The Sphinx's Lair

Q: The answer is a single letter

4:44 AM

0

As the title says, the answer to this entire puzzle is just one letter, but I'll want to see how you get to it. The clues are below: Also a group Check out the reason why Move gently to disappear Chase after a little money Stores quality finds My own storage space Health club figh...

cryptic-clues

Q: Escape the Klotski dungeon!

6:47 AM

0

Help! I am trapped in a dungeon with multiple rooms full of sliding tiles! I need to find a way of sliding the tiles such that the 2x2 tile can be freed, by sliding it out of the exit on the North side of the dungeon. There are some restrictions: every tile in a given room can only be slid if the...

sliding-blocks

Puzzling Meta

7:40 AM

0

Q: Does adding bounty increase the number of views?

Is there any data whether adding bounty really increase the number of views ? I feel number of views does not increase even after adding bounty ? Is there any data for this ?

discussion

A: I didn't write this with the answer

10:36 AM

Making preformatted boxes in mobile is apparently still too hard of a problem

Soha Farhin Pine

2

Ok, @TheGreatEscaper and @as4s4hetic have already gotten the answer, but I'm going to try to explain some of the lines... Updated 7/23 after OP's hints, and a look at the suggested wiki page Answer: I didn't write this with the answer When I use my keys, they make such a sound. Many...

Sorry, I pasted the link by mistake.

@ffao So I've actually made the postworse when I thought that I had made it clearer. I'll notify the OP. Sorry about that.

It probably looks much better than the other one in a PC

And given that I can still look at the old version anyway, I see no reason to remove yours

I just find it mildly amusing that making a monospaced box in mobile is so hard to figure out, for some reason

I think that the font used isn't really monospace. And, of course, the corner characters are off.

Maybe phone vendors think that block graphics are so 80s, but the 80s are here to stay. Ha! :)

12:03 PM

I've returned \o/

And in good spirits, too.

Sadly back at work and greeted by morning thunderstorms but nonetheless back

I hope the thunderstorms were outside?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed your trip to South Carolina.

They are outside yes, and I just got a notification for severe thunderstorms

I did enjoy it, thanks :)

12:28 PM

@n_palum Those were hitting us all last week, guess they're moving east

From 90 and sunny to 70 and rain what fun

We had flash flood warning galore

12:44 PM

we had fun weather here yesterday. You should enjoy it today.

I'd rather not drive into work where I can't see it's raining so hard

Yup, you've got what we had

1:01 PM

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/53715/… -- close enough to others already posted to close as duplicate?

that's gotta be a dup gareth

bah. you ninjad my comment to you. :)

It's what I do. :-)

There are others with very similar structure, requiring very similar calculation. I had a quick look and didn't find an exact duplicate (where, e.g., I would count something differing only by having 12 people instead of 10 an exact dupe).

But I'm never sure just how close we should allow these things to get before calling them duplicates. In some sense every puzzle of this sort is just an exercise on the Chinese Remainder Theorem.

Step Hen

Hey all - just wanted to make sure I didn't do anything wrong on my first post here - let me know if there's anything I can fix.

Looks to me like 6 people think you did ok already :P

You didn't do anything wrong. It's just that long blocks of ciphertext don't appeal to most people.

1:06 PM

True but at least there's story with it, and in theory, clues in the story.

0

Q: Monkey with Coins Killing

10 people can share a bucket of coins equally. A monkey steals one coin. The number of coins remaining is therefore 1 less than would allow them to be shared out equally. One person after another tries to take the coin from the monkey -- but each time, the monkey kills them. Each time a person d...

calculation-puzzle

^ I swear I've seen that exactly, or at least comedically close, though

You just had a conversation with Gareth about it.

Bah. I meant, I can't find a dup (yet), but I swear one exists

I think the pirate one is essentially the same thing. But I'm not the adder

1:08 PM

Again, it's not clear to me what should count as "essentially the same"...

@Rubio Gareth and plum both linked the pirate/monkey/banana question

Likewise for odd-one-out weighing puzzles, where e.g. the number of things being weighed varies. For that one at least there's an existing question that deals with it in some generality.

Although I remember there being another question of the same vein to the coin killer. I think it had to do with an old lady and apples? I don't remember, I just know that you needed numbers 1-11.

The story is a tad different but the rest is the same really

I'm still looking. I think there is one even more directly duplicative than the bananas one

@dcfyj yeah maybe we're thinking of the same one

1:13 PM

not sure how to go about searching for it though

oh. actually now that I think about it

@dcfyj I think you may be thinking of this one puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/496/… which is all +1 rather than -1

the one I'm thinking of was "there's always one short" or something

not really any more duplicate-y than the pirates

YEAH that one

1:17 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Yeah, that one

but, again, the same idea

I was thinking it was +1 but it's still practically a carbon copy

I'd reference that one vs the bananas one, I think it's closer to the current one in method, but it's kind of a wash either way

@StepHen I suspect I know what the first 5 words of Sistek's first message are. Unfortunately this doesn't immediately tell me what the cipher is :-).

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/53704/… this is starting to feel broad

1:26 PM

Not with the last answer, I think.

Sp3000

(On an unrelated note, I can't decide whether the C4 def is bacon, one's bacon, save one's bacon or none of the above)

yeah - the latest answer I think shows the intent of the puzzle, and that it's not too broad

@MOehm Yeah if the most recent one is right, it will feel better, but if any one of those single letter things gets ticked right it won't be so good

if any of the other answers is anywhere near right then it's a terrible and too-broad question

but I bet it's not that bad

I'm pretty confident that they won't.

1:27 PM

@Sp3000 same. I pursued "save one's bacon" for a while, but haven't gotten close yet

I also wonder whether the 4C is conceptually a down clue. If not, what does the "above" mean?

Sp3000

My only thought to make "above" not extraneous is if "god above" is e.g. Mars, something named after a God in the night sky. Otherwise I'm out of ideas

Meanwhile, Gareth grins as his school of red herrings send us all in multiple irrelevant directions. "Everything is proceeding just as I have foreseen it."

2

Mithrandir

in Codenames, 22 secs ago, by Mithrandir

Is anyone actually up for a game?

I don't think Gareth would make a direction-dependent 4C.

"Everything is proceeding as I have forseen" 720p HD

1:33 PM

►

^ Gareth. Totally. Including the laughter.

I am making no comments on this particular clue, but I would not go out of my way to avoid direction-dependent clues in this medium.

Hm, really? Interesting.

(but yes, I'm glad to see that it isn't immediately obvious how to parse the clue. That's always good :-).)

I just want to know who thought it was a good idea to save bacon

Sp3000

Well first you bring home the bacon, save it in the oven then later pull the bacon out of the fire

1:41 PM

Then you put it in the deep freezer

cool it to

6° of Kevin Bacon

I just wanna eat it

or 6°K as the scientific types say

Bacon has vitamin A and B.

6°K?

Kelvins don't use the degrees mark. They're that cool.

^

1:43 PM

that causes a mild ambiguity at the absolute zero, but everyone is 0K with that.

... yes, because that was the most inaccurate part of any of what I typed

True. 6K is a bit too cold for bacon. Or for Bacon, for that matter.

or for a deep freezer, for that matter

unless it's uncommonly deep

Cooling bacon to 6K would definitely save it from the usual modes of spoilage.

good point

at 6K you risk the bacon shattering to pieces, though.

1:45 PM

But it wouldn't spoil!

When you've got edible bacon then we can talk

1:57 PM

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice, a game of Codenames is starting

mathematics calculation-puzzle optimization

2:41 PM

0

Q: Mike's Coin Duplicator

This is my first mathematical puzzle on the site. To be honest, I don't know if this should go to M.SE or here. Any grammatical or backstory edits are welcome, as I realized that my English is not that good. Your friend, Mike, invited you to go treasure hunting in a nearby cave. He told you th...

Q: Find the angle in this shape

2:54 PM

0

The aim of this puzzle is to find the angle marked '?'. Answers must be in the format of exact values. You will have to assume some basic geometric constraints. e.g. points which look like they are touching a line, are touching the line, and if lines look perpendicular, they are. Arcs create qua...

mathematics visual geometry

William Nathanael

3:19 PM

too much maths in one page.

there's no such thing as too much maths

(actually, clearly there is, at least in a context like this, but I don't think two puzzles constitute too much maths.)

3:43 PM

@Rubio Kevin Bacon and Bacon Sandwiches youtube.com/watch?v=pJzOIvleEyE

Q: Good Subjective and Knowledge Questions vs Problems You Face

4:12 PM

@n_palum The "BLASTOFF" hah

AJ Henderson

5

Currently the Don't Ask page of SE sites indicates "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face" however Good Subjective, Bad Subjective, as well as a great many non-technical Stack Exchange sites delve in to topics which aren't always problem based....

discussion asking-questions help-center subjective help-center-proposed

figured this was relevant to you guys as well

@AJHenderson Yeah it is, thanks -

We more or less rely on local rule and obvious examples to the contrary than a stated policy somewhere that says "it's ok to ignore the 'it must be an actual problem you face' rule"

Same thing goes for PPCG, if you didn't ping them also, though I imagine you did

AJ Henderson

@Rubio I didn't yet. I was only pinging rooms on my favorites that I used to hang out in more

but probably worth pinging them with it

enigmatic-puzzle number-sequence

5:34 PM

0

Q: Quality Over Quantities

Your final answer will be a number (or maybe not?) 6.1482925535194332784626433, 15, 70, 5388440228181184467208035634811703511875, 45, 1207432478148385373947988/38313917, 15, 70, ?

@Sphinx I have no idea what to do here.

@Sphinx This seems incredibly difficult

Ooh, I found a thing.

stacksfiller

:)

I basically constructed minimums up to 99 cents, but ugh

or maximums, rather

5:38 PM

@Deusovi I wouldn't call yourself a thing but hey, to each their own

@Sconibulus Hm?

struggling to find pattern

I have reason to believe that the sixth one means "IMAGINARY".

5:56 PM

Alright, all that's left is to decode 15, 70, and 45. (Or possibly (15,70) and 45.)

If I get stuck (which I may be), I'll post a partial answer.

I was stuck at "Hello"

As far as I know, "hello" is not in that puzzle.

I got stuck at the title

I got stuck at the Deusovi quote. hehe

And no one gets the reference...

6:01 PM

Is it me you're looking for?

You Had Me at Hello - Jerry Maguire (7/8) Movie CLIP (1996) HD

►

I assumed it was a riff on "You had me at 'hello'" but I didn't look at it long

Q: I didn't write this with the answer

@n_palum lol, no, not that reference

Soha Farhin Pine

Was this puzzle "solid" enough?

1

When I use my keys, they make such a sound. Many a bygone writer and poet have dated me for their work. In the olden days, I fared well The ones who play me have the same name, but they soon fell when the treacherous device with spiders had word. Talk I will of my forefather whose birth wa...

riddle word enigmatic-puzzle knowledge

I tried my best not to fall in the "guess what I'm thinking" pitfall

Still can't figure out how to interpret 15, 70, and 45.

Gonna post a partial.

6:06 PM

Hmmm... thats two math questions now with a very similar presentation. Has anyone checked whether these are from competitions or something?

mathematics visual calculation-puzzle geometry

0

Q: semicircle diameter

Try to find the diameter of the large semicircle in this image: each of the three semicircles has a vertical line starting from its centre. Use any maths equations you wish.

Talking about that one ^ and the 'find the angle problem'

Either that or the OP just made them....

I find it funny that it asks to find the diameter when finding the radius looks to be much easier

Either way it doesn't look like a puzzle though

already VTCd

same

6:09 PM

Why is that not a puzzle?

I'm surprised the first one didn't get closed before an answer was posted

@MikeQ In my opinion it's just a difficult math problem, not a math puzzle.

That seems kind of arbitrary, whether it's "not puzzly enough to be a puzzle"

not really

Its a math problem - therefore its off topic

It's a distinction that needs to be made on this site

Q: Proposed policy on mathematical questions

6:11 PM

9

For background, see: Should mathematics questions really be on-topic here? (about "routine" mathematics questions) What tricky mathematical questions are on topic here? (about "heavy" mathematics questions) Revisiting the 'math question or math puzzle' policy (mostly about "heavy" questions) ...

discussion question-quality scope policy

It's basically ^ this in a nutshell

Apply math rule to problem. Rinse. Repeat until complete.

There's no puzzle, just problem.

It's actually pretty hard to make a math puzzle (at least for me)

This one seems to require some degree of creativity in the approach

@SohaFarhinPine It strays far from guess what I am thinking, but it requires hints, specific knowledge, and doesn't really make you go "oh that's the answer" even when seeing what the intended answer is.

Sometimes its hard to tell the difference, but I generally go by if its 100% math (sometimes have to wait for an answer to see) then its off-topic

in fairness I didn't look at this one, just the prior one, but that one was pretty much entirely math-problem

6:13 PM

@MikeQ creativity doesn't make it a puzzle

I meant, being creative/clever in how you would solve it

meh. still doesn't make it a puzzle...

There's nothing about it that requires something other than maths

I think a creative element would manifest itself in "I would never have expected that math construct or equation would be part of the solution here!" -

Hm... This really sounds like a "what is art" sort of thing

I just glanced at the latest one and I have a pretty good suspicion that the answer will involve nothing I wouldn't expect to see just by that quick glance at it

6:17 PM

@Rubio That's a very nice way of putting it.

i.e., it's not good enough for PSE if the PSE community thinks it's too boring

thats not what we are saying at all though

From what it looks like, it's pure geometry, solvable just with angle/length chasing.

'boring' != should be closed

Not a question of "boring" - it may be extremely interesting - but in a math problem sort of way. That makes it by definition off-topic here, though perhaps just what they'd love to see on one of the mathsy SEs

6:19 PM

I doubt that. The Math SE tends to send things here when it's too abstract for them, and PSE sends things to Math SE if it's not abstract enough.

(I meant in a general case - not for this problem)

...What?

I don't think "too abstract for Math SE" is a thing.

and wait, yeah, what? ... ^

Hm. I thought that they did that before.

No, that doesn't make any sense. Math is by definition abstract.

And we're not always abstract here either.

6:21 PM

Sounds like BG should read that meta policy proposal, math is not off-topic

Sorry, not "abstract", wrong word. I meant something more along the lines of "ambiguous" or "not 100% mathematical".

@ffao Math is not off-topic. But math with no "aha moment" is.

or - as BG put it - 100% math, is.

For Rubio's previous comment: I can't think of an example of something that is interesting and at the same time closable as routine

100% math can still have aha moments

@ffao I can think of lots of things that are.

6:22 PM

^^

There are definitely "aha moments" in math. (I'd argue that a lot of the solutions to these puzzles are mathematics, even if the solvers don't know it.)

The key isn't being "not math" - the key is being "not routine calculations".

sorry, what I meant and what BG probably meant was "100% plug and chug"

so I think we're saying the same thing

Maybe I was imagining it, but I thought that the nuance was whether "Apply this formula" was the question (Math) or the answer (puzzle)

"What's the solution to 3x^2 + 5x - 12 = 0 ?" isn't a puzzle, even though the answer is "apply quadratic formula"

Right, right, I was being too general.

"There is a word I am thinking of. It is very common in my language, and you see it more or less constantly and everywhere, so that you hardly even pay it any attention. I haven't said it yet, but this word appears in this puzzle. What is the word?" -- this is a puzzle, I suppose, but it's not a very good one because you probably get halfway through reading it and already have a good guess what the answer is going to be.

6:28 PM

@ffao I still go by what I said

100 % math is off topic - math itself is not

If you imagine the math analog of that, it's just application of rote rules, no moment of discovery or realization. No puzzle.

@BeastlyGerbil Math is not the same thing as rote calculations.

Well, maybe it's because I'm not a mathematician, but the recently-deleted puzzle seemed tricky to me, and that's why I thought it was an interesting puzzle. Whereas for you math people, it could have been an obvious what formulas to use.

Math is not Meth or a Moth

@Deusovi no idea what they are

Haven't covered them yet probably

6:30 PM

@BeastlyGerbil "Rote" just means "from memory"

I'm not great at the Math stuff, but I think it's easy to see when someone just posts something that's essentially solve this Math problem I found in a textbook

Actually, they're probably the only thing you've covered. "Rote" just means "tedious, from memory, uninspired"

oh...

e.g. Times tables are something you learn by rote. Just pure drilling until they're second nature.

Why is than not math theen?

6:31 PM

Math is far more than that

mathematics as a field covers sooooo much more

Math absolutely can be inspired and creative

vocabulary can be learned by rote, that's definitely not math

I never quite understood the purpose of 'times tables'

I mean aren't rote calculations math?

6:32 PM

@Sconibulus It's handy knowing multiplications off the top of your head?

I know math isn't rote calculations but don't rote calculations count as math?

it seemed like an awful way to do what? Make arithmetic a few seconds faster for a few months?

Oh. Well sure.

honestly, I'm not sure I'd even call them "true" math

Rote calculations probably implies math. Math does not imply rote calculations.

6:33 PM

I mean, you eventually have done the multiplications enough that you know them off the top of your head anyway, and doing the groupings isn't that slow

@BeastlyGerbil But you were saying "100% math isn't a puzzle", which is a lot like saying "100% of mammals bark" because dogs are mammals.

--

I think me... but I'm confused

So are you saying there could be a post here that is 100% math but isn't off topic?

Dogs bork not bark therefore 100% of fish oink

@BeastlyGerbil Did I misunderstand this statement?

6:34 PM

@Sconibulus Agreed. I think times tables are pointless.

which?

@BeastlyGerbil Yes.

the one I linked

@BeastlyGerbil puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/53722/… for instance

The "mutilated chessboard problem", for instance, is 100% math, and is also a puzzle.

6:35 PM

Okay think I get you

I think what we're looking for here is more along the lines of being able to approach something from multiple perspectives and not necessarily come up with the right answer with your approach. Something straightforward that has a predefined application (e.g. using the quadratic formula to solve a two-power equation) is hardly inspired and accepting of creative solutions.

At least it looks puzzly

@feelinferrety I'm not sure about "creative", but "inspired" is definitely a good way to describe it.

and poking around at it I haven't found useful things yet

@Deusovi I would argue that inspiration breeds creativity and hence a solution.

6:36 PM

@Rubio my definition of math is different from yours I think (yours is the correct one and more advanced), like deus said - I've so far really only covered rote calculations so that is maths to me

Basically I'm saying different things to all of you, but agree with you :P

Fair enough - if you confine your statement then to what you mean, it's actually correct. "100% rote calculations is off-topic"

I was ceding that too, but also trying to express that the recently-deleted puzzle was not 100% rote calculations

it did seem rote to me

mostly angle and side chasing

I could be wrong, but the last one was fairly straightforward

I was assuming that it was not assumed to be to-scale

Apply formula A, insert x into blank here, bleep-bloop here is your answer

6:39 PM

"rote operations" is probably better anyway - it's just applying exactly what you'd expect, in exactly the way you'd expect it, if you have learned the math that you need to apply.

It was circles with endpoints in specific places?

Were you assuming they weren't actually circles? Instead ovals?

I can't see how that wouldn't be to scale

@Sconibulus No, I meant more like measuring the labeled line segment's pixels vs the circle radius' pixels, and using that scale to get the diameter

oh, no, you were clearly supposed to get the slope of the line from the bisections, then use that to calculate the radius of the tiny circle

but it was tedious uninteresting calculator stuff

Why "clearly"?

because that was the only measurement given?

6:45 PM

@Deusovi if your answer is correct that hardly seems to be a number sequence puzzle to me.

@Scon I didn't think the solution was so obvious

Do we have a definition of "number sequence puzzle" besides "puzzle that involves a sequence of numbers"?

that puzzle was nothing other than a sequence of numbers to be used to determine the next number in the sequence

if that does not qualify, we must delete the tag

I'm still mentally workshopping my version of the "high quality number sequence puzzle"

@deus do we need one?

I don't know. Depends on whether we want to classify that as a number-sequence puzzle or not.

6:50 PM

"high quality number sequence puzzle" should be our next fortnightly. With the "high-quality" defined as "either before or after the solution is posted, Deusovi says it is"

ha!

Enigmatic is part of it, suggesting number-sequence isn't the entirety of the puzzle. I think they've made you use sequences of numbers that are part of the puzzle, but not necessarily the whole thing. I don't think that should disqualify it from being a number-sequence puzzle.

stacksfiller

@dcfyj Numbers ✓, Sequence ✓, Puzzle ✓

heh

stacksfiller

Seems like a number-sequence puzzle to me

6:51 PM

yes, personally I like it. it's clearly NOT a number sequence puzzle that we are used to seeing (which is likely why it is in any way interesting)

oh hey, @stacksfiller... what uh, what are you up to?

we were just talking about the weather

@Sconibulus @Beastly I don't mean to kick any hornet nests. I'm just trying to say that even if some/most of the PSE regulars can easily solve a puzzle, that doesn't mean that the question is objectively "too trivial" or "not a puzzle". Perhaps the asker genuinely didn't see any obvious solution, and believed that it was worth posing as a puzzle.

@Forklift Would work better if the words weren't there lol

@MikeQ The issue isn't being easy, the issue is being standard.

oh, and @BeastlyGerbil, re: mathematics vs rote calculations:

https://puu.sh/wRYiw/327a89abb7.png

This is one answer from one of my homework assignments from about halfway through last semester.

The question was: "Prove that an upper triangular matrix's determinant is the product of its diagonal entries."

I know you probably haven't studied matrices (they're basically 2-d arrays of numbers with a property called the determinant), but hopefully you can sort of see the structure of the argument I'm making here.

> "If one of the diagonal entries is 0, then we can isolate a specific portion of the matrix and use that portion to show that the determina…

@Deusovi Standard? What do you mean?

@MikeQ Mike think I I understand where you're coming from. Getting the angle seemed like it might not be possible because there was no length and you need some measurement in order to calculate. Wat the solver did was start with "assume it's 1 and then do pretty basic calculations"

6:55 PM

@Deusovi that last line reminds me of geometry lol

@MikeQ I mean the solving process is just "length chasing". Label one segment, label another segment, occasionally use a variable or some trig to get another segment, until you get the diameter.

pretty much, the angle one (and the diameter one that was deleted) were both pretty rote. Find this thing using Mathematics principles. Not really puzzly.

@Forklift Yes - that was my initial reaction, hence why I thought it was "tricky" or there was some trick inolved

@dcfyj Yeah, high schools frequently try to introduce proofs in geometry. The problem is that they're terrible at it, and students see "proofs" and think "mess of acronyms like CPCTC and SAS to show something blatantly obvious to anyone, all of which has to be written out in a way specified by the teacher or it won't be graded (or won't be graded well)"

I don't remember CPCTC but I remember SAS :P

6:57 PM

@MikeQ so, if you're not aware that you can do that, it seems rather puzzling. but a very basic standard of math proofs (we do see a bit of those on PSE) is "assume X" which, if that's the first step and there's not something out of the box after that, most mathers here will see that as a basic question

(I've done calculus as well, my recollection of it is just vague)

having length of two sides and the angle between them is enough to identify a triangle

"corresponding parts of congruent triangles are congruent", a (seemingly intentionally) obscured way to say "if two triangles are the same, then their smallest/middle/biggest sides/angles are the same"

@MikeQ honestly, it was not my first thought and I thought it would be a neat solution, but once I read "assume lenght 1" I just went "oh, duh."

oh, wait, I said the wrong one