The Sphinx's Lair

h o t d a m n

I didn't even know it was possible to make art that suave

The maximum extent of my art skills ends about here

Alconja

:) beautiful. (fwiw, everyone starts there (or below), it's up to you how far you take it)

I don't personally have much interest in art - I spend way more of my time reading shitty MTL novels

But, to make a good puzzle, sometimes you have to put in the effort

also I'm pretty sure that your ambigram is 3 dimensional

Gareth McCaughan

Nice! I have one of my (fore)name that uses the same trick of having two parallel strokes be separate letters in one orientation and a mere embellishment of one letter in the other. But I don't have a version of it as polished as Alconja's above.

anyways back to CC design

gotta make it a challenge

from what I can tell I have 1 genius one, 1 good one, and a bunch of average ones

also 1-2 mediocre clues

only problem is... I forgot how to number crosswords facepalm

the last time, I found some automagically symmetric creator, but I've lost it

Alconja

1:48 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Pub lunch time for me, but it's pretty quiet at work, so when I get back I'm going to have a crack at a "Gareth". :) Seems like some clean symmetry to work with.

1 hour later…

3:00 AM

g and h should be nice

a and e too

t is in the way though, I look forward to seeing how you'll work around that

maybe combine it with the h, so that when you flip it it's g

Q: Five letters in a row

A sequence of letters, 5 long. The first 4 will burn you to a crisp. The last 4 will injure you too. But all 5 are sure to charm.

word

3 hours later…

6:12 AM

I guess that in Gareth's ambigram the counterpart to the G is an incised Thorn or Eth. :)

(Both work quite well as representation for a rotated G, I think.)

6:44 AM

For another "avigram", you could integrate the i into the V. But I grant that it doesn't look as playful and as elegant as Alconja's design. More like a bad 80's logo for AVI Bussiness Solutions plc.

msh210

7:34 AM

I've only ever made one ambigram.

8:18 AM

Q: Italian coin collector

Across 3. Extraordinary claim: He is 13 across after 9 down (7) 6. Crashed ashore, sounding rough (6) 8. Got away from David and Edward going separate ways (6) 10. General supermarket chain from Germany follows Italy's #1 in fashion (9) 12. Rights to incorporate a compression f...

cryptic-crosswords

Q: My favourite two number sequences are below do you know/ can you guess them and what are yours?

8:38 AM

3.3.5.4.4.3.5.5.4.3.6.6... and 8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 3, 2, 0

number-sequence

1 hour later…

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

9:40 AM

Q: One to six, do you know?

One two three, I am yet to open, one two four, fix me now, Four five six, when you ready come and ?, What is this problem ?

riddle word

2 hours later…

Gareth McCaughan

11:48 AM

@MOehm Nope. Lowercase "g" at the start; its descender has two parallel strokes, which on rotation turn into the verticals of the "t" and "h" at the end.

Yes, I can see how that would work. (But my earlier comment wasn't a serious guess anyway.)

3 hours later…

Q: Complete this puzzle(the right way)

3:04 PM

A circle and squares.. Try to complete this picture(the white areas) and explain why!

cipher pattern visual

Is it reasonable to use abbreviations as the solution to a cryptic crossword clue?

I'm finding it somewhat difficult to connect the two sides of this crossword grid without resorting to the arcane

3:18 PM

Hunter's prayer has not succeeded - ORION?

not sure how that works

hexomino

3:29 PM

@Avi ORISON is a prayer, so maybe "has not succeeded" indicates taking out the S?

nice!

Also, is "succeeded" an indicator? If so, what could it mean?

I'm trying to use it but it doesn't show up anywhere that I can tell

as in, "A B succeeded", "A succeeded B"

hexomino

@Avi I guess it could indicate something coming after something else - as in "A succeeded B" could indicate "BA" although "A succeeds B" might be better.

In the clue above it just looks like "succeeded" may be representing the letter "S", which I'm not totally sure about.

I was thinking more of letter selection

as in, last letters of A B or A

would that be possible?

hexomino

3:49 PM

I don't think it would work for letter selection alhtough others here might have more experience with how to achieve that

tragic

there goes a potentially &lit surface

1 hour later…

5:16 PM

Well, to succeed means to come after, not to be at the end of, so I'd use it only for positioning parts of the wordplay. And S for succeeded is, for example, defined here.

5:35 PM

Blowing up lice :o

5:58 PM

with nuclear fission :O