The Sphinx's Lair

Escape Artistry - Ron A. Way
The Art of Uncertainty - Kood B. Wright
Finding the Unfindable - Still C. King
On Religion - D. Vout
The Nature of Fate - Dustin E.
Pure Productivity - F. E. Shent
Avoiding War - Ray Few G.
Growing a Nest Egg - H. E. Ken
Atlantis - Sunk I. Land
Small-Time Fines - J. Walker
How (not) to House Your Dragon - K. Jess
Back in my Day - L. Derr
Girl Power - M. Press
Fencing - N. Gard
O
P
Q
R
Planning for Retirement - S. Tate
T
U
Thanksgiving - Gray V.
Onwards! - W. Tern
Can't Keep a Date - Anne X.

bobble

Avi stated it!

Avi

Grasslands, a book by Med O.

matt

Poop, a book b-no

Avi

Philanthropy

Sleepy

Happy

bobble

7:24 PM

Lights, Camera..., by Q. Ack Shaun

Avi

Pizza

matt

Italian Restaurants, a book by P. Tsa

Avi

nice!

matt

thanks :)

Avi

might go with "italian dining"

as a better book-ish title

but that's a minor nitpick, at best - the naming is very good

matt

7:26 PM

yeah sure

Avi

@bobble hmmmmmm

want to take it

bobble

Getting Drunk!, a book by Parr T.

matt

ooh damn

Avi

hmmmm

College Years, a book by Parr T.?

not sure

many titles go with this name

matt

Historic Theaters, a book by Moo V.

bobble

7:28 PM

The Most Important Part of College?

Avi

ooooh

Work Hard, a book by Parr T. Harder

matt

nice!

Avi

qru left

Calligraphy, a book by Curly Q.

bobble

Noble Gasses, a book by R. Gone

ehh title is not the best

should we have moved the punning to a separate room?

Avi

chat is dead atm

but if anybody has interest in discussing other puzzles, then go ahead

puzzles take priority over puns :P

Renewable Energy, a book by Sol R. Cell

matt

7:36 PM

nice!

Avi

Medieval Weapons, a book by R. Mori

I like this one better

bobble

Poisons & Other Fun Substances, a book by U. Tree

ehhh

Avi

U. Serp

matt

@bobble "fun substances" is kinda sus

Sphinx

0

Q: A rectangle, a circle, and a triangle are drawn in a plane

A rectangle, a circle and a triangle are drawn in a plane. What is the maximum possible number of points of intersection? The sides of the triangle are not collinear with any of the sides of the rectangle.

mathematics

bobble

7:44 PM

quick aside: I'm reallll annoyed that this answer is so upvoted despite breaking the rules of the puzzle

matt

then downvote it

bobble

Already have. I'm the only downvoter

matt

i just did

Sciborg

One sec I'll go downvote as well.

bobble

oh, now 2 downvoters

Sciborg

7:46 PM

There we go.

It's not technically breaking the rules of the puzzle, but I feel it goes against the intended spirit of the puzzle, which is equally valid.

Avi

I mean, it's just

unmentioned

but it shouldn't be too much upvoted

matt

what is that

Sciborg

Ooh, I missed Bubbler posting the C4. "Algorithm" sounds right up my alley...

I have an immediate guess that I think fits, but I'm going to verify that the wordplay is valid before I make a solution attempt.

Avi

SHELLSORT? lol

Sciborg

Nope, but I did think of that and bubble sort. But I think I have it

bobble

7:52 PM

5 hours ago, by Bubbler

SHELLSORT is not the answer, but you're on the right track (to some extent).

Avi

it's probably not but, it's funny

bobble

@Sciborg Does this apply?

> A++ level at completely accidental solutions.

Sciborg

@bobble I mean, this one isn't accidental necessarily... :p

I just need to make sure the wordplay is what was intended, because it seems just a little weird

To explain: cutting off shells of underwater stuff is an obvious reference to shucking, right?

And there's an algorithm called "shunting."

Shunting-yard algorithm

In computer science, the shunting-yard algorithm is a method for parsing mathematical expressions specified in infix notation. It can produce either a postfix notation string, also known as Reverse Polish notation (RPN), or an abstract syntax tree (AST). The algorithm was invented by Edsger Dijkstra and named the "shunting yard" algorithm because its operation resembles that of a railroad shunting yard. Dijkstra first described the Shunting Yard Algorithm in the Mathematisch Centrum report MR 34/61. Like the evaluation of RPN, the shunting yard algorithm is stack-based. Infix expressions are the...

Avi

yeah but that's nowhere near 9 letters

Sciborg

Ahhhhh SHIT, read it as 8...

Deusovi

7:56 PM

the algorithm appears to be called "shunting-yard", not "shunting"

also that sort of letter replacement wouldn't be allowed without specifying the particular letters that need to be replaced

matt

@Sciborg HOLY SHIT

Sciborg

Well, dang. Lol. I thought that one was a hole-in-one with eight letters. Bad time for a visual mistake on my part

Back to square one.

Thank you for the pity holy shit, @matt

matt

@Sciborg no problem :)

Sciborg

I'm so mad, I gotta up the font size on my laptop. I glanced, thought I saw 8, and immediately was like "oh my gosh it's gotta be shunting"

fffsss my stupid eyeballs

bobble

would you like me to remove them?

I can send some bobblies over to do it

Sciborg

8:01 PM

well that's a terrifying offer

bobble

the eyes are cleaned off and given to baby bobblies

Sciborg

is that... the sinister secret of the bobblies

bobble

you didn't hear anything

Sciborg

panicked coraline childhood trauma flashbacks

Trying to think of other algorithms with nine letters. QUICKSORT and MERGESORT come to mind.

matt

@bobble you are seriously creeping me out here ok

Avi

8:03 PM

yes

@bobble you're turning Quicksort into Squicksort

matt

wince

Sciborg

I mean there is a non-shunting-yard algorithm technique just called "SHUNTING" for cutting off binary search trees, if memory serves.

But again, not nine letters

Hmm

bobble

def could also be "underwater stuff" or just "stuff"

Sciborg

That's true, I guess I'm operating on the definition being the first half. If it's the second half, what are possible options?

matt

MANY FISH

bobble

8:06 PM

1 word

Avi

I'm operating on the assumption that "stuff" is "sort"

Sciborg

Same

Avi

even though it doesn't quite fit

Sciborg

SHELLFISH?

Avi

shellfish algorithm?

bobble

8:07 PM

possible parsing: "cut off shells" of a word meaning "underwater", i.e. remove the first & last letters

Sciborg

I do think "cut off" could definitely be a substring/removal indicator

matt

bobble

first thought is (-c)HEAP, because HEAPSORT, but too short

Sciborg

Yeah, that's a good idea though!

Waiiiit....

(-SUB)MERGESORT?

??????

Avi

yeah

but that would be so sketch

(-sub)merge(-d)

Sciborg

8:10 PM

No, just (-sub)merge

Avi

"shells"

Sciborg

shells = submarines?

Might be a stretch yeah....

bobble

yeah, and underwater = submerged is better than underwater = submerge

Sciborg

Dang.

Avi

either way I don't want this CCCC lol

bobble

8:11 PM

So, maybe, (-sub)MERGE(-d) + SORT is your parsing

Sciborg

@bobble that seems iffy though, yeah

@Avi Why don't you want this CCCC :p

bobble

yeah, and cutting off a different number of letters on either end is weird

They'd have to make a CCCC

Avi

@Sciborg still generating book titles

Sciborg

Ah. Lol

Avi

U. Don Tse

Sciborg

8:14 PM

Trying to think of my machine learning stint and all the decision tree algorithms I had to learn

bobble

I've starred everything currently on the sideboard (except my message). Maybe I should be more discerning with my stars?

Avi

Mind Your Manners, a book by Bless U.

only Q to go, then

Billiards, a book by Q. Ball?

bobble

Get the Ball Rolling, by Pool Q.?

Sciborg

TRAVERSAL (algorithmic approach to traversing search trees), RECURSIVE, ITERATIVE...

Avi

Patience, Young Padawan, a book by Q. S. Long

"queue is long"

bobble

8:17 PM

So you're abandoning "stuff" = SORT?

Sciborg

Yeah. I'm no longer convinced stuff means sort. Just offering alternatives

If they said SHELLSORT was on the right track then it could just be an algorithmic word

Avi

bubbler might not have been around to verify, though

I'm more convinced of mergesort

Sciborg

I really love (-SUB)MERGESORT but it seems super stretchy.

@Bubbler just out of curiosity, is it MERGESORT with one of the wordplays discussed above?

Avi

think I'm going to stick with Calligraphy, a book by Curly Q.

bobble

5 hours ago, by Bubbler

I'm going to bed now, and I'm rarely online on weekends. I'll try to come and see how it goes as often as possible though

Avi

8:21 PM

because, curlicues are from calligraphy

Sciborg

Oh, oops. We'll just have to wait and see then

Deusovi

I don't think any of this wordplay works? it doesn't specify what to cut off

bobble

cut off "shells", or outside letters <-- my guess

Deusovi

which ones though? "three from the beginning and one from the end" would be weird - I would expect that to mean one of each, or maybe two of each

Avi

depends on how experienced bubbler is with solving/setting CCs I suppose

Here we go, the Official (*cough cough cough*) Book Puns for Puzzling Stack Exchange
"Escape Artistry", a book by Ron A. Way
"The Art of Uncertainty", a book by Kood B. Wright
"Finding the Unfindable", a book by Still C. King
"On Religion", a book by D. Vout
"The Nature of Fate", a book by Dustin E.
"Pure Productivity", a book by F. E. Shent
"Avoiding War", a book by Ray Few G.
"Growing a Nest Egg", a book by H. E. Ken
"Atlantis", a book by Sunk I. Land
"Small-Time Fines", a book by J. Walker
"How (not) to House Your Dragon", a book by K. Jess

3

bobble

8:35 PM

All of the 9-letter sorting algorithms on Geeks for Geeks: mergesort, quicksort, radixsort, shellsort, cyclesort, gnomesort, sleepsort, and bricksort

Gareth McCaughan

(Nothing in the clue says that "algorithm" refers to a sorting algorithm...)

Avi

yes

bobble

yeah, but one of the early ideas was "stuff" = SORT

Avi

List of algorithms

The following is a list of algorithms along with one-line descriptions for each. == Automated planning == == Combinatorial algorithms == === General combinatorial algorithms === Brent's algorithm: finds a cycle in function value iterations using only two iterators Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm: finds a cycle in function value iterations Gale–Shapley algorithm: solves the stable marriage problem Pseudorandom number generators (uniformly distributed—see also List of pseudorandom number generators for other PRNGs with varying degrees of convergence and varying statistical quality): ACO...

behold, all the options we have

Gareth McCaughan

why is stuff = SORT?

bobble

8:40 PM

mostly because the first algorithms people thought of were sorting algorithms

Avi

@GarethMcCaughan I can't even think of a sentence in which they would be equal, though

Deusovi

@bobble that explains why you would want "stuff = SORT", but not why that is the case

Sciborg

8:58 PM

I'm not convinced stuff = sort necessarily, it just seemed logical to suggest sorting algorithms first since they're common algorithms and a lot of them had nine letters.

bobble

By the way, I've checked all of the aforementioned 9-letter sorting algorithms, and none of their first 5 are in the middle of a 7-letter word meaning "underwater". So that parsing of the clue is a bust

Sciborg

Ahh, drat.

Sphinx

9:21 PM

0

Q: Maserlink - A Masyu-Slitherlink Hybrid

Both Masyu and Slitherlink puzzles have as their target a single closed loop that does not touch or intersect itself. So it seems natural to create a hybrid that uses both Masyu and Slitherlink clues. In this puzzle, your goal is to create a loop that satisfies all of the Slitherlink and Masyu cl...

grid-deduction slitherlink masyu

Avi

@JeremyDover do you have an editor where we can draw lines :(

bobble

9:56 PM

You know, I should do homework and not logic puzzles.... says the rational part of my brain

it didn't win today

... and Deus sniped me. Of course.

2

deleted my answer.

North Læraðr

Both Deusovi and Gareth mentioned making the linguistics puzzle unique: unfamiliar, strange, etc.

I need some ideas though

Deusovi

I was nearly done with my answer when you posted yours

North Læraðr

Broad ideas or approaches, obviously. I just need a springboard

bobble

Maybe I shouldn't have posted before writing up? I've been posting bare answers because that's what I did for the first significant write-up I did (geribil's 3-doku)

Deusovi

yeah, I wouldn't recommend doing that - I don't post an answer until there's nothing else I can do with it. otherwise it just feels like "rep-grabbing" (even if that's not the intent)

bobble

10:05 PM

sorry, won't in the future

aggh now I'm really embarrassed

North Læraðr

@bobble I have no idea what the conversation is about, but it's fine

bobble

Jeremy's latest mash-up: I posted a bare answer, then Deus posted a write-up

North Læraðr

We all make mistakes. As the old saw goes...

Deusovi

@NorthLæraðr look for uncommon features that natural languages have! wikipedia dives could be great for this. and think about particular words you could focus on - what could you distinguish that english doesn't normally?

e.g. spanish has two different forms of "to be", one for permanent states and one for transient ones (roughly). and some languages make important grammatical distinctions depending on if a noun is animate or inanimate -- are there other words or concepts you could "split apart" like this? or the other way around, things that you could "merge together" that english keeps separate?

North Læraðr

Ooh. I've been looking at 2019 GPH as well

I was originally going to expand upon Deus's joke on linguistics genders based on edibility and make a cookbook based on those genders (edible and tasty; edible but not tasty; not edible but tasty; not edible and not tasty). Couldn't get a good idea off of that though, so I'm putting that on hold. I'm actually thinking of progressing slowly through the metapuzzle, revealing a small feature of a new language with one small aspect at a time.

Deusovi

10:12 PM

GPH 2019 was good but might be way too large-scale - they needed to have a lot of entry points and things where we basically had translations directly given, so we could get a foothold on things

North Læraðr

@Deusovi Just looking for ideas, not something to that scale of grandiosity

Deusovi

up to you though, interested to see what you can come up with

North Læraðr

See how they did things

Avi

My idea of a puzzle involving linguistics would be

bobble

I will look in awe at your linguistic puzzles and throw upvotes your way. Can't do much else, I'm afraid.

Avi

10:13 PM

you give the instructions to various different kinds of puzzles in the conlang

and then you finally give the instructions to a new type of puzzle in the conlang

and to solve it, they have to understand the instructions :P

North Læraðr

I want to start with the alphabet/phonetics. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to present a foreign alphabet with its own pronunciation but still make it friendly for those not into familiar with linguistics. And I don't exactly want to be limited to just sounds in English, but how does one present something like this?

I think I could definitely make the conlang around cooking, which would be really funny

bobble

you could put the little dotties over letters, people will generally accept strange foreign pronunciations then

North Læraðr

Unfortunately, I need the pronunciation to be consistent. If I'm making a foreign script, I don't want it to be just weird forms of English consonants mashed together

At least I got my vowels figured out

Or I know what I'm going to do with vowels, I think

bobble

you think

North Læraðr

Can't reveal too much. I have the general concept though

Well, I guess I would need to ditch all the cool foreign like lateral fricative and clicks.

(how to make phonetics interesting and unique without making it a guessing game)

bobble

10:30 PM

magic

North Læraðr

I wonder if I could almost... teach some consonant sounds grouping by having certain closely related sounds in English grouped together?

It would achieve the same effect as the IPA without all the fancy shenanigans. Or not, perhaps?

I guess I'll have to stick with English sounds for now.

bobble

11:56 PM

@Stiv, are you still planning to "draft a blurb" about chain-puzzle guidelines?

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