triple Hokuro←

Hokuro is a grid deduction puzzle inspired by Kakuro. Basic Hokuro rules Each cell contains one of the following symbols: Each arrow indicates a step in that direction, while the dot indicates no movement. The clues in the black cells show the sum of the movements indicated by the symbols in ...

2 hours later…

Q: Can I do better than brute force?

11:48 AM

I received the wooden puzzle below for Christmas. After playing with it for a while I decided I needed to actually write something down if I was going to solve it. Eventually I just wrote an algorithm that went through the 20736 possible locations of the dials and found the only answer. The probl...

calculation-puzzle

3 hours later…

Parcly Taxel

2:49 PM

Done

1 hour later…

4:03 PM

I'm still working on that 'number of wordle patterns problem...

Smooshed 199 array elements to size 110
Took 51 minutes 29 seconds to calculate the 1,897,280,473 permutations of scowl with utils
Took 44 minutes 37 seconds to calculate the 1,897,280,473 permutations of scowl with itertools

that's for one word

and 200 of the potential candidate words

4:16 PM

I might need some compute time...

1 hour later…

5:17 PM

@Stiv SEA(N (BE)AN), where water =SEA, is=BE, bread=NAN

@AncientSwordRage That's the one :) Well found!

It's who I think of when people say Yorkshireman

Right!

CCCC: Reverse genetic information enclosed in jab, that's an order! (8)

juicifer

5:36 PM

@AncientSwordRage jeez I looked at sean bean too and even saw the sea in there but couldn't get the rest of it to work out

msh210

5:58 PM

@AncientSwordRage I guessing you mean st(and<)ing because a standing order is a type of order. (I don't think that works. A standing is not an order.)

(It's like saying "that's a horse" can clue WHITE.)

@msh210 yeah apologies, that was quite rushed.

@Stiv also, going back I've always spelt it 'naan'

msh210

@AncientSwordRage no worries!

CCCC: Writing code in C++ perhaps is a mistake (4)

@AncientSwordRage Can spell it either way - sometimes depends on which part of the world you're talking about in the first place

6:25 PM

Q: This IQ Test Is Broken!

I recently attempted an online IQ test out of curiosity, but for some reason it didn't tell me my final score... (or maybe my IQ is so low I can't find it...) It was a typical IQ test with all the usual gimmicks, a crappy number sequence, weird missing shapes etc (and although it started easy, it...

enigmatic-puzzle visual

@Stiv very true