The Sphinx's Lair

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cap

12:23 AM

@LukasRotter @LukasRotter looks good to me but what is the significance of the colors? ;)

Jafe

1:18 AM

visited vs non-visiited page, i think

3 hours later…

Sphinx

3:55 AM

Q: Longest Increasing European City Chain

Create the longest European City Chain such that: The number of inhabitants between two European cities in a row must always be increasing and we do not count urban or metropolitan areas The distance between two cities in a row must always be increasing You can not choose two cities in a row in ...

Lukas Rotter

@cap Ha :) I think I only viewed your puzzle at work/mobile.

Jafe

4:13 AM

@oAlt i think this is _G+U+I+TAR*, a music producer

1 hour later…

oAlt

5:17 AM

@Jafe correct! The reason I wasn't fully satisfied with the clue is because of a certain detail. Some may think that a guitar by itself isn't really a music producer; someone needs to strum it for it to actually produce music. I added "perhaps" because of this but I still felt it wasn't enough to absolve myself. But anyway I shouldn't worry too much, lol.

Jafe

fwiw i think music producer for guitar is completely fine

oAlt

(Also I don't know why I struggled with making a clue for that word, but I did. It took me ages to find a decent way to break up the word and form a decent surface for the clue.)

@Jafe I see :0

Jafe

CCCC: Marvel's Mr Lee made a comic perhaps describing Peter's brother (2,6)

oAlt

6:12 AM

@Jafe STAN (Stan Lee) + DREW (made a comic perhaps) = ST ANDREW (the Peter here is the one who was an apostle of Jesus).

Jafe

6:43 AM

that's right

Stiv

6:56 AM

@LukasRotter Just made some modifications to another user's edit of the MTC answer, in order to preserve their good intentions with something a bit more accurate. If you can take a look and make sure I've not done anything that will break the bot, that'd be great, thanks. It may even be information that should perhaps be included in the question rather than the answer now. See what you think.

2 hours later…

Puzzling Meta

8:43 AM

Q: How does the bot for Monthly Topic Challenges work?

What tasks does the MTC Bot handle and how? What do we as participants of Monthly Topic Challenges have to do or keep in mind?

discussion topic-challenge

2 hours later…

oAlt

10:15 AM

Gonna post a clue later, am still in the middle of something

2 hours later…

oAlt

12:29 PM

CCCC: Pot's mainly silver – in it's the cooked food (9)

1 hour later…

Sphinx

1:33 PM

Q: In the Spotlight

I'm two words long and have one "u". I love to move around. I'm very much invisible, Even when I am found. I'm almost always in the light, So rarely in the dark. And even if I'm in your yard, Your dog will never bark. The bitter cold is not my friend, So I stay far away. While you can find me whe...

riddle rhyme

2 hours later…

Stiv

3:10 PM

@oAlt Is this SPAGHETTI? (P_ + Ag) in ITSTHE*

oAlt

3:52 PM

@Stiv correct!

oAlt

4:31 PM

I forgot to say this earlier, but I challenged myself to make a cryptic clue whose answer was what I had for dinner, and that clue is the result. Lol

Stiv

Ha! From a spelling point of view, I'm glad you didn't have orecchiette then...

bobble

I am very happy to say that the clueless Sudoku I've been working on for the MTC finally has a unique solution :DDD now to go back and make sure the last three things I added didn't provide shortcuts around the earlier logic

Stiv

Good work bobble :)

bobble

I had a pretty restrictive theme I was working under, which was for the title "Objects In Mirror" (are different than they appear) - all Thermo clues are perfectly mirrored by Arrow clues. Had to break that for the last clue, though, it's an Arrow clue in the exact middle so it has no mirror.

Think the title & theme would still be fair?

Stiv

Works for me. A nice interpretation, adding constraints to a grid-deduction puzzle.

bobble

4:43 PM

At the end, though, I am worrying about making a clueless double-variety Sudoku too easy, which seems... unlikely. Even if you can skip over some logical steps the kind of puzzle it is forces at least some creative thinking

Hopefully some people will find it fun.

I'm a little sad at how many clues I had put in though. Five Thermos and six Arrows. Wish there were less.

It's probably harder than I think it is since all the deductions are so obvious to me who's been in the weeds of them for so long.

I should stop rambling about this and work on it

AncientSwordRage

5:07 PM

@bobble awesome!

2 hours later…

bobble

6:38 PM

It does skip some logic (the last 2 of the 5 things I liked) so I'm back to poking at things to see if there's a fix

oh if i could break the antisymmetry

if this one bit was just symmetry it would work :(

what if I flavored it as picking up the arrow on one side and bringing it to the other, that would explain why it was still an arrow... but that would work even better if you were bringing it through the mirror and it turned into a thermo...

(thinking about the flavortext)

It's very hard to add an arrow clue so close to the end and have it not bypass anything before, and this one place I figured out would require a non-thermo on the other end

AncientSwordRage

7:25 PM

@bobble I'm looking forward to seeing it, even if I have no idea how to solve it

bobble

I've decided the previous version is good enough since the "bypass" path involves some fun logic of its own. After another few test solves by myself to make sure all the logic holds up, I should have this ready for publishing by tomorrow.

AncientSwordRage

🙌🙌🙌

3 hours later…

Stiv

11:02 PM

CCCC: Keeled over, unwell, partway through Saturday - ultimately, there must be something going around... (9)

Sphinx

11:34 PM

Q: Requesting Feedback on Check Sum for Word Linking Puzzle Stage

I want the community's feedback on a puzzle I am considering creating. If your answer is real short, a comment is fine. Otherwise, please leave a real answer. Let's say the solver is given, as one of the earlier stages in a puzzle, many sets of two words that need to be linked together. One set, ...

puzzle-creation