The Sphinx's Lair

12:03 AM

“That’s the way” is clearly OUT. police is COP. if you COPOUT you back out of something, scuttling it. #BadC4Solutions

12:27 AM

@Rubio Pfft. Nice try, but clearly scuttle is Y (because when you scuttle a boat and it splits and sinks down from the middle in a "Y" shape, which is why it's such a common abbreviation in both cryptic clues and regular speech), which goes after "POLICE --" (obviously pseudocode for subtracting one (letter)), to give POLIC(-e)+Y, which is of course is another form of saying "that's the way" something is. #BadC4Solutions

Rubio

@Alconja hm. Well yes, the Y is indeed obvious but I don’t think Gareth would be that loose with the solution so I discounted it.

M Oehm

5:26 AM

@msh210 I hope you won't be even more annoyed when scuttle isn't a verb at all here. :)

@GarethMcCaughan It's MET (the Metropolitan police) + HOD (a coal scuttle)

Rubio

5:48 AM

Hah

“MET”. Crazy.

I’m deeply surprised it wasn’t COPOUT though.

Alconja

I'm starting to think Gareth has a superpower where he can make up words to suit his C4s, then somehow inject them into the timeline fooling everyone into believing they're real... He clearly can't manipulate memories, only physical artefacts, which is why they always seem so obscure/archaic.

10

Mithrandir

WE'RE ONTO YOU, GARETH

Alconja

Anyone who claims they've heard of a hod before is clearly just suffering from some sort of mandela-like false memory effect

M Oehm

I tried to find a quote from Gareth where I think he said something along the lines that he wouldn't mind clueing MET or CID as police, but I can't find it. I guess the timeline has already been altered retrospectively. Doubleplusungood.

Fun fact: I had heard of both Met and hod before.

(But the hod I vaguely knew was the one bricklayers used to carry stuff. There's this silly tale of an Irishman who tries to build a pulley in oder not to carry stuff in the hod, always a classic in English class. Non scholae, sed crypticae discimus.)

Alconja

Mmm hmmm. And next you'll be telling me it's the Berenstain and not Berenstein Bears...

M Oehm

6:04 AM

Oh no, I'm not going to fall into that trap. (I had to look that one up.)

John Dvorak

No, not Berenstain or Berenstein. Berenstien.

msh210

8:03 AM

@MOehm @GarethMcCaughan nice!

in V'dibarta Bam, May 10 '12 at 15:35, by msh210

@HodofHod I suspect most people who see your username must be pronouncing it like the English word hod.

Gareth McCaughan

8:38 AM

@MOehm Bingo! Well done.

M Oehm

Thanks.

CCCC: Police remove every other piece of fencing from conference after riot (7)

Gareth McCaughan

unsongbook.com/interlude-%D7%A0-changelog (one chapter in a very strange book that msh210 might either enjoy a lot or be actively horrified by or possibly both) mentions the Berenst_in Bears and has a little bit of trickery on the web server that serves up either "Berenstein" or "Berenstain" at random every time the page is fetched.

Jul 16 at 11:17, by Gareth McCaughan

I will say -- again, with no comment on the particular clue -- that I would have no hesitation in using "feds" or "Met" or "Yard" or other very well known local police forces in a crossword clue, if it seemed appropriate.

M Oehm

Yes, that was the one I was looking for.

Gareth McCaughan

I know what I want the solution to MOehm's clue to be but I can't quite make it work.

Which is probably just as well since as already mentioned I'm mostly AFK right now.

M Oehm

Perhaps you're removing the wrong stuff? (On the other hand, I may have misconstructed the clue.)

Gareth McCaughan

8:59 AM

The mistake is almost certainly mine, one way or another. I shan't say more in case I'm mostly right and give too much information to other solvers.

Sphinx

9:29 AM

1

Q: Q: What is a Checkmate Word™?

This is in the spirit of the What is a Word/Phrase™ series started by JLee with a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. If a word conforms to a special rule, I call it a Checkmate Word™. Use the following examples below to find the rule. And, if you want to analyze, here is a CSV vers...

Sphinx

10:09 AM

0

Q: Word Search Cipher

I have come up with a cipher idea that probably isn't original but I can't find anywhere, and I wanted to get an idea of just how hard it is by seeing if anyone here can crack it. I would especially like to know whether there's any realistic chance of breaking it with a pen and paper as I would l...

cipher

0

Q: Anagramming in sixes

Fill in the gaps in the following conversations. All six gaps contain the same six letters in a different order, with spaces and punctuation where appropriate. Conversation #1 – Have you ever ______ James? One of my favourites, I must say. – I don't think I have. Hey, does anyone want a be...

anagram

Sphinx

11:48 AM

0

Q: What is a true union word

In the spirit of the What is a Word™/Phrase™ series started by JLee, a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. More specifically, this is an extended Word™ puzzle, built on the base of What Is a Union Word? by Confiers. If a word/phrase conforms to a special set of rules, I call it a TRUE ...

pattern english

Sphinx

12:08 PM

4

Q: (1 of 11: Numberlink) What is Pyramid Cult's Favorite Activity?

Dear PSE users and moderators, I’m new here in PSE, but I really need your help. There was this person who gave me a black envelope consisting 10+1 pages of puzzles, and also a scribble saying: “Find our favorites and you will be accepted to join our ‘pyramid cult’. Feel free to ask for help fro...

enigmatic-puzzle grid-deduction

Rubio

12:52 PM

@MOehm ENFORCE (police) is CONFERE[-f(E)n(C)i(N)g]*

M Oehm

@Rubio Yep, that's it.

Rubio

That took forever to type on my phone. Lol

M Oehm

You could have used just upper and lower case, without those pesky brackets.

jafe

ah, "after riot" is the anagram indicator

i was not close to getting that :P

M Oehm

Interesting. I didn't think it would last long.

jafe

1:02 PM

kept trying to take "piece of fencing" as one term...

Rubio

CCCC: Lots of bloodshed over one pound? (6)

For some reason I got it pretty quickly once I actually looked at it. I wonder now why Gareth didn’t get it almost at once. The anagram , embarrassingly enough, took me the longest. Knowing which letters to drop was a simple matter of counting

M Oehm

Perhaps Gareth wanted to remove the letters in order, which doesn't work here, but since we anagram the rest anyway, I think a legal reading is to anagram conference so that the letters are in order.

(Or maybe even as one contiguous chunk, not just in order.)

@Rubio That's G(A + £)ORE

Sid

1:20 PM

@Rubio Ah ha. I was trying to remove all instances of E, C and N from Conference.

Rubio

1:46 PM

@MOehm Indeed it is.

M Oehm

CCCC: Drink spoils her better parts (7)

(I'm sorry for the slightly chauvinistic surface. Just pretend it's a quotation from someone else.)

Sphinx

3:27 PM

2

Q: Fridays's Blocking Donimoes Problem

I've designed a set of dominoes puzzles that I call Donimoes. You slide the dominoes like the cars in Nob Yoshigahara's Rush Hour puzzle, always along their long axis. The goal is to slide all the dominoes into a rectangle, without sliding any matching numbers next to each other. See Monday's pro...

sliding-blocks dominoes

0

Q: What is an Ornament Word™?

*In the spirit of the What is a Word™/Phrase™ series started by JLee, a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles. If a word conforms to a special rule, I call it a Ornament Word™. Use the following examples below to find the rule. Text version: Ornament Words™ Non-Ornament Words™ ...

wordplay pattern word-property

Gareth McCaughan

4:51 PM

I didn't see that CONFERE->ENFORCE, then next tried removing all copies of the relevant letters, noticed that if I included the "of" in what I should remove alternate letters of I got FEREE, and tried to make it be REFEREE, which of course didn't work.

M Oehm

6:05 PM

Hm. I didn't notice that all the letters that needed to be removed appeared more than once in the fodder until now. (But I think that it is okay if a bit careless to have just "remove" mean "remove one instance".) I wanted to make something with police and saw that I could get enforce from conference. At least the clue didn't sit here unsolved for weeks.

Sphinx

6:45 PM

0

Q: A pile of chips involving powers of 2

Ann and Bob play alternately on a pile of chips. On each play, any number of chips, which is a power of 2 (including 1=$2^0$), can be removed from the pile. Obviously the number of chips to be removed cannot be higher than the number of chips on the current pile. The person, who removes the last ...

strategy number-theory game

Gareth McCaughan

7:36 PM

@MOehm I think it's a good clue and wasn't intending to imply any defect in the construction.

Sphinx

8:25 PM

0

Q: I like to Move it Move it

My prefix moves your body all over the world My infix moves your heart if you have a good taste My suffix moves your life on through a perilous journey But my whole stays in place as people move in it's place What am I?

riddle

0

Q: 3D Statue Park: U shapes

This is a three-dimensional Statue Park puzzle.1 The goal is to introduce the four depicted three-dimensional pieces into the $4\times4\times4$ cube so that the resulting space satisfies the following conditions: The pieces can be rotated or reflected along any axis. No piece can be orthogonall...

grid-deduction three-dimensional

Gareth McCaughan

@MOehm Your CCCC drink is a SHERBET. (spoilSHERBETter parts.)

Gareth McCaughan

9:02 PM

Since I'm still mostly AFK and might not be here next time MOehm is, and since I'm quite sure that's the correct answer, here's a new one:

CCCC: Second god to possess absurd mythological creature (9)

(but I won't change the pin yet; someone else can do that once MOehm has officially approved the answer)

Sphinx

10:26 PM

0

Q: Weird piece of paper I found on the ground

I found this piece of paper on my way to a blimp, and was confused - please help! Here is what it said: This is for someone jones-ing for a plant-based page-mystery featuring late-bonham activities. Here are the ones I think are rocking, in no order, perhaps with little quarters: StH WLL IS Gt...

riddle wordplay

0

Q: The Grand Grid I

This is the first in a series I am calling The Grand Grid. Each involves a logic grid puzzle that is solved by gathering clues presented in variously obscured forms. The forms are some combination of: Scytale (transposition cipher) Morse Code Script Hunt (the text is in English but it is writt...

cipher logic-grid

Sphinx

10:46 PM

0

Q: What are the missing letters?

What letters are missing from the end of this list? AC DI IM NI TM AG DM IR NM TU AI DN IW NT TV AL DS JN OC VN AM ED KA OM VW AP EM KO RA XT AV EN LA RO YK AW HN LF SK ...

knowledge enigmatic-puzzle

Puzzling Meta

11:20 PM

0

Q: Any advice for these downvotes?

I immediately got downvoted twice and am still downvoted 40 minutes later. I'm new so if anyone can let me know what I am doing wrong I would appreciate it. The Grand Grid I

discussion

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