The Sphinx's Lair - 2019-06-01

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12:22 AM

@Deusovi got it, thanks!

12:39 AM

C4 hint: The first letter is "M"

12:57 AM

@EricTressler MOUSTACHE is M[ollusks] + OUST + ACHE

I didn't know there actually was a moustache called a walrus, lol.

Beautiful surface, as already noted.

wow nice @Rubio and @EricTressler

1:38 AM

@Rubio correct; the "?" was sort of hiding a "for example", which may not be legitimate

thanks, though

I think it's valid usage (I've seen that done before), but I'm not convinced it was needed for that anyway.

0

Q: Another Riddle, Another Riley (Oops!)

So, no more gibberish, here you go! My infix is somewhere in the Middle East, My prefix annoy and make you muddy, My suffix a line, peculiar at least. And I, concealed, is what you see! or My prefix on the road, is not an island, My infix is three dots on the left. My suffix...

word wordplay rhyme

2:03 AM

0

Q: 5x5 Grid Puzzle with some squares black. IQ Test

Trying to figure out some kind of relationship here but I’m stumped. What is next? The source is the quiz-facts.com IQ test

logical-deduction grid-deduction logic-grid

1 hour later…

3:04 AM

0

Q: Steve misses _________?

Congrats! Weather Vane for finding the answer of :Steve asks his brother to book tickets $\bullet$Yesterday West Indies won by 7 wickets against Pakistan. Even though Steve belongs to England, he loves Cricket players of other countries too. In this World Cup, Steve misses one of his favorit...

knowledge visual

3:43 AM

@Mithrandir I think you'd be proud:

0

A: Writing challenge: Competition & Rivalry - 27 May 2019 - 17 June 2019

A Work in Progress This is my first time trying this; I've put it together in a few hours. Hopefully it reads well; many eyes make better revision. Any suggestions/criticism/feedback is quite welcome! She paused for a moment, struck by a sudden, lucid realization. I'm going to regret this tom...

4:07 AM

@Brandon_J nice +1

Laina was soon preoccupied with other things - ways to keep her classmates from copying her homework was much higher on her list than trying to play something as shallow as a video game, and both where nowhere near her meticulous maintenance of a 4.0 GPA.

possible typo: where should be were? @Brandon_J

That night, she took a few hourse of her carefully scheduled free time to look into the game some more. --> hours

4:35 AM

@Brandon_J sorry i have to say it here since i am not able to suggest edits to non-wiki meta posts

5:32 AM

@Rubio Your CCCC please?

@OmegaKrypton in development

ok thanks!

5:46 AM

CCCC: "Simple sacrifice of energy," endlessly repeats the salesman (8)

6:08 AM

MERCHANT?

I don't see how to interpret the first part

7:03 AM

silence on P.SE for three hours...

broken just now...

7:42 AM

MERE minus E, plus CHANTS minus the last letter

wow

@Rubio is @Deusovi correct?

it seems pretty clear that I am, though (to nitpick a bit) I don't think "sacrifice of" quite works grammatically -- "simply sacrificing energy" would probably work better

true...

8:05 AM

nice clue nevertheless @Rubio

8:20 AM

(waiting for confirmation just in case)

where is the introduction for CCCC again? thanks!

2 hours later…

10:10 AM

0

Q: Devil goes Pan Digital..Sometimes Lucky..Sometimes not..Figure him out

$Given$: D, E, V, I, L, G, N, O, T are distinct digits (1 to 9). $D+E$ brings good luck $I+L$ is unlucky $N+O-T$ is unlucky too. Fully Figure out this unusual unique devil.both Rep Digit and Pan Digital.

mathematics no-computers

1 hour later…

11:21 AM

@Sphinx whether a number is lucky and unlucky varies greatly in cultures... is this too broad?

waiting for judges before VTC-ing

11:40 AM

@OmegaKrypton Thanks so much! Two pairs of eyes is always better than one.

welcome :)

OK congratulations, guys!

puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/84610

That question only lived for about 30 seconds, and it got 8 downvotes in that time. Nice efficiency!

cough chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq cough

12:02 PM

Well that works, too

12:14 PM

@OmegaKrypton it's up on the right, with an outlined star rather than a normal one. It reads "'Simple sacrifice of energy,' endlessly repeats the salesman (8)"

@Brandon_J i mean the introduction: "CCCC stands for Cryptic Clues...

Gareth McCaughan

@Brandon_J I think OK meant either the brief description of the CCCC, which right now is showing up as #8 on the starboard, or else Deusovi's question/answer about cryptic clues.

I just gave it another pin which has put it in something more like the right place again.

Eventually it'll decay and we'll need a new one.

(Because the starboard algorithm favours things that are (1) starred/pinned a lot and (2) recent.)

@Deusovi of course

@Deusovi I didn’t like “simply” for mere (adverb / adjective)

12:29 PM

@OmegaKrypton ah, whoops

My bad

@OmegaKrypton When it’s a cryptic, Deus is correct by default ;)

By deusalt

May 4 at 23:07, by Rubio

@Brandon_J Brandon can't read, just looks at the pictures?

Just saw that goodie again

Also (curious) who's the mod that saw that question and deleted it so darn quickly?

Heh

I hardly had time to raise a spam flag

before it went poof

It was united by Charcoal members

Er. Nuked.

12:33 PM

r/foundthemobileuser oh wait, wrong site

Yeah. Guilty as charged.

That's pretty snazzy, I must say.

Unrelated pet peeve: an ellipsis with only two periods.

A year or so back, I rounded up a whole bunch of data about our most persistent spammers and their methods and name patterns and what-not and handed the whole lot over to our friends in Charcoal, who used it to further improve their collection of bozo detection patterns. It helped a bit, I think.

It sure worked for that question

For some reason we’ve never quite figured out, spammers think Puzzling is a great place to come. There’s a few other sites they hit as well, but they seem to really like us. Which is odd, because we’re also one of the most diligent sites about nuking their accounts to kingdom come on site, even if they haven’t actually spammed yet.

12:39 PM

lol @Rubio

(What, it’s true. I mean ... he literally wrote the guide for PSE heheh)

Maybe they like kingdom come.

all sites are spammed, but some sites are more spammed than others ;)

#SESitesFarm

I've only seen one other spammer user in my time here

Picked up two helpful spam flags from him

I guess the others get nuked too quickly?

*united

@Brandon_J are you implying at some user on P.SE?

@GarethMcCaughan the former one, yes

12:49 PM

@Brandon_J we used to see two to three a day, like clockwork. Same m.o. every time. Nowadays we seem to be getting about one a day, from what seems to be a different band of bozos.

@Rubio who?

Deusovi

referencing this

30 mins ago, by Rubio

@OmegaKrypton When it’s a cryptic, Deus is correct by default ;)

oic

thx

ah

77

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?

wordplay puzzle-creation cryptic-clues cryptic-crosswords

legendary ;)

1:05 PM

@OmegaKrypton yeah. Can't say anything, of course. #wouldsoundlikeagrammarnazi

@Rubio really? well congrats. Charcoal must be really efficient. Also, uninformed fellow here: what's m.o.?

Gareth McCaughan

modus operandi

ah

Oh, Charcoal is amazingly efficient. And already was... my data helped, but they were doing great already even without it.

was thinking in tech terms XD and wondering if MO was related to IP

I guess they use a VPN so you can't IP ban them effectively?

Probably not a VPN. I haven’t dug at all into the current offenders’ IP pattern but from past experience they tend to use dynamic IPs from typically mobile subnet allocations, so they basically just have to reset a thing or four and voila, new IP

1:12 PM

I am having problem with passage pls tell me the step by step methods to crack these

As an example I have this passage

Can I type the passage here

?

@Rubio it would be vaguely interesting to post the IP pattern to meta and see if our more tech-savvy puzzlers could find the pattern.

@gateprep what do you mean by "passage"?

@Brandon_J we... can’t do that.

I figured. Just musing

And for the record, I’m a tech person. I did plenty of analysis on the IPs I’d gathered up last year :)

@Rubio well I knew that :D

I was including you in the "more tech-savvy" group

1:18 PM

I could basically predict with about 100% accuracy if a user was a spammer just based on their IP, but we don’t really want to just preemptively shun entire net-blocks either

with the idea that collaboration would make it go faster

@Rubio you mean tech dog ;)

?

Er. Yes, of course. Sorry, mobile. *cough*

XD

I might need to give a hint for my ice cream puzzle.

"Ghosh babu has recently acquired four companies :ACT;FACT;NEXT;JEST.He noticed that the sales of JEST is half while profits are twice as much as ACT.

The expenditures of NEXT are Rs.3 crore less than that of JEST while profit of FACT is Rs.1 crore less than NEXT.The expenses of ACT is 3 times that of JEST.It is known that the sales of NEXT is Rs.1 crore or one fourth of FACT.All figures are of 1998-99.Ghosh Babu is also informed that sales of JEST is Rs10 crore more than that of NEXT and expenses of ACT are 90% of its own sales.Profit=Sales-Expenses."

Now answer the following

:-

Which company has maximum profits

1:24 PM

This is just going to be a math problem

yep

Yeah

We really don’t do those here.

sorry @gateprep

@gateprep but thank you for vetting the puzzle in here before posting it.

1:25 PM

he's posting this in a math.se chatroom now...

yes

At least it’s closer to topical there than here, though I’m pretty sure they have homework-help rules for their site

In the future, you could also use "The Riddle Sandbox" to see if things are on-topic before posting. (Here is fine, too.)

I expect their chat might offer guidance, if not an answer

@Brandon_J ehh... for a riddle, sure. We don’t want people tossing any random content in there to see if it’ll fly, though.

My bad

in TheSimpliFire's Chatroom, 3 mins ago, by gateprep

"Ghosh babu has recently acquired four companies :ACT;FACT;NEXT;JEST.He noticed that the sales of JEST is half while profits are twice as much as ACT.
The expenditures of NEXT are Rs.3 crore less than that of JEST while profit of FACT is Rs.1 crore less than NEXT.The expenses of ACT is 3 times that of JEST.It is known that the sales of NEXT is Rs.1 crore or one fourth of FACT.All figures are of 1998-99.Ghosh Babu is also informed that sales of JEST is Rs10 crore more than that of NEXT and expenses of ACT are 90% of its own sales.Profit=Sales-Expenses."

you called it

1:28 PM

Also the sandbox is ... not well visited these days, I fear.

I try to browse it occasionally

Ok going back to lurking. If ya need something you can ping me. I might even pay attention.

@OmegaKrypton in case u r famililar with this pls help in either of the chatrooms

English, please. "u", "r" aren't words.

ok @JohnDvorak you are

1:41 PM

@gateprep sorry I am not too familiar with these. I suggest you follow what @TheSimpliFire asks you to do in the maths chatroom

@JohnDvorak to be fair, these are widely-recognized abbreviations for those words. Highly informal, yes, but still recognizable, at least to me.

+1 @Brandon_J

recognizable but disrerpectful. And they do reduce clarity.

Well, I respectfully disagree.

But I suppose we're splitting thin hairs, anyway.

(longways)

Robin Hood maneuver, hard mode?

1:48 PM

I feel like you just made a funny joke, but it's unfortunately going over my head.

----*joke*------>

*my small head*

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SplittingTheArrow

----joke-- [my head] ----> yay!

--unintentional joke--- ~~head~~ -->

yay!

2:37 PM

I have just encountered a website that uses a YouTube frame to insert ads into its page. And YouTube has decided to put an ad before that ad.

Erik the Outgolfer

2:50 PM

smart guys

3:42 PM

Cicada 3301 is a nickname given to an organization that on three occasions has posted a set of puzzles to recruit codebreakers/linguists from the public. The first internet puzzle started on January 4, 2012 and ran for approximately one month. A second round began one year later on January 4, 2013, and a third round following the confirmation of a fresh clue posted on Twitter on January 4, 2014. The stated intent was to recruit "intelligent individuals" by presenting a series of puzzles which were to be solved. No new puzzles were published on January 4, 2015. However, a new clue was posted on...

Some interesting stuff, the Internet.

1 hour later…

4:54 PM

@Rubio browsing through charcoal I found this:

ham.stackexchange.com/questions/14639

(10K+ only, but the title in charcoal looked similar to today's spammer)

2 hours later…

6:33 PM

@Brandon_J Oh, hey! Didn't realize those had started up again.

6:50 PM

They have!

Cool :D I thought they kinda died out after I stopped starting them.

2 hours later…

8:40 PM

CCCC: Kind of characters from books of the art educators (11)

2 hours later…

10:55 PM

0

Q: The Swiftest of Defeats

The quadruped resigns. Short little puzzle that popped into my head.

word wordplay enigmatic-puzzle

11:39 PM

@Deusovi SOFTHEARTED

That's quite the span. I'm impressed :)

11:56 PM

That's correct, of course. And thanks!

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