The Sphinx's Lair

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oAlt

03:22

@AncientSwordRage I've always pronounced the e as the one in "set", but apparently Wiktionary says both of them are valid pronunciations. But it also says that the standard British pronunciation is "set" and the American is "seat", so I guess we swapped dialects for a moment :p

Oh I'm blind... it also says you do the "seat" pronunciation too, interesting

Don't know how I didn't see that

1 hour later…

msh210

04:29

I can't find a famous Bill Ness....

1 hour later…

M Oehm

05:49

@msh210 Okay, that took a while ... Apparently, someone was asleep.

2 hours later…

oAlt

08:13

@msh210 Ah, you got it. Apparently bill = promontory = ness

Jafe

oh, TIL

so it's ness + undo + rma*?

no wonder my search for xxxxxx march was a dead end

oAlt

@Jafe Yeah. Nicely found as well, that was definitely not the first thing I was going to look for. I was looking for common nouns first...

msh210

08:28

@oAlt well, you got it. I get credited with an assist.

@MOehm heheh

Stiv

Okay, so the clue is solved... but who wants to go next?!

oAlt

@msh210 I still think you should go next. Like I said, very little chance I would have found that song at all (and hence I wouldn't have thought of disentangle = undo either)

msh210

08:54

@oAlt nah, you put the final pieces together. Plus, anyway, I don't have one ready to go.

oAlt

Understood, I'll go next then

CCCC: Tip or peak, primarily! (3)

M Oehm

09:13

@oAlt Surely that's T_ O_ P_, &lit

oAlt

@MOehm Yep!

M Oehm

CCCC: Being fat, I sit between two Bills (11)

2 hours later…

oAlt

11:58

Surely there's a -ness at the end

Jafe

yeah something like weight+i+ness would work if bill meant weight

oAlt

yeah that's one of the few if not the only one I found too, with the right enumeration

Jafe

butteriness is another one but again bill <> butter

same with paunchiness

M Oehm

But Billy the Kid might be a butter-to-be ...

Jafe

hehehe

M Oehm

12:25

(The answer to this one is probably a bit obscure, owed to a translation blunder, but the wordplay constituents are nothing special in crosswordland.)

msh210

Maybe paunchiness? Paunch/bill/ness are things that stick out. I'm not sure "bill" means "paunch", but maybe.

Oh, wait, I see Jafe already mentioned paunchiness.

homerbackingintohedge.gif

juicifer

@oAlt as an american I pronounce that word like "a-seat-a-men-o-fin"

oAlt

Lol part 2 of me not noticing

Wikipedia and Wiktionary both say that's the one commonly used in Canada and US

oAlt

12:48

@MOehm apparently adiposeness is a thing, and that's I pose between ad and ness

M Oehm

@oAlt Yes, it is.

(It's in several "dictionaries" on Onelook, some of which are really just word lists. The medical condition obesity is called Adipositas here. No-one else seems to call it that, though. Perhaps I can get away with claiming that "being fat" could mean "being like fat".)

oAlt

Ahh

CCCC: Guess what's at second square that's part of only one entry (5)

msh210

13:10

@MOehm ooh nice

juicifer

@oAlt if you were to guess what's at second, you would be correct

oAlt

Hah

Jafe

13:28

this is _h_ + unch

oAlt

13:47

@Jafe correct!

Just in case someone isn't familiar with the term; basically just an abbreviation of unchecked square

(On a related note, if I remember correctly I first saw it in one of Deusovi's answers)

Jafe

14:02

CCCC: Two Johns, with coat on, keeping low in Sydney suburb (13)

winging it again since the backlog's empty

Stiv

14:14

@Jafe WOOLLOOMOOLOO (Sydney suburb) = WOOL (coat) + LOO (John #1) + MOO (low) + LOO (John #2)

juicifer

@Jafe wool loo (moo) loo

Jafe

hah!

correct

Stiv

I swear that was less than a second!

juicifer

photo finish here at the c4

Jafe

viewers at home will have been screaming at the screen like "forget the links and formatting, he's right behind you!"

Stiv

14:16

Ha! I even paused to re-read what I'd written and make sure I'd got it all. Oh, the tension!

M Oehm

For even more tension, we could introduce that thing booking.com likes to do: "2 other persons typing right now!"

Jafe

heheh

juicifer

Stiv

CCCC: Snakes' advocate wears suit (12)

oAlt

@Stiv diamond(back)s

Stiv

14:30

@oAlt Exactly right

oAlt

CCCC: Short distance over a long time to get to Korean city (7)

juicifer

inch + eon

Jafe

inch + eon

juicifer

lmaooo

Jafe

nooo~~

juicifer

14:34

the fact that we wrote them exactly the same too

Stiv

Hahaha - I actually held back posting by a second too!

Could have been three!

juicifer

anyway in case @oAlt hasn't seen this yet

oAlt

Hahahah not again

@juicifer you're up next :)

juicifer

CCCC: Expected large island to be seen west of Korean city (6)

Stiv

15:10

@juicifer LIKELY = L (large) + I (island) + K (Korean) + ELY (city)

juicifer

15:22

@Stiv definitely :)

Stiv

Funny. Once I thought it might be LIKELY, I was like "is there a Korean city called KELY?" for significantly longer than I should have been...

CCCC: Gift shipped from overseas is damaged - so I eat butterfly... (6,2,7)

(Talk about a disproportionate response...)

GentlePurpleRain

15:53

@Stiv This is (STATUE OF LIBERTY)*

Stiv

@GentlePurpleRain That it is :)

GentlePurpleRain

CCCC: A sailing ship carrying fruit, says the Reverend, is destined for a castle at the mouth of the Great River. (4 7)

Daniel S

16:13

@GentlePurpleRain CAIR PARAVEL = "PEAR CARAVEL"

GentlePurpleRain

16:23

@DanielS That is correct.

I realized, after I posted, that googling "castle at the mouth of the Great River" will give you Cair Paravel as the first result...

Daniel S

@GentlePurpleRain I think that it's tricky to come up with a def that doesn't give the game away.

CCCC: Overseas gift: a band of glamorous metal. (6)

Jafe

16:39

poison ddef? (gift = poison in swedish and probably other germanic languages as well)

the other def being the glam metal band

Daniel S

@Jafe Indeed (Gift overseas might have been better as it then adds German, but the Danes and the Dutch add coverage).

Jafe

wasn't expecting my high school swedish to be useful for the chat game here tbh

oAlt

Lol I was about to ask if poison is a gift you can get from abroad

Daniel S

@Jafe I think "false friends" are excellent cryptic fodder, but restrict audiences.

1 hour later…

Sphinx

18:11

Q: Numerical sequence 942, 138, 424,?

Homemade number sequence puzzle, quite easy. Sequence: 942, 138, 424, ?

number-sequence

1 hour later…

Sphinx

19:17

Q: The Room Of Tiles

You are stuck in a room with 100 floor tiles, and a magic button. There are three types of tiles: real, fake and nopey. There are at most 49 fake tiles, and there is at least one real tile. To give a clue on the types of some tiles, you can stand on one tile and press the magic button, then stand...