The Sphinx's Lair

North Læraðr

12:06 AM

@oAlt Isn't it [tag:test]?

Like test

merrybot

12:48 AM

@NorthLæraðr indeed

i see you puzzlers have been discussing a conspiracy theory

Deusovi

1:19 AM

a conspiracy theory that clearly has absolutely no evidence for it

Avi

2:00 AM

a conspiracy theory that clearly has absolutely no evidence for it

... oops, wrong account

5

@GarethMcCaughan had to look this up to disprove its existence

oAlt

@NorthLæraðr yeah, I didn't know about that beforehand :((

North Læraðr

Ah

oAlt

[tag:second test]

North Læraðr

uh

Oh, it should be [tag:second-test]

no space in the tag

oAlt

I forgot again reeEeEe

oh-boy

North Læraðr

2:13 AM

My experience as the tag-dooku of Lit SE is becoming useful

oAlt

hahaha

bobble

3:26 AM

I threw out most of my crossword because the words weren't good enough.. cries

Deusovi

yep, I know that feeling

I've been working on a set of puzzles, and one of my first attempts had OLEG, ILLUSE, and UNPEG. a different one had HVACR

bobble

All my entries were legal, but the Something Different ones were (I think) not funny enough

Deusovi

ah, makes sense

Something Different crosswords usually have a lot more open space, so they're still a pretty significant construction challenge

bobble

I did keep 2 really good ones, so I have those + the 5 that are part of the theme

Sphinx

5:01 AM

0

Q: How can the white cross be cut into 5 smaller pieces that can be resembled into the two smaller red crosses shown?

How can the white cross be cut into 5 smaller pieces that can be resembled into the two smaller red crosses shown? Puzzle created by Henry Dudeney on The Strand Newspaper long time ago. Source: Saw this in this video time:(2.15)

jafe

CCCC hint: the first letter is O

Rand al'Thor

7:04 AM

@Avi People ask me this every now and then :-P

Nov 22 '16 at 18:22, by Rand al'Thor

@LukasRotter Short version: after a big surge in low-quality puzzles, the then mods decided to ban posting puzzles as challenges altogether, making the site only for questions about puzzling. A significant proportion of the community rose up in protest against this, and the whole site was in total uproar for a couple of months, even after the CMs weighed in and the mods backed down.

jafe

7:33 AM

because of course solving puzzles can be made into a controversial topic

are any of the mods of the time still active here?

Mithical

8:31 AM

Doorknob is semi active

jafe

9:47 AM

one post in two years probably falls short of "semi" :P

msh210

10:14 AM

@jafe He or she was last seen 10 hours ago, according to his or her PSE profile page. So -- not active, but at least present.

jafe

10:47 AM

yeah true

jafe

11:13 AM

liked your crossword btw, @msh210

i imagine the grid must have taken a few tries to pull off

msh210

11:30 AM

@jafe Thanks. There are things about it I don't like, but I don't know how to fix, which is why I posted it as is. Specifically, there are some rare words in there (as answers, not in clues).

@jafe Yes.

(I mean, I managed to improve it somewhat w.r.t. rare words, but hit an impasse.)

(The presence of rare words is also why I used – IMO – fairly easy clues. Had I managed to make the crossword with only normal words in it, I'd probably have used some harder clues. So, all in all, I'm actually not that happy about the puzzle.)

Sphinx

11:47 AM

0

Q: Ernest does not know the color of his hat

Previously I tried to make a very difficult hat color deduction puzzle: Unseen prisoners figuring out their hats It seems to be too hard for the interested, since I did not get a complete solution. The central part of the logic was that the statement "Ernest does not know the color of his hat" to...

logical-deduction meta-knowledge hat-guessing

Stiv

12:59 PM

@bobble Now, there's an idea... That one should be possible. If wanting to set one up to solve concurrently (e.g. like recent @JeremyDover puzzles), it might need to be quite large to introduce some kind of ambiguity into the LITS, as they tend to be so compact that ambiguity is virtually impossible... One to file away for the future there, I think...

Sphinx

0

Q: Cryptic Family Reunion: I've got a fever!

The answer to this puzzle is a list of ten thematically related words or proper names or phrases. Each of these is clued cryptically, and the theme is to be determined. Since the definition part of a cryptic clue would give away the theme, these cryptic clues use a family member (e.g., mom, siste...

cryptic-clues

Jeremy Dover

@Stiv I'll admit, my first thought on seeing the Aquariums was to come up with a natural hybrid for simultaneous solvability as well...it's been a bit of a theme for me lately, but hopefully there will soon come to fruition a good reason for it.

Sphinx

1:28 PM

0

Q: Ernest does not know the color of his hat (2)

The previous version indeed proved simple; now a medium one (I think) The (same) premise: A number of people stands on a line playing a hat guessing game they may not move during the game, they can only look straight ahead (each person in a direction along the line, i.e. right or left depending ...

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