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01:17
@juicifer Ah, that OneRepublic clue. The one with a (38) if you were a jerk.
Yeah
01:37
@PolygonPotpourri that's the one
(republic)
 
2 hours later…
03:49
CCCC: Evacuate a bar associated with senior position at Cambridge? (7,4)
don't ask me what that means, coffee hasn't kicked in yet
You need coffee to stay awake? O_o
 
1 hour later…
05:11
never said that
05:22
but yes
2
@Jafe a ban donship
05:34
correct
CCCC: Governed by articles in Switzerland (5)
05:48
@msh210 UNDER (Governed by) = UN + DER (articles in French and German, both spoken in Switz)
@Stiv yep yep
Smart
Genius clue.
CCCC: She previously caught rabbit, perhaps (9)
@Stiv @PolygonPotpourri thanks
 
1 hour later…
07:02
Hm. What could ‘previously’ mean?
07:40
Something like former, ex, or nee
07:51
Could also be alluding to a previous version of "she". Wiktionary says that Middle English had it in the form sche, scho, hyo, or heo, of which the first two are the most promising
08:06
0
Q: How to cut wooden beam into 4 parts that can be reassembled into a cube?

Will.Octagon.GibsonA wooden beam (which is a rectangular parallelepiped) with edges of 8, 8, and 27 inches is to be sawed into 4 parts out of which a cube can be made. Naturally, one should draw first and saw later. How should the beam be cut? Clarification: Assume that the sawing does not reduce the overall volu...

08:49
@Stiv Is this L + AGO + MORPH? [rabbit, perhaps] = LAGOMORPH?
How does 'morph' relate to the wordplay here? And I wouldn't ever use 'She' for L ('ladies' potentially), so overall it's not the answer, no.
Perhaps it should be parsed as (previously synonym) caught (she synonym)?
 
2 hours later…
10:46
lagomorphs is just animorphs viewed over a poor connection
 
1 hour later…
11:48
Animorphs from Mar-a-Lago
Gosh, Animorphs. That's a blast from the past...
13:26
About "Guide to Codes and Ciphers" - I actually understand how Enigma Cipher works, so l probably could write up an answer about mechanical ciphers lol.
13:47
<3 animorphs
14:20
@Stiv I'm thinking "HERBIVORE". Although that doesn't really fit into the "previously" part, so maybe there's something I'm missing.
HER 'BEFORE'?
(is 'caught' a hearing indicator?)
Maybe it is, although I honestly am not sure. First CC that I've had at least some sort of train of thought for, although I can't really remember the process.
14:32
Anyone, could you verify or invalidate that (HER + "BEFORE" [rabbit, perhaps]) is a probable solution?
I kinda like that solution
Great! @Stiv, is this the solution?
I guess it could be a homophone indicator, like when you ask someone to repeat something they said, you say "I didn't quite catch that"
But I definitely did not think of "caught" as a homophone indicator first
And also, the f in before is pronounced f, and the v in bivore is pronounced v for me. So that's something to consider as well
@PolygonPotpourri Yes, it is :) And I think I've seen 'caught' used before in the lair as a homophone indicator (but may be mistaken - I shall defer to oAlt on all things archive-y...), I've certainly seen it used elsewhere (and I reckon the F and V sounds are close enough, personally, though others are free to disagree...!).
@Stiv Nice! Utterly magnificent clue.
Get ready for...
CCCC: Report: One keen enigmatist finally makes the answer to a metapuzzle found in every previous clue I've made (10)
I'm looking for a full solution.
14:43
@CrSb0001 thanks for the assist by the way. For some reason I (and probably others) just never thought of that even though it's one of the basic characteristics of a rabbit
Yeah, I actually feel quite a bit bad for stealing that off of you, @CrSb0001.
@PolygonPotpourri I wouldn't say "stealing" lol. It was more of a lucky start that ended up leading to the correct answer. :)
@CrSb0001 Ah. Oh well.
@oAlt I was actually also thinking that because I've usually heard people refer to a rabbit as a "she" when talking in general about rabbits.
Ahh
e, first, pounds, point, blackjack, striped, when, Washington, days, a, scrabble, odd, key, after, alternative, green, doubled, $, in, scores, value, prime, mate, love, name, ball, clear-sighted, blank, fortnight, amount
Here are all of PolygonPotpourri's clue answers from the beginning
It's entirely possible that even their first clue answer ever is part of a sequence. Stiv did that too
@Stiv By the way, I don't remember :P
I checked just now and unfortunately, I don't seem to have found an instance where "caught" was used as a homophone indicator
15:24
@CrSb0001 Also, is your profile picture of the Scratch game Mello? That game's quite neat!
@PolygonPotpourri yeah, it's pretty neat lol!
 
3 hours later…
18:49
@oAlt It says clue, not answer, though.
 
1 hour later…
19:58
0
Q: The Knights and Knaves Want Out

HovercouchOn the island of Knights and Knaves, knights can only say true sentences and knaves can only say false sentences. This makes day-to-day life awful, since nobody can truly lie. Mafia games end in five seconds. So knights and knaves instead speak with gadgets. Instead of saying statement $P$ direct...

 
2 hours later…
21:38
may as well post this so others can make progress on it: some words that polygonpotpourri has posted make up phrases that can represent the number 14:
DAYS IN A FORTNIGHT, GREEN STRIPED BALL, 'ALTERNATIVE' SCRABBLE POINT VALUE
the scrabble point value one could feasibly be replaced by other words to make different scores if need be
i figure it might be because it looks like we'll be making numbers that aren't 14 since 14 is neither PRIME nor ODD, and BLACKJACK normally refers to 21
but i can't figure much else out beyond this point since i don't know what the other numbers are and both DAYS IN A FORTNIGHT and GREEN STRIPED BALL can really only be 14
22:01
Nice spots. Some alternative options include ALTERNATIVE BLACKJACK NAME = 21 and WASHINGTON AMOUNT IN $ = 1, so you might not be looking for all 14's but other numbers in combo too.
(Or just WASHINGTON $ AMOUNT to keep the 'IN' elsewhere and preserve the three-word clue pattern)
FIRST PRIME VALUE = 2
you could also leave STRIPED out of the ball combo and just get GREEN BALL = 6
FIRST ODD PRIME = 3
POINT AFTER LOVE = 15 (in tennis)
Ah yeah keep VALUE for elsewhere...
BLANK could represent a fill in the blank; i.e. E BLANK = 3
Or BLANK SCRABBLE VALUE = 0
(or E SCRABBLE VALUE = 1)
CLEAR-SIGHTED and MATE are the two i'm struggling to connect to numbers; CLEAR-SIGHTED could maybe be 20/20 but that doesn't seem right
22:12
That was all I had for that one too. Not sure on MATE yet.
'WHEN DOUBLED' feels like a unit
so CLEAR-SIGHTED WHEN DOUBLED = 20
oh good spot
So an almost complete three-word-clue partition might look something like:

ALTERNATIVE BLACKJACK NAME = 21
POINT AFTER LOVE = 15
BLANK SCRABBLE VALUE = 0
WASHINGTON $ AMOUNT = 1
DAYS IN FORTNIGHT = 14
STRIPED GREEN BALL = 14
FIRST ODD PRIME = 3
CLEAR-SIGHTED WHEN DOUBLED = 20

Spares at present: E / POUNDS / A / KEY / SCORES / MATE
(No guarantees all tripled-up correctly here though)
that's what i've got, yeah
POUNDS though...
How about POUNDS KEY VALUE (on a UK QWERTY keyboard) = 3, since that's the number key that shares the position?
Then SCRABBLE BLANK SCORES = 0
Leaving A / MATE / E
DAYS A FORTNIGHT = 14
MATE IN BLANK = 1
SCRABBLE E SCORES = 1
maybe??? i'm by no means sold
22:25
What's 'MATE IN BLANK'? Oh, wait, like a chess puzzle title, Mate in one, I see...
I feel like we need that 'IN' with 'FORTNIGHT' tbh...
But it's a nice idea
yeah i feel the same, the A connection is loose at best
As for the numbers we're generating, a few of them appear to be the first digits of pi (3 14 15) but I'm not spotting a full significance yet. If we had a '24' we might have been able to combine that with '20' to make this year and a possible datestamp of some kind.
I'm warming to the final 3 in your suggestion above actually...
if those final 3 are true then the complete set of numbers is 0, 1, 1, 1, 3, 14, 14, 15, 20, 21
I make it two 3's instead of one and a 0...
ALTERNATIVE BLACKJACK NAME = 21
CLEAR-SIGHTED WHEN DOUBLED = 20
POINT AFTER LOVE = 15
WASHINGTON $ AMOUNT = 1
STRIPED GREEN BALL = 14
FIRST ODD PRIME = 3
POUNDS KEY VALUE = 3
DAYS A FORTNIGHT = 14
SCRABBLE E SCORES = 1
MATE IN BLANK = 1
oh right yeah i confused myself between all the messages
1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 14, 14, 15, 20, 21
22:34
And in A1Z26 they are almost an anagram of ACCOUNTANT but for having an A instead of a T...
UTOANCCNAA
ACCOUNT=Report, AN = ONE, _T from (-enigmatis)T
ACCOUNTANT fits the CCCC as well, ACCOUNT (report) + A (one) + _N _ T
(keen unused)
Ah, no you're right - used your way
Andrew Jackson's on the $20 bill so it's not that one that's wrong...
Have I been playing Scrabble so wrong??! (jk)
Is mate in 20 a thing?
(I'm no chesshead)
i mean you could theoretically have mate in anything
mate in 1 is the most common
mate in 20 feels like a far stretch though
Well, I think we must be pretty much there. Unfortunately I absolutely have to go and get some sleep now as I'm still recovering from a rough health ride this autumn... I hope I wake to it all having fallen completely into place in the morning! Great spot to set this rolling - hope you can work out that final missing piece (and that it's merely a miscalculation on our part, not the setter's!)...
have a good rest
22:45
(wave)

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