The Riddle Of The Sphinx

Overview

Design a stream of factual questions about our land, our people, our society, and our science. Questions are rated both directly by fellow scribes, and indirectly by achieving an appropriate difficulty level.

To pass this test, you must create 7 "perfect" riddles. Riddles are submitted, rated, and answered at a Lesser Sphinx (see Sphinx Locations to find one near you).

The overarching goal of this test is to create a living history museum by recording the history of the land, the people, the guilds, the skills, and the technologies.

Submitting Riddles

A riddle has two parts: The question, and the answer. The answer field can contain multiple possible answers if necessary. The wildcards ? and * can be used to represent either zero-to-one characters or multiple characters. For example, "*stranger" will match "stranger", "the stranger", and "I am the Stranger". "chest?" will match "chest" or "chests". Finally, case does not count. "Chest" and "chest" are the same.

You can have a maximum of 21 submitted riddles at a time. You can remove a riddle you submitted at any time.

Rating Riddles

Any initiate of Thought may rate a riddle by visiting a Sphinx (all sphinxes draw from the same set of riddles, so it doesn't matter which one).

Once a riddle has been rated by seven people, its rating will become permanent and it will be moved to the set of answerable riddles.

Things To Consider When Rating

1. Consider the accuracy of the riddle. Is the answer given correct? A "Rate Later" button is available if you need to do some research first.
2. Consider the possible responses. When answering a riddle regarding clearcutting, a person could type either "clearcutting" or "clear cutting". If the riddle is "I come in a bowl. What am I?", a person could type either "a tadpole" or "tadpoles". Has the author taken this into account? (See the section on wildcards above)
3. Consider the relevance of the riddle. Does it involve the history, society, people, guilds, or culture of this tale? "I was the first master of Acrobatics. Who was I?" would relevant, while "What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" would not be.
4. The difficulty of the riddle should not necessarily be considered when rating in most cases. After a riddle has been rated, its difficulty will be tested by those who answer it. (See "Answering Riddles" below)

Noble Riddles and Practice Riddles

Riddles with a score equal to or greater than 401 are considered "Noble". All other riddles are known as practice riddles. Only Noble riddles count for passing the test and gaining focus points, so keep this in mind when rating. Higher ratings should be saved for riddles which you believe fit the above criteria.

Answering Riddles

All citizens may attempt to answer a riddle, regardless of their status in the discipline of Thought. You have only one attempt to answer a riddle. Focus points are awarded based on your longest streak of correct answers (You are, however, allowed to answer 3 questions incorrectly before a streak is ended). Practice / Common riddles are ignored, success or failure do not count for or against a streak.

The focus value of each riddle has not been confirmed yet, but

Your first focus point will be awarded after a streak of ~3 correct riddles, and your second after a streak of ~15. (This may vary due to leftover fractional focus points from judging other thought puzzles, but two people so far have had identical results)

[Got 1 focus after streak of 11. Streak was ended at 26 after I encountered inappropriately-rated "noble" question with bad answer three times. No second focus by 26. Don't know if I have the patience to try a streak that long again until there are more questions. --Solalique]

[It took a streak of 10 noble riddles for me to get a focus point. I am now at 21 and didn't get a second point yet.]

It is possible for you to have zero correct answers in your streak, and 2/3 wrong answers. Yes, this is as stupid as it sounds. It's basically because the word "streak" isn't the right word to describe the "session".

"Perfect" Riddles

Of the first 21 people who attempt to answer a noble riddle, between 7 and 14 must answer correctly for a riddle to be considered of appropriate difficulty (33-66% correct answers). Riddles will remain in the list after 21 people have answered them, but success or failure when answering them will no longer affect the "appropriate difficulty" flag.

Once a noble riddle is determined to be of appropriate difficulty, you will be awarded credit for a "perfect" riddle.

Passing The Test

To pass this test you need to create 7 "perfect" riddles. This is a painful, iterative process. A riddle which is not noble will not allow you to pass. A riddle that is too easy or too hard will not allow you to pass. You will have to remove the weak riddles and replace them with new ones until you pass. I hope you have a Sphinx in your camp.

You retain credit for perfect riddles even if you later choose to remove it from the pool.

Sphinx Progress - To help track Egypt's progress towards getting an Oracle of Thought.

Technical Notes

This information may not be 100% accurate, but it summarizes what we know about the way a Sphinx selects questions based on the information provided so far by Teppy, et al.

Two sets of pools exist. One set is for unrated riddles, the other for unanswered riddles. There are 32 pools in each set. Once a pool has floor(1000/32) (i.e. 31) riddles in it, it will be considered active. When you ask to either rate or answer a riddle, the sphinx randomly checks up to 10 pools until it finds an active one, then presents a random riddle from that pool to you. If it fails to find an active pool, you will recieve a message saying "The Sphinx was unable to provide you with a question."

When you create a riddle, it will be randomly placed into one of the 32 "unrated riddles" pools. Once a riddle has been rated seven times, it is set as either "Noble" if the score is >=401, or "Practice" if not. It is then moved to a random "unanswered riddles" pool.

That last bit can't be right, because "Pharaoh says we need about 200 questions for people to be able to start answering them." If rated questions truly were moved to a random pool after recieving 7 votes, wouldn't we need a lot more? More experimentation or developer revelations are required. --Brant

Lesser Sphinxes

Images

The Sphinx of Karnak

Materials

As verified by building a Medium Construction Site, the materials to build a Lesser Sphinx are:

Sculpting Material

• 141061 Straw
• 33331 Clay
• 31013 Silt

Sculpture Form

• 11117 Slate

Decorative Embellishments

• 7673 Black Paint
• 6529 Turquoise Paint
• 5851 Light Goldenrod Yellow Paint
• 4523 Sea Green Paint
• 3307 Indian Red Paint
• 2129 Saddle Brown Paint

Vocal Mechanics

• 73 Small Gear
• 59 Medium Gear
• 37 Large Gear

Strikers

• 23 Bastet Gem of Any Type
• 23 Bridge Gem of Any Type
• 23 Hexas Plate Gem of Any Type
• 23 Cat's Eye Gem of Any Type
• 1 Cut Amethyst: King's Tomb
• 1 Cut Amethyst: Khufu's Ship
• 1 Cut Amethyst: Unity
• 1 King's Tomb (Any)
• 1 Khufu's Ship (Any)
• 1 Unity (Any)

Resonators

7 sets of 28 chimes. The chimes are randomly selected when the project is selected on the construction site.

Sphinx Projects

• VOK CCR Sphinx - Located at the VoK mega
• Sinai Sphinx - Located at the Sinai Fairgrounds Megalopolis
• LoR Sphinx - Located north of the Lake of Reeds, not far from LoR Mega
• OE Sphinx - Donation chests/contest booths are at 801, 5775 by the southern uarch in OE, anyone wishing to help speak to fairy
• RP Sphinx - To be located at Liberty Bridge Mega
• SE Sphinx - Planned for site north of SE mega, just across the road.
• 7L Sphinx - Located near The City of Karnak

(See also: Sphinx Locations)