The Sphinx's Lair

Rand al'Thor

12:11 AM

New puzzle from me: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42333/…

Areeb

Seems puzzling

Rand al'Thor

:-D

I think (hope) people will like the solution when it's discovered.

I just hope I haven't made it too hard.

Areeb

It was obviously Mad Jason with his anger issues

I always like interesting solutions

Rand al'Thor

I'm still struggling with the twin text-message puzzles from @IAmInPLS and @LukasRotter.

Gareth McCaughan

so are we all...

Rand al'Thor

12:19 AM

What's "the world's most infamous book depository"?

6 letters, so can't be Alexandria.

Gareth McCaughan

damn, that was my first guess. second was the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (not exactly a depository) but that's a bit more than 6 letters too

what's the context for the question?

(is it in the historical sc hunt I haven't looked at yet?)

Deusovi has posted an allegedly nearly done solution in which the answer to that one appears to be DALLAS

I have no idea why

Rand al'Thor

Yep, @Deusovi has put me to shame on that one.

Gareth McCaughan

ah, and the Dallas thing is the JFK assassination

Texas School Book Depository

The Texas School Book Depository, now known as the Dallas County Administration Building, is a seven-floor building facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, United States. The building is most notable for its connection to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. An employee, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot and killed the president from a sixth floor window on the building's southeastern corner. The structure is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. It is located at 411 Elm Street on the northwest corner of Elm and North Houston Streets, at the western end of downtown Dallas. == Earl...

about which I had no idea

Rand al'Thor

Americans have an advantage in that puzzle :-/

Gareth McCaughan

(I still think Alexandria is infamouser, though)

Areeb

12:23 AM

"Library" almost works

Gareth McCaughan

aside from being the wrong length and having nothing specially infamous about it, you mean?

Rand al'Thor

I had to do a bit of Googling to solve "Among presidents, a unique label for Buchanan" too.

Areeb

Haha I'd fudged up my definition of infamous a bit

Rand al'Thor

Heh, at least I caught one thing Deusovi didn't:

3rd clue in the 2nd crossword should be TREATY (as in Naval Treaty). — rand al'thor 30 secs ago

Areeb

Oooh wasn't there a collection of missing books? Thomas Jefferson had lost them and they turned up somewhere

Rand al'Thor

12:27 AM

Damn, trying to remember which Sherlock Holmes story was called "something Bachelor" without looking it up.

Areeb

The one with the Mormons in it?

Rand al'Thor

Noble Bachelor!

And NOBLE fits the 6th clue in the 1st crossword.

Phew.

I wonder if I should just delete my CW answer now?

There's not really much point, now that Deusovi has outdone it so much on his own.

Areeb

Might as well then, save the SE servers a few bytes of storage

Rand al'Thor

Nah, they store deleted answers too :-)

Areeb

Why though? 0.o

Rand al'Thor

12:39 AM

Sometimes deleted posts get undeleted again.

That's the beauty of the SE system: very little is irreversible.

And what is irreversible is only doable by mods, who are generally trusted to be careful with it.

Gareth McCaughan

I'm not understanding why the box full of emperors leads to SAINTS in Deusovi's answer.

Areeb

That's not a bad idea

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Me neither. RULERS seems like a better fit.

Or ROMANS even.

Gareth McCaughan

Whatever it is it has to fit into ALL ____ ______

where the last word seems like it has to be ORDERED or something like that, which is kinda weird

since it's supposed to yield a date unless I'm very confused

Rand al'Thor

A year, I think?

Gareth McCaughan

12:43 AM

perhaps it's ALL ROMANS ORDERED and refers to some census (e.g., the possibly nonexistent one in Luke's gospel)

Rand al'Thor

Maybe it was the year that all Romans did something-or-other.

Gareth McCaughan

but I hope it's a bit more convincing than that

Rand al'Thor

Is there another word that fits better than ORDERED?

Gareth McCaughan

I hope so

but haven't thought of one yet

"we were only following orders" is the usual English rendering. Apparently auf Deutsch it's "Befehl ist Befehl" which is even less helpful.

maybe it's not ROMANS or RULERS but something entirely different that will become obvious when we solve the remaining clue in that box

which I confess has me baffled right now

"A bit of warmth, but praise for Les mixed in Jacobian role". Really Jacobian? I thought that was only for maths (pertaining to Jacobi) versus Jacobean for the historical usage (pertaining to someone called James).

but whether it be Jacobian or Jacobean I can't solve it yet

8-letter emperors: TIBERIUS CALIGULA CLAUDIUS DOMITIAN AURELIUS COMMODUS PERTINAX MACRINUS PUPIENUS BALBINUS (gosh, what a lot of Roman emperors I'd never heard of before) AEMILIAN VALERIAN AURELIAN NUMERIAN MAXIMIAN GALERIUS LICINIUS VETRANIO ARCADIUS HONORIUS MAJORIAN OLYBRIUS and now I'll stop because there are no more 8-letter ones until we're well into the Byzantines who surely don't count

Rand al'Thor

How many Roman emperors can there be with 8-letter names?

Heh, GMTA :-)

Gareth McCaughan

12:52 AM

lots, it turns out

I may have missed some

Rand al'Thor

But we probably need the letters LES (in some order) in there as well. That narrows it down.

Assuming "Les mixed in" is to be interpreted in the usual cryptic-crossword way.

Gareth McCaughan

Probably. But it feels like there's too much in the clue to fit everything in.

If "Les mixed in" means LES is in there, where are the other letters coming from? You'd think "A bit of warmth" would mean W but Ws are in very short supply among Roman emperors, or in fact Roman anything.

Rand al'Thor

I was thinking "A bit of warmth, but praise" might be the literal part.

And we have the letters LES inside something Jacobian.

Gareth McCaughan

and "for" is just syntax? yeah, maybe

though "a bit of warmth but praise" is a funny sort of definition

anyway, I don't think there's a Roman emperor called PARTIALLES DERIVATIVES.

oh, sorry, it says mixed so PARTIALESL DERIVATIVES.

but again we don't know it actually has anything to do with Roman emperors. Maybe there's some other set of which AUGUSTUS, NERO and CAESAR are members. Hmmmmmm.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Ha! :-D

I was looking for anagrams of LES MATRI (minus the X because it's a rare letter), but no joy.

Gareth McCaughan

12:58 AM

on the obvious hypothesis that Jacobian means Jacobean, "Jacobean role" could mean any of the zillions of roles in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and all we have to do is list them all and try combining with the letters of LES. Kill me now.

Rand al'Thor

VTCs needed, btw.

Gareth McCaughan

voted

Rand al'Thor

I also looked for anagrams of LES JAMES, but there aren't many J's in Roman names.

Gareth McCaughan

and JAMES for "Jacobian role" would be kinda feeble anyway

Rand al'Thor

True.

goes back to looking at the twin text-message puzzles

Gareth McCaughan

1:07 AM

ooo, LAUD is praise and found inside CLAUDIUS, and also Claudius is the bad guy in Hamlet.

ahhh

CELSIUS with LAUD instead of ELS (Les mixed)

Rand al'Thor

Aha! Nice one :-)

Gareth McCaughan

the four emperor names in the box happen to be (in a different order) the first four names of Germanicus (member of the same family as the other guys, was never emperor) but I doubt that's in any way relevant.

oh, no, wait, I think I'm confused about that and they're actually the first four names of the emperor Nero, who took inter alia the name Germanicus

yup. anyway, I don't think it helps

Rand al'Thor

Still no attention on my new murder mystery ...

Gareth McCaughan

it's not an easy one to get into, I think

I have a theory about how it works "at top level" but am too lazy to try to figure out details

and am not generally super-keen on (what I take to be) this sort of puzzle
(for the avoidance of doubt, this is not a criticism of the kind of puzzle but a comment on my own mental quirks)

Rand al'Thor

I'm a bit worried that I should have left more clues about the method, but then people around here are pretty damn clever, so maybe (hopefully) it'll be OK anyway.

Gareth McCaughan

1:20 AM

well, you've made it very clear that the dates are important, and it's apparent that there is a place name associated with each date, which seems like it offers some avenues for attack

Rand al'Thor

"a call time for ants" = "faecal lint storm" :-/

Gareth McCaughan

the "obvious" guess is that we turn the dates into letters (e.g. by 1=A..26=Z, but other possibilities exist) and combine them somehow with the place names, and for two of the three people it works "right" and for the third something is wrong indicating that he wasn't really with Dan when he said he was or something of the kind.

turning dates into triples of letters via 1=A..26=Z seems to give mostly common-ish letters rather than lots of QXZ nonsense which is promising, but it's not immediately obvious what to do after that and if my suspicion is that actually 1/3 are "wrong" that makes it a bit harder to attack

note: I am not fishing for hints here

none of the above seems particularly hard to think of, so if any of it is the right sort of thing then there's a good chance someone less lazy than me is already trying specifics and making progress

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan And I'm having to restrain myself from giving any :-)

Gareth McCaughan

as indeed there is if it's all complete bullshit

please continue restraining yourself

I don't think it's likely that I'll try to solve the puzzle but other people may be reading this

Rand al'Thor

It's fun (in an evil sort of way) to watch people struggle with a puzzle you made.

You need to post some questions, so you can experience it too!

Gareth McCaughan

1:26 AM

as for the text messages, yeah, there are lots of silly anagrams to be found but if there's anything useful I failed to find it (though I didn't spend infinitely long about it)

yeahbut I'm crap at inventing puzzles

partly through plain ordinary lack of imagination, partly because I'm super-picky so get discouraged very readily

Rand al'Thor

I wonder if the fact that the friend is a musician is relevant. If so, I probably don't have much chance of solving it.

Gareth McCaughan

I guess having someone called Jason in a puzzle full of dates is kinda provocative, but I'm guessing it's coincidence (still not fishing for hints)

Rand al'Thor

(although, "call time for ants" = "flotsam clarinet" could be relevant?)

Gareth McCaughan

I hope the musician-ness isn't critical. Whether it completely disqualifies me from getting anywhere with the puzzle depends on what sort of musician, but I am utterly hopeless at the sort of question that requires you to know every track on every album released by some obscure 1980s pop group.

Clarinet is nice but flotsam seems so very useless that I doubt it

but who knows? I really don't understand the puzzle

(I'm sure there's some nontrivial thing we need to think of besides "try taking anagrams of the sillier bits of the messages")

Rand al'Thor

And "perform a bro feint truly" has the letters of trumpet in it.

Gareth McCaughan

1:33 AM

hmmmmmm

also tuba

and piano

and trombone

and flute

this seems like too much of a good thing -- I mean, it could be that IAmInPLS has crammed lots of instruments in, but isn't it more likely that you can often find some instruments in a not-too-short fragment of ordinaryish text?

ooh, baritone and baryton too

Rand al'Thor

Maybe the answer is "he's giving you an orchestra for your birthday" :-P

Gareth McCaughan

yeah, that'll be it. or, y'know, not.

IAmInPLS

6:41 AM

Hello everybody!

No answer on my puzzle, good to see you struggling mouahaha

Alright

You do require musical "knowledge"

Though, it is not about instruments

(this is a hint I guess)

"a call time for ants" : there is an anagram in this indeed, but all your guesses are wrong. Maybe remove one or two words...

Finally, I read that somebody gave something good, but I can't remember what ;-)

Rosie F

7:04 AM

call time ~ metallic. Reference to heavy metal?

IAmInPLS

7:24 AM

@RosieF Did you just remove 3 words? ;-)

Lukas Rotter

8:34 AM

Just had the perfect idea how I could've made my latest puzzle even harder... But I guess it's fine how it is :P Do you think I should already add a hint?

Lukas Rotter

8:54 AM

Just added a hint, since the puzzle has been only for 16 hours already.

Rosie F

9:57 AM

@IAmInPLS Thanks, IAmInPLS -- you've just guided me that last little bit to my first result with this puzzle.

Lukas Rotter

Maybe the solution is anagram, the band :P

The letters would match the total messages sent by the friend (7), so maybe there's one anagram per message. And the first letters of the discovered anagrams contain letters of anagram, suggesting that the first letters of all of them form another anagram. Just a thought, I'm probably totally off.

IAmInPLS

10:21 AM

@LukasRotter There's one message that doesn't contain an anagram ;)

And you are off for the rest unfortunately

@RosieF You're welcome! Although the category is not 'rock' :)

@LukasRotter Well, I just noticed that you counted the last message too. This one does not contain anagram either

Rand al'Thor

12:22 PM

Just got my first downvote here since my return.

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor I.e. you can accept one answer now? :P

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Yes, unless I repcap today :-)

Still looking at your text-message puzzle, btw. I suspect the dates and times of the messages are actually important in some way?

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor Yes, they are very important. The only reason why the "messenger" in the picture is a custom one I built myself quickly is because I had no messenger that displays the exact date and time for each message.

Rand al'Thor

> WP-WP-WP RS-RS-RS R-WO-WO-WO

Letter pairs make me think of Playfair, but you probably wouldn't use that again so soon ...

Lukas Rotter

12:44 PM

@Randal'Thor I'll say that much: There is one medium and one very strong clue in the "normal" text (i.e. the text that is not in the messages) of the question that hints to the used cipher.

The edit could also be used as a clue to determine the cipher, but the primary reason I put it there is to help people who already figured out the cipher.

Rand al'Thor

I wondered if there was such a thing as a Friedrich cipher, but there doesn't seem to be.

The I/MFREE is obviously a clue of some sort, but I'm not sure how to interpret it.

@LukasRotter By "the edit", you mean today's new message, or the edit you made just now to add "Sat"?

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor I mean today's new message. The "Sat" edit was just for consistency in the messages, it isn't anything important in this case.

Lukas Rotter

1:06 PM

Is it just me or would this question attract way too many loop hole answers without further limitations? Two of the answers seem OK, but marcoresk's answer seems like a loop hole to me (not = zero, dot = multiply, parenthisis = speech pause)... I think the OP wants a mathematical equation following the "conventions" (e.g. you must say multiply, not dot).

But since the answer got 3 upvotes, I guess many don't view it the same view... IMO if not == 0 and the rhythm of speech is allowed to indicate brackets, it should also be allowed to just say the number in binary with "a" as 0 and "b" as 1. Or, even better, use the rhythm of speech and just make a x-second pause, where x is the number!

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Thanks for reminding me; I just posted another answer there.

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor Btw, you're latest puzzle is also bugging me :P The fact that it is tagged with cipher is remarkable, since there is no obvious ciphertext. The only think I could think of is that the dates have to be converted to letters and then figure out the cipher somehow.

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter I will say that the tags on that puzzle are a hint.

Sid

2:48 PM

@Randal'Thor I am still looking for clues in your puzzle. All the dates are before the 26th.. So, tried converting them to letters... Sadly, I got nowhere.

Rand al'Thor

@Sid No maps needed this time, btw ;-)

Sid

3:05 PM

Yeah... I figured after some time.

Lukas Rotter

"I don't remember nothing" - I know that normally a double negative just intensifies the negation in english, but I would arrest him just for that suspicious statement :P

Sid

@LukasRotter They are drunk!! You can't arrest a man for rambling while being drunk...

Rand al'Thor

Ha! My answer to the riddle sandbox proposal is now higher-voted than the question itself :-D

Lukas Rotter

@Sid But how do they remember the dates so accurately if they're drunk? :P - "Loada rubbish if you ask me"

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Clearly the scenario described isn't completely realistic.

Lukas Rotter

3:14 PM

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I know. I always like to nitpick once I realize I don't have a clue how to solve the puzzle ^^

Sid

All the cities mentioned are the capitals of their respective countries... Maybe that is essential... Although I have no idea what to do next

Rand al'Thor

@Sid New York and Sydney aren't capitals.

I made sure to include some non-capital cities so that nobody would go up that blind alley.

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor Never really followed the sanbox proposal, to be honest. Once I heard of it I thought "Nice, now riddles will be solved within 3 seconds by people who already looked at it in the sandbox" and didn't look much further. Is there any sandbox on another SE site that worked?

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Apparently Programming Puzzles & Code Golf has a sandbox that works, but their questions aren't the same as ours. As I understand it, people can't look at a PPCG question in the sandbox and work out the 'right' answer to post as soon as it appears on the main site; they might work out an answer to post, but so can other people and there's no guarantee of which will be best.

Sid

I actually liked the sandbox idea until I noticed that it became overcrowded... And then gradually almost everyone lost interest in the idea...

Rand al'Thor

3:23 PM

@LukasRotter But yes, your criticism is quite right as far as this site is concerned. That was point 2 on my list, right up there with "new users will be driven away".

I suspect the answer to this riddle has something to do with oil and the Middle East ...

Sid

maybe the ISIS??

Rand al'Thor

Do they have a Hungarian or Russian connection?

Sid

Who knows?? people tend to blame USA for their rise. Maybe, the fact that Russia tries to bomb them or something. Don't know about Hungary...

Lukas Rotter

3:44 PM

Should the visual tag only be used if the puzzle requires to view the visual component in order to solve the puzzle, or can I tag any question that contains an imgae with it?

"A puzzle that incorporates a visual component like pictures, diagrams, drawings, etc. Do not use this tag for puzzles that discuss geometric objects without displaying them." - The description doesn't specify it, so I'd tend to the latter.

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter I'd say tags should be used to represent meaningful content of the puzzle. To take an extreme example, if you post a riddle or some cryptic crossword clues and include a cat picture in the question, that shouldn't be tagged visual unless the cat picture is actually part of the puzzle.

Or if someone writes down a riddle by hand, scans it, and uploads it as an image file, that shouldn't be tagged visual unless there's some actual information in that image file which wouldn't be included if they'd just typed out the riddle in the question box.

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor Ok thanks, I guess I'll bump my latest puzzles up by editing them now :P

Rand al'Thor

(Ahh, it's nice to run into an old puzzle that you'd forgotten you'd written ...)

@LukasRotter The "error message" question is sort of visual though.

You've expressed the puzzle in a visual form which adds something more to it than just that list of coordinates, and the picture of the 7x7 grid is actually needed.

Whereas in the text-message puzzle, all the image really is is just a picture of the same enciphered text you've also written by hand.

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor But it doesn't require the visual component, everything can be solved by the coordinates I posted. Pretty much the same concept as your scan example. And I've also stated in plain text that it's a 7x7 grid

Oh, I forgot, I didn't include the playfair hint in plain-text... Nevermind I'll edit it again :P

Deusovi

5:45 PM

For the scavenger hunt, we just have "faster to take 7th, with those two following (6)" and "Silly snot scan arrests ridiculous ornate pimp".

@Randal'Thor, @GarethMcCaughan - got any ideas?

I'm pretty sure we're looking for anagrams of "snot scan" and "ornate pimp".

I've had no luck there though.

Maria Deleva

I was looking for anagrams of the first letters, but there are too many s. and for the first - no idea

Deusovi

Hm, anagrams of the first letters?

Nah, those seem to be cryptic-ish indicators.

Maria Deleva

s,s,s,o,p, r, a

Deusovi

I think "silly" and "ridiculous" are anagram indicators for the words that follow them.

Rand al'Thor

@MariaDeleva This crossword of yours is fun and challenging!

I thought I was onto something with ERATO, but OTO seems to be meaningless.

Deusovi

5:52 PM

Oh yeah, I haven't tried that!

Maria Deleva

@Randal'Thor thanks. OTO is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordo_Templi_Orientis

Rand al'Thor

Oh, abbreviations are allowed?

Maria Deleva

Yes, of international organisations.

There is actually one more abbreviation, but it is quite popular one. :) and is not an organisation. Also, I thought someone would solve the cryptic clue first :) @Randal'Thor

Rand al'Thor

Not sure what SEO is, but I'm quite confident in that S.

Search Engine Optimisation?

Maria Deleva

Yes, and most big companies have such job positions :)

Rand al'Thor

6:07 PM

So I guess it must be FAFF and FAEL rather than SASS and SAEL.

Maria Deleva

Nope.

Rand al'Thor

I've been through the whole alphabet for 14 A 14 14!

Is GAGG a word?

Maria Deleva

Well, we could keep guessing like that :)

you missed to replace one 13 in your crossword :) In the last column

Rand al'Thor

Oops, thanks.

Maria Deleva

And a 3 on the same row

ffao

6:11 PM

I probably should be discussing the puzzle in chat rather than in comments

Maria Deleva

yes, it would be better :)

ffao

I still think 20=I, 1=F, and 8=W though :P

Maria Deleva

and Rand disagrees? :)

Rand al'Thor

@ffao I'm not going to ask why ... I'm trying to solve it all by myself (with maybe a little help from Maria) :-)

ffao

ah, I like cooperation more than I do racing :P

but you can solve it alone then

@MariaDeleva: isn't the guy's name La Fontaine? there's one extra letter

Rand al'Thor

6:18 PM

2 and 20 must both be vowels.

So they must be I and U in some order.

ffao

I'm guessing 2=U and you misspelled it as La Fountaine

Maria Deleva

I guess, I misspelled it. I tried checking it on google, but I guess copying is not my strong suit... :)

But there is also a not so popular guy (actually several) with an U

Rand al'Thor

Aha! I finally solved the cryptic clue.

I was barking up the wrong tree because I assumed "crazy" meant anagram.

ffao

I win the race

yoo

Rand al'Thor

6:35 PM

@ffao Wut? :-(

I still don't know what Ginir and Babb are, but those are the only letters that fit elsewhere.

ffao

babb is a surname, apparently

Maria Deleva

@ffao, I upvoted your answer, but Rand's answer is still better presented. Maybe you could include some more information on how you solved it, what is the answer to the cryptic clue, etc. I feel uneasy accepting this answer, even though it is complete and Rand's is still not.

Ginir is a town in Ethiopia

Babb is the surname of whoever you choose of this list: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babb

Rand al'Thor

@Maria Finished! :-D

Now to look at @ffao's answer ...

Maria Deleva

So I should start thinking of a new puzzle now :)

Rand al'Thor

"Starting with where Rand left off" ... better to say exactly where, since mine is now complete :-)

Maria Deleva

6:47 PM

Well, yours was complete with all explanations and everything before his. Although ffao did get the crossword first.

Unfortunately, I have no way of accepting two answers.

as it was a close race so to speak

ffao

rand is a lot more methodical

my approach was more like "this looks like word X, so let's fill X and see if this takes us anywhere"

Rand al'Thor

@ffao Yep :-D You'll see that a lot in my answers here.

@ffao Well, I tried that a few times at first and buggered it up, so I had to be more careful.

But of course once you've already got half the letters, it becomes much easier.

The hardest part was between LLAMA and STEM.

ffao

the first six letters

Maria Deleva

Well, for now the reputation seems pretty much evenly distributed :)

ffao

once you had T it was all much easier

Maria Deleva

6:51 PM

And how wrong was I thinking that the starting point will be the cryptic clue solution...

Rand al'Thor

@ffao Yep: narrowing it down even more, R and T were probably the two hardest to get.

ffao

I didn't care about the rep anyway, the only reason I submitted my own answer was because rand didn't want help with his :P

and I wanted to solve the crossword anyway because it looked fun, so yeah

Rand al'Thor

Anyway, thanks to @ffao posting an answer, the question has now hit HNQs :-)

Maria Deleva

wow, didn't expect that :)

Rand al'Thor

So it's REP FOR ALL!

Lukas Rotter

6:54 PM

Just added another hint here, and slowly I get the feeling that the puzzle is way too hard :(

Maria Deleva

hahahhaah @Randal'Thor that was funny :)

ffao

I took a look at that puzzle before, but I'm terrible with ciphers

for some reason, we have a lot of puzzles where dates are relevant lately

Maria Deleva

me too. if it is not a simple substitution cipher, I could break with the cryptogram solver, I have no chance of breaking it :)

I don't even know where to start

Rand al'Thor

@ffao I take it that means you've seen my Puzznk question :-)

Lukas Rotter

@ffao Ikr? :D This‌, this and mine all have dates as a relevent part and were all posted in a 12 hour period, I think!

ffao

7:00 PM

@Randal'Thor the most puzzling thing about the Puzznk question is the "cipher" tag, so I guess the dates must be encoding something related to the cities

but that's all I could think about

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter And of course yours also had a similar theme to @IAmInPLS's.

6 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter I will say that the tags on that puzzle are a hint.

ffao

the drug one has exactly 24 possible locations, so the date must be some sort of key that tells you how to relate times to locations, but don't know exactly how

Lukas Rotter

I first thought that the dates just have to be converted to letters and they then represent airport codes (not the first time rand would use them), and then... Well... "I dunno, man" (the puzzle is perfect for quotes for some reason...)

Hugh Meyers

Odd the way several people can get similar ideas at once.

Maria Deleva

well, I guess people are not that different after all :)

ffao

7:04 PM

I guess if that puzzle were airport codes it would have been solved in 5 minutes, because it was the first thing I tried too :P

Hugh Meyers

Good old Jung and the theory of synchronicity.

Rand al'Thor

No airport codes, I promise. Most or all of those cities have more than one airport anyway, so there wouldn't even be a unique code for them!

Lukas Rotter

@ffao Yeah, I also dismissed the idea after I tried it on two dates... After that I was pretty much clueless.

ffao

7:18 PM

closing math puzzles is still so random

I can't for the life of me figure out why the tangram one was closed

Maria Deleva

yeah - that let me wondering as well. and I gave up on further working on and posting a similar puzzle :)

Rand al'Thor

I think there's enough of a 'trick' / interesting approach to this that it's a maths puzzle and not just an exercise. Voting to leave open. — rand al'thor 25 mins ago

And voted to reopen the tangram puzzle.

Hmm, looks like @BeastlyGerbil VTCs too much :-)

Maria Deleva

but still - we would need better info for the triangles. I am pretty sure 2 of them have 90 degree angle

ffao

yeah, I think that one should be closed under maybe under a different reason

or maybe the info is enough, I didn't give that too much thought

Lukas Rotter

Just noticed there are two typos in the description of the cipher tag: "A cipher is a simple method of modifying messages to make them unreadable, but still possible to recover. Common ciphers are Caesar, Vignere, Atbash, and several types of substitution cipher." Could someone who has the power please fix them?

Rand al'Thor

7:28 PM

@LukasRotter What's the second typo?

I just fixed Vigenere.

Lukas Rotter

Isn't the plural of cipher ciphers? "several types of substitution cipher"

Rand al'Thor

Yes, but it's OK to say "several types of [singular]".

ffao

I think I might have been more angry by the fact that almost everything with the math tag has 3 close votes

but a quick search shows that none have been actually closed, so it's fine

Rand al'Thor

"There are many types of car on the road" is as good English as "There are many types of cars on the road".

Lukas Rotter

@Randal'Thor Oh well, thanks for giving me a free lecture in English :P How embarrassing, a smartass trying to point out typos makes a mistake himself :P

Rand al'Thor

7:31 PM

:-)

ffao

at least in my language "types of car" makes more grammatical sense, but so many people use both that both are now acceptable

Lukas Rotter

7:54 PM

53 mins ago, by Rand al'Thor

6 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter I will say that the tags on that puzzle are a hint.

I still don't get the hint... We already realized before he posted this comment that some kind of cipher is involved. If he wanted to hint at that, then maybe Caesar, Atbash or Vigenere is involved (according to the description). story doesn't seem to say much except that it's... a story. And the description of mystery suggests that there are clues hidden inside the question for "deducing conclusions" - So maybe there are inconsistencies/paradoxes in the statements?

Does anyone else (except rand) have an idea?

Mithrandir

@LukasRotter What question?

Lukas Rotter

4

Q: A murder in the Puzznk rock band

There has been a murder! Crazy Dan, one of the members of the Puzznk rock band, was found dead on the ground after a wild party with the other band members last Saturday. He didn't die of an overdose either: he had a knife sticking out of his back. Detective Inspector Jorkins is in charge of th...

Gareth McCaughan

9:04 PM

@Lukas Rotter, you have fallen victim to Muphry's Law (and no, that isn't a typo).

2

I'm still thoroughly stuck on the last two crosswordy clues in the historical scavenger hunt.

Lukas Rotter

@GarethMcCaughan Nice, never even heard of that one before. At least these mistakes are common enough that someone already invented a law for it, so I feel less bad :P

Gareth McCaughan

Yup. Happens all the time. (Believe me, I checked carefully that I hadn't mistyped Muphry. That would have been ... entirely appropriate.)

Maria Deleva

It is not a mistake, it is a feature ;P

Gareth McCaughan

Hmm, here's a thing. We have to take the year of ALL ____ ____, add it to 1/7 of the birthdate of "faster ...", and get a 4-digit year. That seems to imply that ALL ____ ____ is at least 1000-2000/7 or thereabouts, i.e., at least 715. Which rules out e.g. anything related to the (classical) Roman Empire. So what the hell are those emperors for?

Maria Deleva

just a random thought, without checking it at all - what if we sum the years they have ruled or some other years connected with them?

Gareth McCaughan

9:17 PM

How would that give us the 6-digit word we need for ALL ____ ____ ?

*6-letter

Maria Deleva

roman numerals?

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi Random question: how do you pronounce your username? (For some reason, I think of it as "day-uss-oh-vee", but that's probably completely wrong.)

ffao

so all romans ordered would be MCLXVI = 1166?

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan ... 1000-2000/7 is nowhere near 715?

Rosie F

@ffao MDCLXVI=1666.

ffao

9:19 PM

@RosieF true.

Maria Deleva

but that would be 7 letters

ffao

doesn't make a lot of sense to put (year) afterwards if ALL ____ etc isn't describing an event, but a random number

so it could be something else still

Gareth McCaughan

@Rand, (1) surely Deusovi is pronounced exactly as you say and is Latin for "god of sheep"; (2) 2000/7 ~= 285 so 1000-2000/7 ~= 715; what am I missing?

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan OK, then I must be misunderstanding your notation. I thought you were talking about taking a number between 1000 and 2000 and dividing it by 7.

Ahh, you mean 1000 minus 2000/7. Sorry, my mistake!

I've probably fallen victim to Mur9hy'5 law or something.

ffao

9:38 PM

snot scan arrests ornate pimp = Constans arrests Pope Martin?

if that is relevant, it happened in 653 btw en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Gareth McCaughan

oooooo

and looking at that I see that the letters I wrote down for ORNATE PIMP are missing an I, which I would claim as my excuse for not getting it if it weren't for the fact that I'm 99.5% sure I wouldn't have got it with the right letters either.

another random thought: if the Nuremberg defence is taken to be "WE WERE ORDERED" rather than e.g. "WE WERE OBEYING" then maybe ALL ____ ORDERED is actually another anagram and ALLROMANS or something anagrams to an event whose year we need.

Deusovi

11:36 PM

I came to the conclusion that "all romans ordered" referred to MDCLXVI as well

@Randal'Thor That's... pretty much how I pronounce it. There's no "official" pronunciation or anything, and I even 'say' it different ways at different times.

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