The Sphinx's Lair

CCCC: Oh, my? Initially, around 11°C in the United States? (6)

1:52 AM

ME O around XI C -> the united states of MEXICO

@Jafe That was faster than I expected hehe, you got it

2:06 AM

(For anyone else wondering, the official name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos, which translates to the "United Mexican States". I could've clued a different country since all, if not most, other countries are composed of united states anyway, but that felt like a cheap gimmick. I wanted to use a country which actually had "United States" in its official name.)

3:22 AM

think i've used the same trick before hehe

CCCC: Music composer's received university grant, finally (6)

australia, germany and brazil have states too bit for most countries i think united states would be a misnomer

oh and nigeria has states i believe

3:45 AM

@Jafe nice hahah

@Jafe ah I guess that's true. I forgot that not all countries call their subdivisions "states"... should have said "some" instead of "all if not most"

4:19 AM

@Jafe min(U)e _t

that's right

4:33 AM

Ah nice spot

5:02 AM

@oAlt thanks. @Jafe 's used "the setter's" for IVE recently, which made this one easier

Apr 24 at 6:06, by Jafe

man, i need new material

@msh210 yeah, saw that one too

@Jafe absolutely share the same feelings

CCCC: “Music must stop!” the composer boomed. (15)

5:59 AM

Nice surface. (That one's so long, pretty sure it must contain sagittarius or capricorn ...)

heheh

6:12 AM

(( @MOehm sorry if my edit summary's a bit confusing (I said "Correcting this one while I'm at it" but you can see that I edited two typos, not one). I thought my two edits (and thus the two edit summaries) would count separately, but it didn't. ))

But I'm sure you won't mind it too much

the unintended sneak-edit, that is

Yeah

And while I'm at it (no pun intended) I'll say what I forgot to say earlier: nice clue as well, msh – it's always nice to see a relatively long word being clued in just a few words

@oAlt Of course I don't mind. I'm not good at typing, but I thought I had caught the "picl" typo. Perhaps just in my text editor, from where I copied the long edit.

:00

(But in general, I don't really like being edited, not even by myself. I'm always a bit annoyed when that little pencil symbol shows up here in chat, which indicates that I coudn't get it right the first time.)

6:32 AM

Slightly same

Jul 1 at 16:18, by oAlt

(Man I hate it when I can't express myself concisely in one go and thus still have to edit what I say lol)

6:55 AM

@oAlt thanks, but don’t compliment the clue until you see/find the solution :-)

i think it's some anagram of "stop the composer" that means "music must" (something necessary for making music), but the best word i can come up with is "photoscopmeters" which is not 100% promising

(not least because it's not actually a word)

2

The fodder needs an N to make it phono-something.

i see now the only option is listing all possible anagrams by hand

lemme get my pencil and enough paper for 15! lines

2

7:10 AM

You probably meant enough pencils, too.

maybe it's one very large pencil

11:01 AM

I've searched this and its following sections, and I don't think I ever saw a 15-letter word apart from "electroacoustic", but electroacoustic isn't a style of music; rather, electroacoustic music (which was what was in the page) is. On top of that, it doesn't fit the clue at all.

@oAlt Well, “minuet” appears there, but it’s not a style, either. A minuet is a piece of music (in a particular style).

11:48 AM

still trying to make a music-related word from those 15 letters... something like... orchest...tppmsooe

i gave up halfway through, can you tell?

it could also be "the composer" stopped by a shorter word for "music" to make a long word for "boomed"

plenty of composers' names and different terms for music but i'd wager there aren't that many 15-letter synonyms for "boomed"

12:35 PM

or hmm, maybe it's a synonym of "stop" plus an anagram of just "the composer"?

Rand al'Thor

Eno's storied aria was once soloed by Judge Lance Ito on the alto oboe at Ohio's AirAsia Arena.

5

I just saw this and it's so relatable.

hahah it sure is

12:59 PM

fun fact: "era" is by far the most common answer in NYT crosswords

1:10 PM

hmm, if something is instrumental it's a must.... and instrumental- looks like a promising beginning for a long music-related word

"Stop" could be UAG or even UGA, or "must stop" could be T, but I'm doubting both

UAG?

A stop codon :0

TIL

2:29 PM

Assorted C4 thoughts: "Music must stop" could be a musical instruction to stop or pause such as "fermata" or "al coda". There are several 15-letter words that include Verdi, but I couldn't find any that include Sibelius or Rachmaninov. (The Verdi ones all start with "overdi...") Music could perhaps mean related to the Muses, but even Terpsichorean is two letters short.

Sphinx

2

Q: Monday's Fujisan Problem

Four Shinto Priests have traveled from their various prefectures in pilgrimage to the top of Mount Fuji. You must find pathways for them to move up and down the mountain until they can all achieve the peak. Often, this will require you to guide them into positions from which they can assist each ...

dominoes

AncientSwordRage

3:19 PM

Nothing to do with this then?

Boom operator (media)

A boom operator (or First Assistant Sound) is a core role in the sound department of a film production, who works with the production sound mixer and utility sound technician. The principal responsibility of the boom operator is microphone placement, usually using a boom pole (or "fishpole") with a microphone attached to the end (called a boom mic), their aim being to hold the microphone as close to the actors or action as possible without allowing the microphone or boom pole to enter the camera's frame. == Invention of the boom mic == The first noted instance of a prototype boom mike was on The...

bobble

5:52 PM

Very last bump for this before it drops off the sidebar puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7371/69582

Q: Is there a way to decode a list of numbers of power of 2?

6:29 PM

C4 hint 2: A component of the solution uses eye dialect. That fact is not indicated in the clue. Sorry about that.

Sphinx

6:42 PM

0

I've got a list of numbers that are power of 2 between 0 and 64 and I think I'm supposed to be able to decode it into textform. 0 1 2 4 2 8 64 8 16 32 1 2 4 8 16 64 0 8 64 32 8 4 0 1 0 1 2 2 8 Any ideas?

riddle mathematics cipher

7:03 PM

@msh210 GOTTER (gotta, must) + DAM (stop) + ME (composer of the clue) + RUNG (boomed)

@MOehm there you go

It's a Wagner opera, so music. (Don't know whether the timing is deliberate, but the Bayreuth festival is on right now. This year's Götterdämmerung seems to have received a fair share of boos.)

Phew. I first intended to post it as a joke, but with GOTTA. :)

@MOehm not intended: I had no idea

I wouldn't usually have known, but it's in the news here, of course.

@MOehm here = Beyreuth? the state? Germany? How far does an annual Wagner festival make the news?

7:15 PM

Good question. I'd say there will be news flashes in Germany, but there's probably more detailed press coverage from Bavarian media. (I subscribe to Süddeutsche, a paper from Munich, and listen to the Bavarian public news radio.)

I don't follow news abou the Bayreuth festival closely, but I see the headlines, of course. The other bit of interesting news besides the mixed reception of the new Götterdämmerung production was that a singer was hurt when he plummeted into a chair and the chair broke down. Ouch! (He had to be replaced for the rest of the, don't lnow, three hours, but Ib think he was able to resume his role now.)

Much of the press coverage, at least on TV, is about the celebrities attending, anyway.

7:47 PM

Interesting.