The Sphinx's Lair

Rand al'Thor

1:26 PM

Delete votes needed from 10k-ers (@Gareth @Will @Alconja?): one, two, three, four.

(yes, I'm trying to clear out the bad humour questions before the tag goes)

Rand al'Thor

2:37 PM

Next stop, 45678.

Beastly Gerbil

:P

Sid

3:06 PM

@Randal'Thor That is not a multiple of 5

Rand al'Thor

@Sid I accepted an answer to get a neat score and then unaccepted it to get back to a multiple of 5 ;-)

Sid

@Randal'Thor Lol. DOn't get me wrong, but you are weird.

And btw, you were right about comb and plateau being strange words. They were there for a reason

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Thank you :-) bows

@Sid And maybe "quadratic" too?

Sid

3:26 PM

@Randal'Thor Yep that too

Rand al'Thor

Hmm ... "comb", "plateau", and "quadratic" are all at the ends of lines as I see the text. But I imagine that's just coincidence, and if I change the width of my browser window, they won't be any more.

Sid

Well, I can't comment on that, although I didn't think about the browser width stuff before posting that. Will take that into account, the next time....

Rand al'Thor

From "comb" it's 42 words to "quadratic" and then another 18 to "plateau". Suggests that every 2 or 3 or 6 words might be significant.

Sid

I am enjoying this

Rand al'Thor

But "buzz" also looks significant, and from "buzz" to "comb" it's 29 words, which is prime :-/

Sid

3:38 PM

Seems odd, doesn't it?

Rand al'Thor

OK, looking at the words at the ends of lines gives me: "bluff Hurrah buzz (important) comb loss (psychologically) quadratic plateau respite frozen bluff better".

FHZ(T)BS(Y)CUENFR

Sid

Yeah, cipher tag is not only for morse code

Rand al'Thor

I noticed some weirdly placed commas in the text outside the letter too.

Which makes me think maybe all those commas in the letter aren't important after all.

Sid

English is not my native language. So, Grammar errors may be forgiven

Rand al'Thor

And punctuation errors? :-)

Because I've spent a lot of time analysing those commas.

Sid

3:50 PM

Everything is intended in the quoted text.

Rand al'Thor

Hmph. Just tried considering full stops and commas per line instead of per sentence, but still no joy.

Sid

4:13 PM

@RosieF Fancy a try? Last time, you had solved the main portion of the puzzle

Rosie F

@Sid Hi. I have actually had a look at your puzzle, but I couldn't see anything more than what other people had already spotted and answered.

Sid

WOw, is it that difficult? I thought it would be solved soon. Maybe, there is too less views, probably due to the weekends.. I would perhaps wait another few days before posting hints..

Rand al'Thor

4:28 PM

Running FHZT BSY CUENFR through quipqiup gives an interesting selection of results.

> Andy the social

Perhaps the character in your story is named Andy, and he failed his exams because he spent too much time socialising?

Sid

4:44 PM

@Randal'Thor I wrote it in first person..

Rand al'Thor

Sid the Social? :-P

Sid

I think, you got the "END".. So, There is something wrong in your code..

And Disastrous results doesn't mean I "failed"

Rand al'Thor

End of what?

Sid

Arbitary Kangaroo got it, I think, must be in the chat history

Rand al'Thor

22 hours ago, by Arbitrary Kangaroo

Each letter of first paragraph spell "END", and I have checked first/last letters of last words before dot/before commas. Nothing useful

^ meaning "the first letter of each paragraph", I assume

Sid

4:51 PM

Yeah, what could "END" possibly mean??

Rand al'Thor

Ends of lines? (FHZ etc.)

Ends of words?

Sid

I would leave you to find that out. I am AFK for the next 19 hours, So, good luck

Rand al'Thor

OK, thanks! :-)

TheBitByte

6:48 PM

Hello!

Hey!

Hi!

Hi Rand

My friend needs help decoding a weird message.

It says on the front of the paper:

ThisIsACipher ----> TrehpiCAsIsih

And on the back:

?? ---> CnoSletaYuovI

If you need more information I will inform you, but my friend thinks you're a good puzzle solver.

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi Are you sure this is a dupe? I haven't completely got my head around the two puzzles, but:

If I'm understanding this right, the difference between your question and that of Tyler Seacrest is that he wanted a strategy to maximise $\lim_{N\rightarrow\infty}(\frac{W}{N})$ while you want an $N$ and a strategy to maximise $\frac{W}{N}$. Is that correct? — rand al'thor 36 mins ago

Deusovi

6:54 PM

That's just "Keep first letter, flip rest". So it would be CIvouYatelSon, which doesn't mean anything to me, but...

TheBitByte

@Deusovi Well, he says the result is an actual English text, not gibberish.

Deusovi

@TheBitByte Wow, your friend is responding really quickly. :P

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte I bet it's got a "You've" in it.

TheBitByte

@Randal'Thor My friend says betting is bad, and it is, of course, and he says that you are close, but wrong.

Deusovi

Probably just "You". It also looks like it contains "Solve".

"You Can Solve It".

TheBitByte

6:56 PM

@Deusovi My friend says he thinks the exact text isn't like this, but you are almost exactly close. He also wants to know how you found it, because he has other weird messages too!

Lukas Rotter

Here's a code. Can you crack it?: fw8904730983kf89023ncweamnfiope20tmi9b6m89ny327nery895mbi9tm0ei09x2e1m3y8n2 Good luck!

2

Deusovi

Oh, "Can You Solve It".

I just anagrammed.

TheBitByte

@Deusovi My friend says it is not just anagramed, but enciphered using some method. He also says to check your spaces between the words.

Deusovi

Yes, I know the spaces aren't there originally.

And I know it's not just anagrammed, but frankly, I can't be bothered to figure out the exact permutation.

Rand al'Thor

^

Deusovi

6:59 PM

And the sample space is small enough so that it's pretty obvious what the message is once you find it.

Sure, it wouldn't work for a bigger text, but I probably wouldn't do a bigger text anyway. I'm not much of a fan of ciphers at all.

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil You don't like Bayes's Theorem? :-P

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor ?

Beastly Gerbil

I didn't actually know what it was till your answer

Rosie F

This shows why cipher puzzles with very short plaintexts are not good -- either simply enciphered and easily crackable, or else practically impossible to crack

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi Because he didn't accept this answer.

TheBitByte

7:02 PM

My friend knows this, but he says intuition doesn't always work. He says he's got another (and the final, it seems) weird message, could you please help him?

It says "SdraHkroWoTevaHuoYsemitemo"

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor, no offence its just I thought the other answer explained it better :P

Rand al'Thor

@RosieF With a very short plaintext, it might be better to use steganography and embed the message in something longer.

Beastly Gerbil

Any way you don't need any extra rep :P

Deusovi

"SometimesYouHaveToWorkHard".

Keep first letter, reverse rest.

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte SometimesYouHaveToWorkHard.

Deusovi

7:03 PM

Just like your first one.

Rand al'Thor

Dammit @Deusovi :-P

Deusovi

:D

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Only because you haven't got far enough in maths yet to know about Bayes's Theorem ;-) That's the method to use for solving basically all problems of that kind, but the method used in the other answer won't always work.

@BeastlyGerbil This is undoubtedly true.

Beastly Gerbil

@Rand Oh ok, like you say I asked a question which involved maths which I don't yet understand so probably shouldn't have asked in the first place :P

TheBitByte

Good. My friend wants to thank you. He managed to figure it out himself, too, and has a little puzzle for you, although it might not be the same:

"euiTnrTsoXroogAgmioXAYGnoaahT?"

Deusovi

7:05 PM

Ugh.

You just said it was "the final" weird message.

Look, I don't like ciphers.

Beastly Gerbil

@TheBitByte, this isn't the place you post puzzles

TheBitByte

@Deusovi My friend though so, but he says this one is easy.

Deusovi

@BeastlyGerbil Nah, you can. Nothing wrong with that. I've posted a few cryptic clues here before.

TheBitByte

@BeastlyGerbil Maybe you can help my friend!

Deusovi

@TheBitByte Your "friend" is pretty clearly you.

And I can't be bothered to figure out the permutation you used.

Ciphers are generally not fun.

Beastly Gerbil

7:07 PM

These aren't even ciphers, just anagrams

Deusovi

@TheBitByte No. I never claimed I could prove it. But it seems pretty likely to me.

@BeastlyGerbil Transposition ciphers are ciphers.

Transposition cipher

In cryptography, a transposition cipher is a method of encryption by which the positions held by units of plaintext (which are commonly characters or groups of characters) are shifted according to a regular system, so that the ciphertext constitutes a permutation of the plaintext. That is, the order of the units is changed (the plaintext is reordered). Mathematically a bijective function is used on the characters' positions to encrypt and an inverse function to decrypt. Following are some implementations. == Rail Fence cipher == The Rail Fence cipher is a form of transposition cipher that gets...

Beastly Gerbil

Oh didnt know that

Lukas Rotter

I love cipher-puzzles, but only ones that involve hints wrapped up in stories, in riddles, other forms of giving clues, etc. Just throwing a ciphertext out and saying "Decrypt it!" isn't fun for me personally to solve, even if it's an easy cipher.

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil No problem. I don't really have a very good intuitive understanding of probability either :-)

Deusovi

^

@Randal'Thor Nobody does (as far as I know, at least). Small numbers are really hard to visualize.

TheBitByte

7:11 PM

Okay, just because you said it:

Three doors, classic Monty hall, but Monty has no idea what is behind each doors. Same thing overall, however, Monty will never open a car by mistake.

Switch, or stay?

Deusovi

That's the exact same as the regular Monty Hall.

Nothing changes.

Pick a goat, he picks the other goat. Pick a car, he picks randomly between the other two.

TheBitByte

@Deusovi Wrong! :)

Deusovi

Okay, then what's the difference? Can you give me an example of a situation that could happen under one but not the other?

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte How can Monty never pick a car by mistake if he has no idea what is behind each door?

TheBitByte

@Deusovi You mean what's the difference or what's the answer? :D

Deusovi

7:15 PM

@TheBitByte No, I mean what's the difference.

TheBitByte

@Randal'Thor logical-deduction, not lateral-thinking, and also, the puzzle just says that.

Deusovi

@TheBitByte No, that's a valid question, and an important one too.

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte If Monty knows he can never pick a car by mistake, then he must know which door the car is behind, which is equivalent to knowing exactly what's behind each door.

Rosie F

@LukasRotter I know what you mean, but I wouldn't be able to write a convincing espionage narrative and wouldn't care to try. Pity, because I'd like to explore what is in the sweet spot between "trivially crackable" and "no fun to try to crack".

Sconibulus

@Randal'Thor ...unless the prize is a boat, not a car...

Rand al'Thor

7:17 PM

The assumption that Monty never picks the car by mistake is exactly equivalent, for the purposes of the puzzle, to the assumption that he knows exactly what's behind each door.

Lukas Rotter

@TheBitByte I logically deduct that Monty never picks a door with a car behind it, even if it's a 1/3 chance every time. Because magic.

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor Exactly what I was saying.

Rand al'Thor

@Sconibulus Heh :-) But TBB just said it's not lateral-thinking.

Sconibulus

He also said it was a different puzzle, so he's lying at least once :)

TheBitByte

Let me rephrase the puzzle: Monty doesn't know what's behind each door. He then opens a door at random, and it happens to not reveal the car.

Switch, or stay?

Deusovi

7:21 PM

@TheBitByte Okay, and that's the "Monty Fall" problem. That's different, and it's 50/50 then.

3

Actually, that's the question that you already posted.

-2

Q: Monty's At Random Hall

There are three doors. Behind one of them is a car. You want that car. Behind the other two doors are goats. You pick a door, but it is not opened. The host, Monty, opens one other door at random, and he asks you if you want to keep your selection, or switch to the third door, which has not bee...

logical-deduction

Rand al'Thor

I still think that's the same as the classic Monty Hall. Again, the assumption that Monty doesn't pick the car is exactly equivalent to the assumption that he knows what's behind each door, but the purposes of the puzzle. But I may be wrong: I know it's very easy to make logical errors where Monty Hall is concerned!

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor Nah, this isn't an assumption. It just happens to be the case in this specific run. He could pick the car in a different trial.

TheBitByte

@Deusovi If you look closely, in the question I already posted, Monty indeed can open a car by mistake. However, the answer still remains 50/50.

Deusovi

Yes, because all of the cases in which that happens are "can't happen" or "doesn't matter".

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi See, I told you I don't like probability :-P

Sconibulus

7:23 PM

If he picks the car, are you allowed to switch to that one?

Rand al'Thor

Anyway, dinnertime. BBL.

Sconibulus

I don't remember exactly how the game is worded, is it "you can switch doors" or "you can switch to the unopened door"

Deusovi

:32678089 ...What? I didn't get anything wrong this time though.

Lukas Rotter

@RosieF Hard to say, but you definitely don't have to write a story for it to be conceived as good. Judging by the upvotes, my latest two cipher puzzle, where one was about an exception dialog and the other one about a messenger conversation, were pretty well received. Not any author-level story, just some visual components to make it look interesting and mysterious hints :P

TheBitByte

@LukasRotter Mysterious hints. That's what I usually do in my cipher puzzles.

Except my puzzles are more confusing than specifically mysterious.

Lukas Rotter

7:28 PM

:32678111 You just said "think before you type" and removed the last two comments? Nice! :D

3

TheBitByte

@LukasRotter BY the way, I was surprised how you solved my other ciphers, but not the cipher machine, which I think was a bit easy.

Deusovi

@TheBitByte Well of course you thought it was easy - you wrote it! You already knew the solution.

I over- and under- estimate the difficulty of my puzzles all the time.

3

TheBitByte

@Deusovi I though it was easy because I genuinely thought it was a bit easy, although then again maybe it wasn't, for some people.

Lukas Rotter

@TheBitByte Really? It involved a vigenere-cipher with an auto-keyed alphabet and a passphrase, which is more than the puzzles I solved. An I'm not sure how to deduce the reversed "cipher", but I don't have the exact story in mind.

Beastly Gerbil

8:20 PM

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/43575/…

Erm?

Lukas Rotter

@BeastlyGerbil Well, that's weird... Maybe the title was too long?

Beastly Gerbil

Well yes its weird that it didn't load, but I was pointing out how low quality the puzzle was

Thank god, he edited that title

TheBitByte

@LukasRotter The title (now removed) was a combination of ciphers. However, the actual cipher you have to solve is in the post.

Lukas Rotter

11:06 PM

This comment by @TheBitByte made me question the etiquette on downvoting answers. As I see it, the question "[..] and how would it continue?" is just an extra question for fun, nothing to take seriously (except the answer violates rules, of course). Obviously everyone has there own criteria by which they downvote, but is it generally acceptable to downvote answers because of this?

I.e. in your opinion the continued list (in this case) isn't "good"?

Deusovi

@LukasRotter You can downvote or upvote answers however you want, as long as it's based solely on the content of the answer. It's not unacceptable to downvote for that reason. I personally wouldn't, but it's not an offense or anything.

Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter People can cast downvotes for any reason or none, and there's nothing that can be done to stop them (unless they start serially downvoting a particular person). I certainly wouldn't encourage downvoting for that sort of reason, but it's up to TBB if he wants to do so.

The quality of TBB's own puzzles has been ... not good, so he might be salty over all the downvotes he's received. Who knows.

Gareth McCaughan

11:24 PM

For sure, anyone can downvote anything for any reason. But I think downvoting Deusovi's answer for the reason TBB gave was entirely un-called-for and I think puzzling.s.c would be a worse place if that sort of downvote were commonplace.

TheBitByte

@Randal'Thor Let me just say that is false. I would advise you to delete this.

Gareth McCaughan

What in particular is demonstrably false? I can't imagine how anyone could demonstrate that the quality of their puzzles has or hasn't been good, or that they were or weren't peeved over the downvotes they'd received.

(I don't see any reason why @Randal'Thor should delete his comment, and in general I am not a fan of deleting comments here.)

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte What's your problem today? First you were picking on @Deusovi and @Gareth in comments on their answers, now you're criticising my question too. Are you annoyed because of the reception your ciphers received in chat earlier, or what?

Deusovi

You have 13 questions. The sum of their scores is 4, and one of them even goes down to -9. This shows that many people thought your puzzles were low-quality.

Puzzling Meta

0

Q: What is the current editing policy of this site?

I came across this heavily edited puzzle Cipher, cipher, ciphers. In the comment section a fairly new user is warned by one of our moderator team members, not to edit their post frequently. The presense of the moderator indicates, that something might be off here. I think users making efforts...

discussion

Rand al'Thor

11:30 PM

@TheBitByte I may not have seen all of your puzzles, but I've certainly seen some bad ones at least. Remember those logic puzzles of yours I tried to answer, which were unsolvable at first and which you kept changing over and over again while answers were coming in, in a desperate attempt to make them make sense?

TheBitByte

@Randal'Thor I was not "picking" on anybody. I was just providing constructive criticism, and people must accept criticism otherwise how else would posts and answers improve here? Also, I'm not sure why you're associating this with some personal anger of mine, that is simply false.

Rand al'Thor

I mean, don't take this personally. My first puzzle here was crap as well. We're all learning all the time :-)

@PuzzlingMeta ~~I'm pretty sure this is a duplicate ...~~ Hmph, maybe not.

@TheBitByte I did accept your criticism, and responded constructively to it in comments. I'm just wondering why you were being negative about both the answerers and then the question too.

TheBitByte

@Randal'Thor Constructive criticism might be commonly associated with negativity of some sort, but it seeks to help people improve their answers and/or posts, not the other way around.

Gareth McCaughan

Speaking of deletion, I see that @TheBitByte has done a Very Annoying Thing s/he keeps doing: make a comment on (in this case) Rand's question, get an answer, and then delete the comment making the answer no longer make sense. If I were Rand I'd be a bit cross about that, and not because of any problem with getting constructive criticism.

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte Constructive criticism is always welcome.

But as to your comment on my question, this is one of the reasons I like these pattern puzzles with short clues hinting at elements of a well-known series. You don't have to bother making each clue precise enough to have only one possible solution, because even if there are many possibilities, only one will make sense with the whole thing.

TheBitByte

11:40 PM

@GarethMcCaughan This can be done, when, for example, somebody posts a comment about an issue with a question and that comment becomes no longer relevant with the latst edit to the question.

Gareth McCaughan

In this particular case, I offer the following evidence that the question was in no sense unreasonably broad: Two solvers independently found the same solution the author had intended within a few minutes of posting.

Rand al'Thor

You're right that each individual clue might be too broad, but "Pavlopoulos, hip hip hurray, Tom Cruise, elephant's mouth, repetition" makes a lot less sense as a solution than "alpha, bravo, Charlie, delta, echo".

Gareth McCaughan

@TheBitByte Yes, I understand that sometimes there is sufficient reason for deleting comments (though I think only rather rarely). This is not, however, such a case. You complained (I assume -- I can't see what you actually wrote) that the individual clues were too broad. Rand explained why he didn't think so, but didn't change the puzzle. And then you deleted your original comment.

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte Yes, but I didn't edit the question! :-)

TheBitByte

@GarethMcCaughan Okay, I complained about something an issue with the question, and I was a bit wrong, meaning my comment is not really relevant, hence the deletion. This is quite similar to the example I just mentioned.

Rand al'Thor

11:43 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Nah, I'm not cross about that. I can just delete my comment too.

@GarethMcCaughan It said (still on my screen, since I haven't refreshed the page):

> Isn't "a famous actor" a bit too broad? Also, "5. 5. 5. 5. 5. 5." could be potentially interpreted as "Repetition" And, "A thousand" could be interpreted potentially as "Millennium*" – TheBitByte 19 mins ago

Gareth McCaughan

@TheBitByte The fact that a comment was "a bit wrong" is not, I think, grounds for deleting it.

TheBitByte

@GarethMcCaughan Per my earlier example, that indeed would be grounds for deleting it, at least in my opinion. In fact Rand could equally delete his comment too if he wished. I think such clarifications are more suitable to be asked in chat, not comments.

Gareth McCaughan

Well, it seems unlikely that we're going to reach agreement on this. I'll just restate my opinion that in general deletion of comments (whether here in chat or in comments on a question or answer) is a Bad Thing because it falsifies the historical record and removes context from later things, and leave it there. Of course you are not obliged to agree with me.

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte Well, since we're both here in chat, you could as easily have asked me here as engaged in all those comments.

Gareth McCaughan

Also generally a Bad Thing: editing the text of a comment in such a way as to make nonsense of someone else's response to it. E.g., if you claim that something is "demonstrably false", someone disagrees, and you realise they are right, the appropriate response is "Oh yeah, you're right. I should just have said 'false'".

4

TheBitByte

11:51 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Well, in my opinion, what you're stating is a bit broad. Deletion of comments is not in and of itself a "wrong" thing, this depends on the specific situation in question, and even then there might be some level of subjectivity involved.

Gareth McCaughan

Rather than to edit your comment so it just says "false", so that the other person's comment looks like nonsense.

TheBitByte

@Randal'Thor That is an error on my side, I guess. I'll hopefully try to do that next time.

Gareth McCaughan

(In case I am not being blatant enough: this is exactly what happened right here in this discussion, as I only just noticed. So now it looks as if I responded to @TheBitByte's comment in an entirely inappropriate and unreasonable way.)

I strongly object to this.

Deusovi

Agreed.

TheBitByte

@GarethMcCaughan We were talking about deletion, not editing. Are you sure that we are on the same page?

Deusovi

11:52 PM

No, we were talking about modifying the record.

Gareth McCaughan

We were talking about deletion. I am now talking about another variety of falsifying the historical record.

Rand al'Thor

@TheBitByte True. One of the things mods are here for is to make decisions on whether comments should be deleted, e.g. once they've been flagged.

@TheBitByte Gareth moved on from deletion to editing: hence the "also" in his last starred comment.

Gareth McCaughan

(incidentally, there is another option that avoids misrepresentation: you edit your comment to (1) fix the mistake and (2) acknowledge that you've edited it and clarify what it used to say.)

TheBitByte

@GarethMcCaughan That sort of implies deletion in and of itself is de facto "falsifying the record", which it doesn't necessarily have to be.

Deusovi

Sure, not necessarily. But in this context, it is.

Gareth McCaughan

11:55 PM

It necessarily has to be, because it means that what appears to someone reading differs from what actually happened. In some cases it's benign (e.g., you fix an inconsequential typo; or you make a less trivial fix and make it clear in the edit what you've done and what used to be there). In others, not so much.

TheBitByte

@GarethMcCaughan I could see this having two issues: 1) I might not be able to edit the comment in time, and 2) People would see my edited comment and think the person replying to it is replying to the edit and that it's redundant, when in reality it may not always be like this.

Gareth McCaughan

and whether or not deletion is falsification (either in general, or in any particular case) there is no question that what you did above, editing your comment to make nonsense of my response to it, was falsification.

TheBitByte

@GarethMcCaughan There's a bit of subjectivity and people's own opinions involved here, let's not forget about that. Otherwise an objective framework would need to be defined for most forms of deletion in general, which is either very hard or almost impossible.

Rand al'Thor

For instance, I just flagged most of these comments as off-topic chatter:

Deusovi

Yeah, no.

That was not subjective.

Rand al'Thor

11:57 PM

Which isn't any kind of slight against the commenters involved: comments aren't designed to be permanent, after all.

Gareth McCaughan

Almost everything is at least a little bit subjective. But there really is very little subjectivity about the following question: If you write something and someone else responds, is it reasonable to edit what you wrote so that it looks like they're an idiot?

@Randal'Thor Are there any adverse consequences to a user if many of their comments get flagged? (I'm guessing not.)

Deusovi

@GarethMcCaughan Nope.

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