The Sphinx's Lair

Alconja

1:01 AM

@Randal'Thor DASHBOARD (def: console, one's father (about) = DA...D, hasbro (broken) = SHBOAR)

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja Good job!

Deusovi

Ah, nice!

What about "toy" though?

And "his", for that matter?

Alconja

yeah... I'm assuming slightly rule breaking for readability

Rand al'Thor

Like I said, it was hard to get a smooth surface reading. I had to introduce a couple of superfluous words.

Originally I was trying to use "abhors" instead of "Hasbro", but couldn't make it fit.

Rubio

Nice @Alconja - I tried dozens of words for console, never thought of dashboard

telegames
sportsman
telespiel
colortron
commodore
adversary
telematch
ataripong
fairchild
astrocade
megadrive
atarilynx
seganomad
dreamcast
hyperscan
gamestick

Deusovi

1:05 AM

"Console father about boarish disarray, forgetting one (9)" might've worked better.

Rubio

those are all 9 letter one or two word game consoles, btw. ;) in case you ever need that again

Deusovi

@Rubio: You could've saved some time - if it were two words, it would've been indicated. For instance, "Sega Nomad" would be (4, 5), not (9).

Rubio

Oh, I know

I got carried away ;)

Alconja

...question about clue validity... can i use a single indicator word to indicate a process applied to multiple following words? eg. [I] [A] [B] [C] [D], where [I] is an indicator, say for an anagram, where the anagram is produced collectively from [ABC]

Deusovi

Yeah, sure.

Gareth McCaughan

1:09 AM

"smooth surface reading" is lovely but much less important than not having superfluous words. I guarantee I would never in a million years have solved Rand's clue as it stood because it simply wouldn't have occurred to me that the word "toy" might be aardvark there just to improve the surface reading even though it hatstand destroys the syntax of the crossword clue.

2

Deusovi

But they have to be consecutive and not indirectly clued.

Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten it either.

Superfluous words that aren't connectors (is, or, of, and) are typically Very Bad Things™.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Sorry :-(

I didn't realise superfluous words were that bad.

In fact I wasn't even sure whether @Deusovi was joking when he said "what about 'toy' and 'his'?"

Deusovi

Nah, I wasn't joking. It seemed right to me, but I was confused about the extra words.

Rand al'Thor

Also, @Gareth, I wouldn't use an aardvark as a hatstand if I were you. A moose makes a much better hatstand.

Rubio

True.

Alconja

1:12 AM

Ok, I think this is valid:

Deusovi

The point of the wordplay part of a cryptic is that it can be interpreted as instructions of a sort (though sometimes they're very tenuous grammatically).

Alconja

CCCC: "Again and again! Strike back!" - the killer (8)

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Oh, and congrats for making me spend about a minute wondering what on earth those words were autocorrect fails for :-)

Rubio

And @GarethMcCaughan - I hope that your thoughts on the Cleverly Disguised Word are on point, cuz that's some good thinking there

Alconja

speaking of tenuous grammar :)

Gareth McCaughan

1:13 AM

@Randal'Thor No need to feel bad about it. Just don't do it again :-). And I'm glad to have conveyed a little of how superfluous words feel to a cruciverbalist :-).

Deusovi

MURDERER: (RE + RE + DRUM)<.

Rubio

man. Like fish in a barrel.

Rand al'Thor

@Alconja No clue where to start on that one. I'll leave it to D and G the crossword heads ... oh wow, Deusovi already got it.

Deusovi

:D

Rubio

That was, like, maybe a minute.

Gareth McCaughan

1:14 AM

@Rubio It's almost as if Deusovi is good at these.

Rubio

@GarethMcCaughan Bah. Couldn't be that.

@Alconja is just obviously bad at making puzzles that take time to solve.

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio (as for the cleverly disguised word, GPR says I'm doing the right kind of thing but not the actual right thing, which I guess is better than nothing)

Rubio

*cough*

Rand al'Thor

@Deusovi, you got another one ready for us?

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio yeah, Alconja's whole history illustrates that

Deusovi

1:15 AM

Yeah, that's clearly the right explanation. Come on Alconja, step your game up. :P

Rubio

Most. Definitely.

Alconja

:)

Rand al'Thor

I'm about to go to bed, but might wait a bit if there's another CCCC upcoming.

Deusovi

@Randal'Thor: Let me think one up. Haven't written one yet - I could do a simple one from my upcoming post on writing good cryptic clues, but I'd like to do something more clever.

Alconja

You win. I'm officially retiring from puzzle making, an abject failure...

Gareth McCaughan

1:16 AM

noooooooo

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan Yes, while you're the best puzzle writer on this site ;-)

Well, you could be - who knows.

I'm still looking forward to seeing your first puzzle here.

Ideally it should combine elements from all of your existing answers.

Rubio

That would be a neat trick.

Rand al'Thor

If you take the initial letter from every answer Gareth has posted, they spell out something very interesting.

Rubio

... hey!

Rand al'Thor

hoping for stars on that

Rubio

1:19 AM

My mother is NOT that

Rand al'Thor

OK, bedtime for me. Good luck with the next CCCC, everyone.

Deusovi

Night!

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor See also: oreilly.com/pub/e/1598

oh no, wait

Deusovi

CCCC: It makes wet god - disgusting! (6)

Gareth McCaughan

I thought you were making a different joke from the one you actually were

(if you take the initial letter from every puzzle I've posted, it spells out something interesting, namely the empty string)

Deusovi

1:24 AM

(You all are going to either love or hate this clue...)

Alconja

I hate it already.

:P

Deusovi

Ah, don't you love the sense of community we have here on Puzzling?

Alconja

I know, the way our mutual hatred of each other brings us together...

Rubio

Remind me to make my next cryptic, if I ever get another shot, all about my deep and abiding dislike for Deus and his chronic inability to make, or solve, good puzzles or clues.

In fact, here it is.

(0)

Deusovi

Ooh, got it. Is the answer ?

Rubio

1:27 AM

Yes. It's Gareth's most recent puzzle.

Deusovi

I don't quite get the wordplay half, though. :P

Rubio

^^ I just explained it. Sheesh, do I have to do all the work here?

Ok afk a bit, back later. I'm not sure if I hope this latest clue is solved, or isn't.

Deusovi

Alright, see ya! c:

Alconja

Wasn't clued very well tbh... it needed a "?" at the end to indicate the wordplay was also part of the def.

Gareth McCaughan

I need to go to bed; apologies for not contributing to solving D's latest. I will make the following remark: I think you're "supposed" to look at it and think "oh, anagram of WET GOD", and I bet that doesn't work, and I suspect "it makes wet" is the definition and "god - disgusting" is the wordplay part. But having observed that RAVILE doesn't, so far as I know, have anything to do with wet-making, I'll leave it there.

@Alconja On the contrary, the wordplay and the definition didn't overlap at all.

Alconja

1:30 AM

@Deusovi Wait... is that the new clue? (only just realised... since it didn't have the prefix)

Deusovi

Whoops, yeah!

Alconja

@GarethMcCaughan Ahh.. my bad, I misread it :P

Gareth McCaughan

@Alconja You sure did. I don't think there's any part of it that you read correctly.

Alconja

@GarethMcCaughan My failure once again shines through.

@Deusovi I'm wondering if it's somehow related to deus (god) => odious (def:disgusting), but not sure how "it makes wet" could perform that transformation...

Deusovi

Interesting theory! I'm not going to confirm or deny, of course.

You'll definitely know it when you have it.

Alconja

1:47 AM

Also, without looking for clues, just as a cryptic rules clarification: I'm assuming "It" has to be "it", and can't be "I.T."?

Deusovi

Yep, that's correct.

Deusovi

4:24 AM

Hey, @Ankoganit!

Ankoganit

Hi @Deusovi

Deusovi

9:02 AM

@Randal'Thor: I've written up a guide for cryptic clues, since you and several other people wanted a full explanation of all the rules behind them. Hopefully this was clear enough - if you see anything I should add, please let me know!

0

Q: Cryptic Clue Guide

This post is not a puzzle. There is nothing puzzly hidden inside it or the self-answer, posted at the same time. What exactly is a cryptic crossword clue, and how do I write one?

5

Rubio

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd bookmarked.

@Deusovi Thank you sir!

IAmInPLS

Nice, @Deusovi

This is and will be really helpful!

Deusovi

9:21 AM

Great, glad I could help! Let me know if you have any more questions - I'd be happy to answer anything that I haven't covered there! c:

Rubio

9:32 AM

Did you see the comment regarding the (apparently missing) explanation for "?" cueing?

boboquack

Could a hyphen clue minus e.g. in your CCCC god-disgusting be some word from god with the letters from some word from disgusting removed?

Rubio

removals have to be complete, so it would have to be ALL letters from something meaning disgusting

user189275

@Rubio @LukasRotter @BeastlyGerbil @Sid I am MBB.

user189275

I, like almost everyone, noticed that completely crappy questions are filling up the site, and while I was told that this ultra low quality "puzzles" are "seriously downvoted", I was skeptic about that.

user189275

I made up a super crappy insta-thought rough hypothesis of what affects the upvotes, and I had a. Quality b. Effort c. Instant gratification (I don't really know this term) as the three main factors (and I'm sure I'm wrong).

Rubio

9:35 AM

Lol.

user189275

So, I decided to open up MBB account, and while keeping the quality and effort to ultra low (to make sure these are ultra low, I strictly, before making each puzzle, thought various ideas + sorted out the crappiest idea in strictly under 3 minutes, and typed each puzzle within less than 5 minutes, to make sure I don't give too much effort), vary the gratification each time to see how it affects the upvotes.

user189275

While the first post, being extremely stupid-trivia related, was downvoted (for good), the others was upvoted, and I seriously don't see how they are "puzzles".

user189275

Also, I decided to check how pilagarism is handled (@Deusovi), so the last riddle is verbatim copied form a William Cowper poem (which is in my school textbook :P), and nobody even noticed !

user189275

I stopped this experiment because I don't really care much about crappy puzzles being posted on this site as long as there are good arty puzzles, and I spended too much time (~10 hours +) in collecting datas from other puzzles to verify my hypothesis, which completely took up my time.

boboquack

@Rubio I realise that, but would that be acceptable? @Deusovi?

Deusovi

9:38 AM

@boboquack Yes, that would be acceptable.

At least, I think it would. Some people may disagree.

user189275

This is copied verbatim from this.

Rubio

@ArbitraryKangaroo In fairness, puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45820/… was actually a decent puzzle; and for Quick n Easy the premise was sound, but I'm not sure there's a good way to execute it without requiring almost explicit hints (as we collectively found). The others I didn't really spend any time looking at, they seemed pretty bad but some were well received. (Surprisingly well, in a couple cases)

user189275

@Rubio I find all of them completely crappy super nonsense. And yeah, the "puzzle" you linked is super trivial, and is a rote exercise than a puzzle, because the idea is instantly obvious.

Rubio

As for plagiarism, it's actually ok if (a) it's not already here and (b) it's given proper credit. I personally would add (c) it's expected people don't just mechanically copy some source(s) for everything they post, as we don't just need to have some copyrighted work reproduced here in toto, and a little added personal creativity wouldn't hurt. There's rules for all this, in any case.

user189275

No sorry, I thought some people will immediately notice that the "riddle" is plagiarized, but to my surprise, nobody did. And just to say, there's no personal creativity except ditching the first and last para and ctrl+C and ctrl+V-ing.

Rubio

9:49 AM

It's not like people go plagiarism-checking every submission. If someone didn't recognize it, there'd be no reason to immediately identify it as such.

In any event, as for your experiment, I think the results are interesting.

user189275

No okay, but still nothing is done to it, But I read somewhere that "strict" stuff are being taken against plagarism.

Rubio

Sorry everyone btw. chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/14524?m=33473416#33473416

Lukas Rotter

Ok, so Gareth gets +500, Sid and Beastly get nothing. Just to make it official :)

Rubio

Hehe

Lukas Rotter

Of course the user who needs it the least (the one with most rep) would win, lol.

Rubio

9:54 AM

I thought I remembered another comment about an actual valid rep reward. I couldn't find it in my search, but I didn't try particularly hard.

user189275

@LukasRotter No. you spotted it first, didn't you ?

user189275

[By the way, all but one of my messages are perfectly consistent]

Lukas Rotter

@ArbitraryKangaroo Maybe (at least the one who mentioned it in chat first), but I purposely didn't participate in the competition I set up.

Now I just need to find the answer @GarethMcCaughan presumably put the most effort in.

Any suggestions? This one looks pretty decent.

user189275

Just wait for GMC to speak for himself.

Lukas Rotter

BTW, did MBB even mention himself that he is AK? If not, MBB should do so to remove any doubt...

user189275

10:02 AM

Yeah, so I am lying perhaps :P

Lukas Rotter

Well, it's definitely a possibility. :)

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

42

Q: Help! I am infected with the puzzling bug!

Argh...I can't get this bug of puzzling off my head! It's really weird, and so annoying, you know...I can't help thinking about puzzles all the time. It's like... when I see a word, I think of anagrams...when I see tiled floors, I think of sudoku on them...when I see a door, I look for loose bric...

wordplay cryptic-clues

user189275

@LukasRotter:

user189275

x lm ... cpy tijq ? pyyciy, z ie fev. (10 letter obvious key) — Mushroom Bang Boom 20 secs ago

user189275

The obvious key is: Plagiarism

Rubio

10:11 AM

I tried SOCKPUPPET first. :)

Lukas Rotter

@Rubio Well, there was another bet between Beastly and me: If MBB = AK/TPK, then nothing happens. If MBB != AK/TPK, he wins 500.

Rubio

@LukasRotter I see. So you win a big fat nada on that one.

Lukas Rotter

If Beastly entered the second bet and said "I think Mushroom Bang Boom is: Arbitrary Kangaroo" first he would've won 500 either way, I don't remember me stating any rule against it :D

user189275

Nobody mentioned tpk, but MBB is handled from the mail with the chat account tpk, so I think Gareth doesn't actually wins :P

Alconja

On plagiarism: it's not ok to copy something and post it here verbatim, even with attribution (unless you have explicit permission from the author, or the content has been released under a permissive licence).

4

Lukas Rotter

10:19 AM

@Rubio Yep :P If I don't have any unsolved question of me (there hopefully will be one soon), I start a chat game where I can only loose or win nothing.

Rubio

Actually he mentioned you specifically by name. :)

Lukas Rotter

oops

user189275

@Alconja Yeah, sure, that's obviously true. That's why to test that (after how long someone finds out) I posted that one.

Rubio

Ugh.

Lukas Rotter

I removed my message because it was a duplicate of this one. I refreshed the page and somehow jumped from editing to posting a new comment.

Rubio

10:23 AM

welp. I only stayed up to satisfy my curiosity. Now that what was the generally accepted "obvious" identify has proven to be the actual identity, I can hop off here and get some sleep.

user189275

Yeah, but I guess it was obvious for overuse of "trivial", I suppose.

Lukas Rotter

@ArbitraryKangaroo And because of the the style of the name, the removed comment on an answer and general writing style :P

user189275

What's the general writing style ?

Lukas Rotter

But yeah, the "trivial" ultimately gave it away completely (although I thought MBB was actually trolling with that)

user189275

No, actually not joking, they are infact trivial.

Lukas Rotter

10:26 AM

@ArbitraryKangaroo I meant that I thought he purposely used the word "trivial" so often to make it seem like it's you.

user189275

Oh yeah, mimicking me is super easy.

Gareth McCaughan

@LukasRotter It's not at all clear to me that there's any sense in which I actually deserve +500 for solving the "Who in the world is Mushroom Bang Boom?" puzzle, especially as I was far from the only person to guess. (I suppose it's actually +500 for "being able to follow instructions in exchange for 500 rep".) But if you really want to do this, pick any answer of mine. Perhaps actually better to pick one that extra-obviously isn't deserving of a big bounty, and explain in comments.

@LukasRotter Or you could make a new question about MBB, say explicitly in it that its only purpose is for me to answer it and get a bounty, etc. But that might reasonably be held to be a misuse of the site and possibly both question and answer would get a ton of downvotes.

Lukas Rotter

I think I'm going to award it to this answer, seems like it didn't took very much effort.

Gareth McCaughan

10:41 AM

One of @Rubio's, then?

oh wait, wrong tab

yeah, that one didn't take very much effort. (And it was a kinda silly puzzle.)

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

3

Q: ASCII Puzzler 2: Arrows Depicting Movement, Things, or Pointing Out Objects

This is a sequel to ASCII Puzzler 1: Part 1 and a prequel to ASCII Puzzler 3: The Trees and ASCII Puzzler 4: Not a Rebus!. Here is the second rebus I have for you to figure out: | V --- O <--- B --|--> -|- --- /\ ^ | Here is another rebus I made. The main theme of this is a...

rebus

Gareth McCaughan

Incidentally, clearly I'm the person who needs the +500 most. I'm on exactly 19500 right now :-).

Lukas Rotter

@GarethMcCaughan I can only award the bounty in 23 hours, unfortunately.

Sid

@Randal'Thor A big apology to you....

user189275

Haha. The hilarious-est bounty line ever.

Sid

10:52 AM

What's the current CCCC?

Is this a puzzle? puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45986/…

user189275

10 hours ago, by Deusovi

CCCC: It makes wet god - disgusting! (6)

Beastly Gerbil

11:13 AM

@ArbitraryKangaroo I knew you were MBB

Sid

11:28 AM

@oleslaw Any further hints to your puzzle? The latest hint only throws further doubts and the obvious try doesn't work out.

oops... That was meant as a comment on the question...

Gareth McCaughan

12:25 PM

@ArbitraryKangaroo As for plagiarism -- that puzzle had been on the site for what?, two hours before you owned up and said it had been plagiarized. I don't know how many people even saw it (certainly I didn't).

Would someone have said to themselves "that's remarkably assured versification for a mere puzzle" and looked it up? Would a Cowper enthusiast have happened by and recognized it? Either is possible, but there's no reason on earth why either should happen in the first couple of hours after posting.

Gareth McCaughan

1:31 PM

(Some comments on MBB's puzzles, in order of appearance. "Overseen chat" was very bad and I'm actually not sure why I didn't downvote it. "A stupid cipher?" was clever and funny despite MBB's attempt to do something stupid. I upvoted it and regret nothing. "Quick n easy" was OK. I upvoted it because I though it deserved to be around 0 rather than at -6. "A true deep quotation" was OK and the misleading absence of spaces was (I think) a neat feature. I neither upvoted nor downvoted. [continues]

"Riddle who is he?" was bad because too easy (and also because copied without attribution, albeit from something not intended as a puzzle). It was solved before I ever saw it. I downvoted it.)

In general I think these were baddish but by no means all terrible despite MBB's/AK's attempts to make them low quality. Clearly AK is just so much smarter than the rest of us that what is nontrivial to us is trivial to him. His intellect would be much better used solving puzzles than telling the rest of us how stupid we are.

Or might be better used doing something else entirely. AK said earlier that he was leaving PSE. I would be sorry to see a skilled solver go, and I suspect he could be a good setter if he attempted to set good puzzles rather than bad ones, but I would not be at all sorry to lose the endless stream of complaints about how stupid the community here and its taste in puzzles are.

Sconibulus

2:15 PM

It looks like of the five questions, two were well-received, two were poorly-received, and one was terribly-received.

Based on my question history, 5 or less is pretty bad, 10ish is good, not great, and 20+ is very well-liked

Lukas Rotter

2:28 PM

I'm making a pattern puzzle including a GIF (what a surprise), but want it to be solvable without viewing any image. The problem is that there are hundreds of instances of a certain pattern included in the GIF. So while listing a few of those would probably be enough information to solve the puzzle, there's still technically more information in the image. Do you think just listing a few examples is enough? (maybe include a link to a full list on pastebin)

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