The Sphinx's Lair

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12:32 AM

Four checkers-playing fanatics eagerly pair up for two simultaneous games of checkers but somehow find themselves with only one board. They do have enough pieces for two games, so it is time to act. One recklessly cuts that board into 9 pieces and reassembles them into two identical oddly-shape...

5 hours later…

msh210

5:08 AM

@hexomino thanks

CCCC: Fairbanks, Alaska, is home to corporation first to produce oil via particular method (5)

1 hour later…

jafe

6:26 AM

@msh210 F_R+A(C_)K

where "fairbanks" is the two sides (banks) of the word "fair", i assume :)

ABcDexter

hola amigos

Sphinx

7:09 AM

Q: keys, codes and patterns

My flatmate always forgets his key, so now we have installed a small locker outside the room where a spare is located. So that my flatmates doesn't forget the code we made this small riddle for him, if he can find the pattern he finds the missing number. The missing number is also the code for un...

pattern calculation-puzzle

msh210

7:55 AM

@jafe yep!

1 hour later…

Sphinx

9:03 AM

Q: 2020!(Not exactly though)

The images in the rectangle will help you replace the question marks with the correct numbers!

knowledge visual number-sequence rebus

jafe

9:20 AM

CCCC: Abortion-opposing proportion to increase rapidly (11)

Sid

@jafe that is PROLIFE+RATE

jafe

@Sid that's right

Sphinx

9:40 AM

Q: Show this man Exit , enter into cell only once and should cover all cells

Show this man the exit Conditions : 1. should cover all cells 2. should not enter the cell twice (only once)

logical-deduction

2 hours later…

Sphinx

11:15 AM

Q: Loophole in anti-sex laws

There is only one country on Earth, Oceania. It's a totalitarian society ruled by a person with title "the Greatest Of Dictators" (G.O.D. for short). There are videocameras everywhere, citizens of Oceania have zero privacy. Gender of all citizens is known, every citizen is either a male or a fema...

lateral-thinking story

4 hours later…

Sphinx

3:39 PM

Q: Humans, vampires and mirror part 2: the triangular mirrors

Find part 1 (without triangular mirrors) here. Here is a room composed of $10 \times 10$ squared cells. Each cell can be empty (𝑋) or contain one of the following: a double-faced mirror ( / or \ ); a triangular mirror (which comes in four variants: ◁, ▷, △ or ▽) where all the edges of the t...

logical-deduction no-computers grid-deduction

2 hours later…

Sphinx

5:13 PM

Q: What is an ?????? 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 an ?????? Word™. Use the examples below to find the rule. $ \begin{gather*} % set Title text. (spaces around the text A...

pattern english word-property

1 hour later…

Sphinx

6:29 PM

Q: The escape of Beastly Gerbil

The finale of a three part series: Part 1 - The disappearance of Beastly Gerbil Part 2 - The entrapment of Beastly Gerbil I have a lot to think about... firstly I disappeared for two years, and now it turns out I was trapped in my own brain... Well I'm out now and I'm back. I don't really re...

riddle enigmatic-puzzle visual story

North

7:11 PM

Anything new?

Noooooooooooooooo

There's no Galactic Puzzle Hunt this year :((((((((((((((((

WHYYYYYY

Sphinx

8:04 PM

-1

Q: Emoji Puzzle on UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Emoji Puzzle - UNESCO World Heritage Sites

emoji

North

8:29 PM

Okay I kinda lowkey like ultra-dark mode on stack overflow

am i the only one who feels this way?

Mithical

North

I feel like the prank wasn't ultra-dark mode, but that we can't keep ultra-dark mode

Maybe they should just black out the whole screen for an ultra-ultra dark mode

1 hour later…

Sphinx

9:39 PM

Q: Largest set of independent hexominoes

What is the largest set of hexominoes that can be found in which no two of them are such that one can be converted into the other by cutting out one of its component squares (thus obtaining a pentamino) and glueing it elsewhere?

combinatorics graph-theory polyomino

1 hour later…

msh210

10:39 PM

Years ago, at least once and I think twice, Games magazine ran a puzzle it called "Is Dot a Fact?". It worked as follows: There was a rectilinear grid of dots (corresponding to some integral points in the plane), each labeled. There was a list of statements, each of which was labeled so the dots and statements corresponded. Each statement also had two additional labels attached to: if you thought the statement was true, you should proceed from that dot to the first additional [cont'd]

label; if you thought the statement was false, to the second. You were to draw the corresponding line segment in the grid. Some "additional labels" instead indicated to stop drawing, IIRC. For example, if you started at dot 1, you read question 1, say "1+1=2. T: 7. F: 6" (it wasn't that easy) and if you thought "1+1=2" was true you'd draw a line from dot 1 to dot 7 and continue with question 7, whereas if you thought "1+1=2" was false you'd draw a line from dot 1 to dot 6 and [cont'd]

continue with question 6. That, at least, is how I remember it. I was thinking of making a similar puzzle for PSE (possibly with a twist, but the same general idea). The problem is, though, that now almost any fact I could be sure of is online, and Web search engines are good. So I was stumped as to how to come up with questions. Then I hit on an idea. I looked up the research interests of about 150 researchers in various fields and e-mailed them, explaining what I was doing, and [cont'd]

asking for a fact that was indisputably T/F (to someone who knows the field) but hard to find online. I got a single answer. One. So... I don't think I'll be making this puzzle. If someone else has an idea as to how I can collect facts for the puzzle, do please let me know -- or make the puzzle yourself. (If you plan to make the puzzle yourself and want to know what twist I had planned for it to make it more interesting than the Games version, let me know, and I'll gladly share.)

Oh, I forgot to mention. The point of the Games puzzle was to draw a picture.