The Sphinx's Lair

word knowledge enigmatic-puzzle

6:31 AM

1

Q: Puzzle from puzzles

I like Puzzling SE! Know why? Because I like stealing from getting inspired by all the top questions on this site! Email message from benefactor (1, 7, 3) Order logic puzzle(s) to die for (3, 2) A married, genuine circle (6, 7, 2) No, it’s not a secret game (3, 4, 7) Polish f...

7:11 AM

0

Q: A shy person in a queue

I'm so shy when between people. When in a queue, I'd like to be the last. That's the only time when I'm not shy. When consuming food, I'd take one or two, depending on the context. What am I?

riddle computer-puzzle

8:32 AM

@Adam @Brandon_J The Hunger Games books were OK (not great, not terrible), and the book-to-film adaptation was actually one of the best I've seen. Not too much important stuff cut out from the books (the unspoken Katniss-Haymitch understanding is the main thing I missed), some stuff added to the films which I actually agreed with (like enlarging Effie's role), some great casting (with the possible exceptions of Peeta and Gale).

Lots of people shout "cash-in" at the decision to split book 3 into two films, but I actually thought that was a good idea as there was So. Much. Stuff. in book 3. They could've put the split later in the story though, that's true.

@Mithrandir Brandon becomes Bradley a couple of times - might wanna fix that.

The buildup is good, but I agree with you that the ending seems a bit rushed. (It can be very hard to write a satisfactory conclusion for a horror story! Often the best part is in the slow buildup of suspense/fear/creepiness before anything really happens.)

@Randal'Thor It was written as a joke at 1 in the morning, I'm not really sure it's worth it to go fix it...

Well, it's a decent short story for all that.

Save it for a future Writing challenge? ;-)

Heh, I'll consider it ;) Are those still going on? *heads to check*

And thanks.

@Randal'Thor The ending in the movie did feel a bit rushed. The plot twist came out of nowhere where as in the books there was a great buildup and foreshadowing to it. A split in the later part of the book totally would've fixed this issue

@Mithrandir I'll also drop a recommendation for Cliff McNish's The Hunting Ground, if you like that kind of story.

Or basically anything by Cliff McNish, if you like kids/YA fantasy, full stop.

8:39 AM

Although I do remember that the first movie part ended on a large cliffhanger and they probably couldn't resist it for marketing purposes

@Adam Not that large a cliffhanger. Would've been larger if they'd just had the strangulation and blackout and ended the film there.

Maybe I didn't notice the lack of buildup and foreshadowing because I was already aware of it from reading the books ;-)

A lot of stuff takes place in Katniss's inner monologue, which is hard to show in a film ...

@Randal'Thor It was loosely inspired by Scott Smith's The Ruins.

My guesses pre-Mockingjay-films for where the break would be were: (a) just after Peeta returns from the Capitol; (b) just before Katniss starts training for the Star Squad; (c) just after Peeta arrives in the Star Squad; (d) around the time Boggs dies.

Turns out it was (a), but shifting it a bit later would've changed the perception (which I've seen from a few people, not just you) that MP1 was boring and MP2 too packed.

First parters are always soo boring. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 also had this issue however I'm not sure how they could've made it less boring

10:11 AM

0

Q: The Voice That Beckons

Lethargic apprentices nesting dreary offices Foraging puzzles intermittently generally suffices What is the one-word answer to the riddle above?

riddle wordplay

12:26 PM

This puzzle is not only innovative but very smart! (+1) However, I believe it is the consensus that all puzzles must be self-contained, and therefore this puzzle, necessary of prior knowledge of other puzzles on the site, may not be that appropriate. Just saying though, happy puzzling! — Omega Krypton 14 secs ago

judges please?

^ puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/88960/puzzle-from-puzzles

@Randal'Thor or mods

See the metapuzzles tag.

imo it is on the site so it is self-contained

hmmm

From the security and sustainability aspect of self-containment it is 100% ok

@OmegaKrypton No, this type of question is fine.

12:36 PM

ok good then. i'd delete my comment. thanks

The only problem is that the "top questions on the site" is going to change over time, so the puzzle isn't completely durable.

But that's a separate issue to the self-containedness that you raise.

btw, i have a word prop problems, but i found only 5 words that have the pattern. any suggestions abt what i could do?

If you're confident that you've found all words with the property, then "these and only these words have the property" is actually quite a lot more information than "these words, possibly among thousands of others, have the property". I think that could be a perfectly reasonable puzzle. (Whether it actually is, of course I don't know. It might turn out to be something you can't realistically figure out other than by happening to stumble on it.)

If it's just that those are the only ones you know and you expect there are a few others but probably not many, perhaps you could promise that the question will always contain a complete list of examples you know of, and invite questions of the form "what about AARDVARK?".

If the property is one you can check with a computer program, you can at least say "there are no other examples in such-and-such a word list". (But the fact that it's computer-checkable might be information you don't want to give away.)

OK. Thanks a lot! @GarethMcCaughan

PdR Part 8 is OUT!!!

Q: Piece de Resistance - Eight Doubled Tetrominoes Make a Tetronogram

0

Eight Doubled Tetrominoes Make a Tetronogram This puzzle is part of the "Piece de Resistance" series. Go back to Part 1 (Ace) for the story.Ace Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight ... Time for Another Tetronogram! (named by @Feeds aka MrPie) The puzzle is made of a grid like a nonogram. ...

word grid-deduction polyomino nonogram tetris

1:07 PM

Decided what to do with it... >:) @GarethMcCaughan

@Sphinx meanwhile, have a try at this!

@OmegaKrypton Are you absolutely sure it's uniquely solvable?

@Randal'Thor i think so. i play-tested it a long time ago, tho i didnt mark down the answer.

Anyway, posted my answer. Both options (very slightly different) seem to fit all the row/column clues.

Now to edit with detailed reasoning ...

Ugh... no matter how i tried, it's always soooo hard to get a unique solution. anyway, you gotcha! i'll shade one more grid for you just so you know

done @Randal'Thor

1:24 PM

No problem, it was fun!

I never tried a Tetronogram before, although I have a lot of practice with nonograms.

@Randal'Thor good you liked it! it was my original, my second production

1:40 PM

Done describing detailed deductions.

looks nice, will look into it in detail later ;) will let it sit for a while b4 giving you the green check! @Randal'Thor

No problem :-)

Hmmm. I'm not sure if we should be using the tetris tag on any puzzle involving tetrominoes, rather than specifically questions relating to the game Tetris. Seems confusing.

same here...

Maybe the tag should be renamed to just "tetrominoes"

nice!

1:54 PM

It's unlikely that the game itself will have any puzzles on it

I'm slightly surprised that there aren't already any *ominoes tags

But some of the questions are specifically about the game Tetris.

@Adam Not puzzles maybe, but questions about Tetris would certainly be on-topic too.

Instead of renaming the tag, I might just go on a quick editing spree. There's only 10 tetris questions.

Would questions about Tetris deserve a tag though?

@GarethMcCaughan We do have dominoes.

And apparently polyomino.

(yay for pluralisation consistency!)

@Adam Of course, why not?

um should we change 'em?

1:56 PM

It's a topic for the site, of specific interest to some people.

Q: Is it possible to make a game of Tetris un-winnable?

and why isnt @gareth 's answer accepted here?

6

Here's a puzzle I've been thinking about for a while, but still don't have an answer to. Lets say a friend is playing Tetris, but instead of the computer picking pieces at random you get to choose which pieces are added. (Unlike the computer you do not have to pick from a bag, you may choose an...

tetris

Like we have tags for minesweeper, chess, etc.

(OK, there are chess puzzles too, but you get the idea.)

Hang on, looking for a meta post which might explain my reason

Polyominoes aren't really a generalization of dominoes, in that most actual things involving dominoes make essential use of the numbers on them.

Bingo puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6667/56238

Although I guess if a separate tag was created for "tetrominoes" then the tetris tag will sort itself out

1:59 PM

welp, then the two tags may be too similar?? and the tetris tag has only 10 q's

+1 for the second paragraph. "Emergent folksonomy" is the term of art here :-) I'd just add that it's probably rarely warranted to remove such a tag once it's created. Partiti, OK, just one question, but if someone is interested enough to create a tag and it's had a few questions about it, then there's probably enough interest in it that it can be kept around. E.g. for kakuro and akari, I wouldn't bother going to create the tag, but if someone did, I'd say don't remove it. — Rand al'Thor Jul 20 at 11:05

I've just sorted out the tetris tag now.

Removed it from the questions which simply involve tetrominoes, left it on the questions specifically about Tetris.

I didn't create a new tetrominoes tag because I'm not sure if there's demand for such a specific tag when we already have polyomino.

ok let's see what the mods and the community says. i myself agree with you

(As Gareth notes, dominoes do deserve their own tag because they, at least sometimes, have a different property that other polyominoes don't.)

can we keep the singular/plural consistent??

like domino + polyomino or dominoes + polyominoes

@Randal'Thor? @GarethMcCaughan?

Q: Renaming the "crosswords" tag to "crossword", and other such tag pluralizations

6

During this private beta, people have generally been tagging questions with what they feel is suitable; however, it's come to my attention that a few of them have been pluralized when (in my opinion) they shouldn't be. I was writing this question about a crossword puzzle when I noticed that the ...

discussion tags

2:08 PM

:( okie

should the chess-golf and reversi tags be removed, with only one q each? (yes, im asking this, even i created the reversi tag)

Don't they automatically get removed if there is less than 3 questions or something?

@Adam No.

@OmegaKrypton reversi is worth keeping, I guess. It's a game which is beloved of many puzzlers and the kinds of people who'd be on this site.

Should set up othello as a synonym though.

good then, thanks

There's at least one other question which could use that tag.

I dunno where I read that then

2:16 PM

And a couple more.

That makes four.

@Adam What you might be thinking of is that a single-use tag with no tag wiki is automatically removed.

Except on certain sites like Science Fiction & Fantasy which opted out of that 'feature'.

Ah I see that I read it here but it also says that it is only "on some sites". Is it true for Puzzling or not?

please, approve tag info edit for reversi?

and i cant create the synonym

@OmegaKrypton Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the user interface (I don't spend much time looking at tags) but I don't see any obvious sign of an unapproved edit. What I do see is that the tag description currently says "Also known as Teeko" which is flatly wrong and I am about to remove.

ah, no, found it

@GarethMcCaughan puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/43296

I see you changed "Teeko" into "Teeko or Othello". I'm going to make it actually just say "Othello". (Teeko is a completely different game.)

there, done

2:25 PM

ok thanks

you're welcome, OK

Btw, @Gareth, just curious: is there any reason why comment flags tend to take longer to process here than post flags? At least that's what I've been noticing with my flags recently. Comment flags are usually easier to handle, but do you guys tend to leave them because comments are low priority? Or is my sample simply not representative?

Q: Pluses and stars inside square visual quiz

2

The problem is to cut the square into four parts by going along the lines, so that each part shall be exactly the same in shape and size, and each part contains a star and a plus. by H. E. Dudeney

visual

I can't speak for anyone else. I tend to procrastinate on comment flags because (1) the UI is a pain (I very seldom find that I can actually decide whether a given comment flag needs dealing with from the information provided in the reviewing tool, I have to go and look at the question and the rest of the context), (2) a lot of comment flags feel like rather a waste of time, asking for things to be removed that really aren't doing any harm, etc., and [ctd]

... (2') only a small fraction indicate actual problems that really need to be addressed, and (3) in many cases, as well as being unimportant, it's highly unobvious what the optimal thing to do actually is. (E.g., for many of the zillions of "no longer needed" flags: removing is neater, leaving gives a bit of information about the history of the puzzle that someone might find interesting.)

Wait so comment flags don't work like spam flags? That's an odd design for SE

2:36 PM

in what sense "don't work like"?

Well I am referring to how a certain number of spam flags automatically deletes questions

I don't know whether there's any such mechanism for comments, offhand, but it's rare for a single comment to attract a lot of flags.

I just think comments are kinda a useless thing to have a flag for in the first place, it should really be an automatic process for the really harmful comments

typical example: there's a recent calculator-related question where there was some discussion in comments trying to clarify what exactly is being asked, and now a bunch of the comments have been deleted by their authors. What remains is hard to make sense of, and someone has flagged a lot of it as "no longer needed". That's probably correct but it takes some thought to work out whether any given comment is saying anything still-useful.

GentlePurpleRain

The policy on comments is that they are to be treated as temporary and might be deleted at any point. Anything that needs to be preserved should be edited into the post.

2:40 PM

@Adam Sufficiently many comment flags (at least of the "abusive" type - not sure if this goes for "no longer needed" too) will delete a comment. But as Gareth says, that rarely happens.

GentlePurpleRain

I tend to delete comments pretty indiscriminately, except occasionally when they haven't been responded to or provide some important insight that hasn't been put into an answer.

Also for "really harmful" comments, certain buzzwords (e.g. swearwords) enable a comment to be deleted automatically with a single flag.

@GentlePurpleRain I do see Gareth's point that sometimes comments might show something interesting about the history of the post.

(For at least some of the comments on that question, the remaining comments no longer make sense because of what's been deleted, but it would have been perfectly reasonable to leave everything there. So one user has removed their own contributions and then flagged the things they have made meaningless with "no longer needed". Deleting those probably is the right answer but it feels rather like busywork.)

But for example, I flagged the "please provide source" comments on this question and I actually hope those comments go quickly, in case someone hastily DVs or CVs because they don't realise the source has been added since those comments.

3:37 PM

Per discussion above, I have suggested the synonym [othello] for the [reversi] tag. The system works in a rather weird way and I can't make it be a synonym; other people have to vote for it in order for that to happen. (And those people have to have got some points for asking/answering questions with the [reversi] tag.)

So, Rand and others who would like those to be synonyms, over to you.

Actually nobody on the site has enough points to vote on that proposed synonym.

But as a mod, @Gareth, you can use the merge tool to make it a synonym.

Edit othello into one of the Reversi questions, then merge the tag into reversi and tick the "also make this a synonym" box.

Bleh, who designed this thing?

@GarethMcCaughan A bunch of uneducated monkeys obviously :P

OK, done.

They did a bit of work on the merge and synonym tools relatively recently.

3:45 PM

Oh, hey, I got a badge for that.

Congratulations.

Add it to your Student badge in the "unexpected" category :-)

Ha! A new puzzle here :)

Q: Two Parts, Three Lines, Five Words

0

The Puzzle Property reserved indisputably. Mystery expecting. Nearly unbelievable! Most buzzwords excluded ruthlessly! So? Ass subs cons, cost leg. OP's Words This puzzle may be too vague, or perhaps not. Hints would be given when needed.

wordplay enigmatic-puzzle

Q: Is there a reliable way to hide/convey a message in vocal expressions (speech, song,...)

3

Assume Bob. Bob wants to convey the following, simple message (an example) to Cassandra: Walk 5 feet forward, turn around 90 degrees clockwise, walk another 4 feet and dig 3 feet into the ground. Easy, right? Now here's the twist: I require Bob to not state the message outright, but by somehow ...

humans language communication

^ get thee to Puzzling SE!

Q: Make 1998 using the least possible digits 8

4:50 PM

2

Make the number 1998 using the minimum amount of digits 8. Your allowed operations are +, -, *, /, ^, % (percent). Have fun.

formation-of-numbers

5:40 PM

Ugh, I just noticed a mistake in my (otherwise quite nice, I think) C4 clue. Not sure whether I can fix it.

Ah, yes, I can fix it, at the cost of making the surface a little worse. Will edit.

... well, actually, I don't much like the repair I was about to do. I'll think about it a bit more.

knowledge pattern word-property

1

Q: Eccentric keepers

There are four keepers in our fantastic creatures preserve who have certain preferences in the kinds of creatures they care for. Can you figure out what kind of creature is arriving soon? Colleen likes griffins but dislikes sphinxes, likes chinchillas but dislikes gerbils, likes k...

6:03 PM

Certainly not a dog

11 2

formation-of-numbers

I think we found @Rubio's sock.

I don't know how "Certainly not a dog" could possibly relate to Rubio

OK, I've edited the CCCC clue. Notice is hereby given that there's something slightly unsatisfactory about it still.

msh210

6:36 PM

@GarethMcCaughan The surface is better than before IMO

6:50 PM

0

Q: An Autokey Cipher

15.26.32.25.23.25.19.11.5.20.3.3.6.12.0.23.4.8.8.8.25.4.43.32.0.3.7.4.3.11.10.18.35.7.4.8.5.21.1.5.58.13.38.3.2.1.62.2.55.10.4.36.14.2.1.3.9.71.59.2.24.13.79.73.14.10.12.3.3.8.65.77.40.75.7.7.74.42.3.8.8.2.4.13.15.3.114.58.32.0.27.5.12.12.51.2.23.12.6.5.10.18.18.7.4.18.7.47.7.32.22.14.5.37.16.2.2...

cipher

Q: What made crows fly at night?

7:30 PM

0

Today as I'm typing this, there's a group of crows flying and kawing frantically around trees of my apartment society building. I'm puzzled by this behaviour? Any clue?

mystery

8:01 PM

@Sphinx Probably a... murder.

ba dum tsk

cipher pattern calculation-puzzle

1

Q: How do I answer this?

So, I'm trying to figure out this weird code that was sent from one of my friends. Could someone please tell me the sentence within? 30 30 31 31 30 30 30 30 20 30 30 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 30 30 31 30 30 30 30 30 20 30 30 31 31 30 30 30 30 20 30 30 31 31 30 31 30 31 20 3...

Q: A delve into extraordinary chess problems: Self-Stalemate 2

10:29 PM

0

Following on from a slightly easier puzzle here. This is a puzzle by W. A. Shinkman in 1924: White to play and force Black to stalemate him in nine moves. As a reminder: "In a self-stalemate problem, White's objective is not to win, in the usual sense of the word, but to get himself ...

chess