plasmid

Indeed I am, this one goes to Wilson.

Not a sun or star, as there are clues about not being able to linger in the atmosphere due to inability to breathe, and the bit about projections that get retracted during an attack. Perhaps that could refer to a star's arms becoming invisible when the sun rises, but the part about penetrating a hull would be tough to factor in. As far as space shuttles and satellites and the like, even though they're not actually UFOs, I would still consider them to be too similar to the decoy answer. If I were to say "I'm not a bull" and went on to say that I had four legs and horns and people occasionally ride me and go to great lengths to avoid falling off, then I'm probably not looking for a cow (I think some types of female cows have horns). It just wouldn't make for a very clever sort of riddle. I would more likely be looking for something very different that would still fit all the clues, like a bicycle with training wheels.

I thought it turned out rather fun the last time I tried to play Devil's advocate (or rather God's advocate) and challenge my own views about whether religion is even theoretically potentially useful. This probably won't end up being nearly so epic, but in a similar spirit let's try turning the tables again. I've seen an awful lot of rubbish on the boards about multiple parallel universes (or "multiverses"), string theory, and other such drivel since I've been on here. I suppose some people are bound to buy that sort of bunk, just like there are bound to be people who believe in ghosts and fairies and any hope for the Steelers to win it all this year. But the mere fact that people go around holding such delusions isn't the disturbing part. What's really bothersome is that some people think this almost classifies as science. Absurdity! Multiverses are inherently unprovable. Could I go outside right now and run an experiment that could either definitively prove or disprove the existence of even a single parallel universe? Could you even theoretically come up with an experiment that could ever prove or disprove the existence of multiverses? No, I say! So, since the multiverse "hypothesis" is an inherently unobservable and unprovable speculation that as far as I know or care to look up does not even need to be invoked to explain any natural phenomena, then off to Occam's guillotine with it! Henceforth, anyone who posts anything about these mythical multiverses must acknowledge the fact that there is no scientific value in what they're saying, and must use quotes around it to help emphasize the fact that it shouldn't be taken seriously, and must use air quotes whenever talking about it in real life, and must give equal time to every other postulate like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Same goes for other untestable hypotheses like string theory and the existence of consciousness. If you can think of any experiment to objectively verify consciousness aside from some hokey "personal revelation" that you are yourself conscious then fire away. Scientists, defend thyself against thyself! RAmen

Hi mangamathsfreak. I typically write riddles in such a way that they initially sound like they're describing one thing, but are actually describing something else completely different. Then I title the riddle "I'm not a ..." whatever the first thing was so people will know to try to look along completely different lines. So in this case, the title tells you that the real answer is nothing at all like a UFO. And I would consider a satellite to be pretty close to a UFO and therefore excluded by the title. But I guess I'll take that response as a sign that I've made a good "decoy" answer for this riddle. If it helps, links to all my prior "I'm not a ..." riddles are on my profile page and should give a good idea of how different the "real" and "decoy" answers usually are, as well as examples of the types of imagery and clue placement I tend to use.

Floating about in this sunless dark sky With hope on the natives to cloy Once safety's assured with no need to standby Sextuple projections deploy Cautiously venture at ponderous pace And not without being relieved For I cannot linger in this inner space The atmosphere's not fit to breathe Drifting back off I come under attack Take nary a second to mull My several devices all quickly retract And pray they don't penetrate hull

Point of clarification: are you asking for the smallest number of cells that can generate a pattern that will eventually spread to infect the entire cube, or are you asking for the smallest number of cells that will (regardless of their initial distribution) be guaranteed to eventually infect the entire cube? The second case seems fairly easy. For the first case, I can do it in 52. But I can't prove that this is optimal. Maybe KlueMaster could flesh out the proposed solution with 49, I don't think that infecting the diagonals alone would actually do it, but maybe I'm missing something.

This one goes to plainglazed for telling what I'd be if I weren't me.

Not DNA or genes or anything along those lines. A plasmid is a bit of circular DNA outside of an organism's main chromosome that's usually used to deliver a small set of genes, so the title would rule out such answers. A spider web usually doesn't carry a message, unless of course it happens to be one of Charlotte's webs. And a scar could certainly carry a message, but there's a line about having an endless path that's a fairly important clue for this riddle.

The mysteries of how I react Are now broken down to a science My strands stretch out in parallel tracts They're known for their inter-reliance With path that's endless, ever progress And carry my master's injunction The message borne is anyone's guess Decode it, perhaps learn my function This world's indeed a place of distress Should I go without my protection A lipid coat solves part of that mess Attraction could bring an infection

Either or

Interesting that this one was solved by two people who aren't from the old crew that's used to my riddles. But you guys surely helped with guesses that were very near the mark. Hopefully a re-read of the riddle with the answer in mind will make the clues both large and subtle become obvious and the fit seem natural. Well done to all three of you, including JLayden for one of the best alternate answers I've seen.

Actually not an electric razor, as they aren't much of a flamethrower and typically don't go snatching maidens. Hairspray may be flammable but would be hard to classify as a flame, and usually isn't used in the timing as it appears in the riddle – before the line about being in disarray and before the line about plowing. Not a blunderbuss; while most weapons would be similar to a dragon attack and therefore fit a lot of the clues, there's the bit in the beginning about emerging from a lake that would leave you wondering why it's there.

Lots of answers while I was at work. The ones that have to do with natural phenomena like t-storms or the sun or a meteorite would be ruled out by the last stanza (unless there's some mythology to suggest otherwise that I don't know of). Edit: Had a chance to Wikipedia the Kaali crater. Some mythology surrounds it, but not about human vanity causing it. The weaponry like napalm and a-bombs would fit much of the riddle, but would leave open the question of why the second line talks about people emerging from a lake. Not a fish story or censorable material; the former would be a strange fit for the fourth stanza, the latter because of a couple of subtle points - the eighth line would have referred to dusk rather than dawn if I were writing about the usual such stuff, and the bit about plowing the fields would have said "I" (to jive with who "I" would be in the sixth line) rather than "Now" (as in a command to the person/thing being spoken to). A shower head is actually remarkably close, I'm only holding off on calling it an alternate answer because the one I had in mind is so close and fits a bit better. The Columbia disaster is a remarkably good fit to this riddle. The first stanza could work since the earth is mostly water. The second stanza's "break of dawn" would refer to the breakup at re-entry, which did actually happen in the early morning. There's a little ambiguity about the timing since the third stanza's first two lines would have had to refer to liftoff which would precede re-entry in the second stanza. In the fourth stanza, plowing the fields has an alternate interpretation (that wasn't the alternate interpretation that I had in mind), and there were multiple females on the flight that could account for the plural maidens. And the last stanza would fit as well. Overall it seems like an acceptable alternate answer. I must be getting rusty after all this time away from riddling, but nonetheless a great response. Of course I'll still leave this open for the answer I had in mind.

Hi everyone. The chimera and volcano don't seem to fit with the last stanza. The wig certainly does, but misses the fire breathing part.

You peasants now are loose Emerging from the lake I wait for thee upon my roost An ever-patient drake Alarm! Revile with dread For I have have taken flight As beaming down from overhead At break of dawn I strike With thund'rous noise I came And frightened beasts away My widened maw spewed forth the flame Upon such disarray Now plow the fields of blight The maidens, snatched away Shall not be rescued by a knight Not one will come to slay For witchcraft brought me hence To leave you with this bane A curse for humans' great offense The sin of being vain

Thought I'd add a comment since this is the field I'm going into soon. Oncolytic (or cancer killing) viruses have been under development since at least the mid 90s or so and have made it to various stages of clinical trials. The fundamental idea is pretty much what you said: find a way to make a virus infect and kill specifically tumor cells, and you'll have eradicated the tumor. How to specifically target a cancer is sort of tricky. Some tumors do express unusual proteins, or more commonly they overexpress proteins that are normally regulated at much lower levels, and many groups have inserted binding sites into viral coat proteins that will make the virus attach to tumor cells and preferentially infect them. Other people are trying to use the patients' white blood cells, which have some degree of ability to recognize cancer cells as abnormal, and attach the viral particles to those white blood cells to home them in on the tumor. Or you can go with a more low-tech approach and simply inject the virus straight into the tumor mass. But targeting at the level of infection might not be totally necessary. Viruses like adenovirus have to overcome host defenses and drive the cell to survive and grow in order to replicate efficiently. One of the ways it does that is by making a protein that inactivates p53, a major regulator of cell division. It turns out that many cancers have developed mutated or otherwise inactivated forms of p53 as part of the process that made the cells start to grow out of control. So one of the earliest oncolytic viruses that went to clinical trials was an adenovirus where they removed the protein that inactivates p53. That virus can't replicate in normal cells that have p53, but can grow in and kill cancer cells that already have inactivated p53. The other question is: what sort of cargo should the virus carry? A relatively normal virus might just have a viral genome, in which case it infects a cell and replicates and kills the host cell in the process. But it's also possible to make virus-like particles where the viral genome is replaced by whatever other DNA or RNA you want the virus to carry - that's pretty much the basis for gene therapy. One of the slick tricks that people have tried is using viruses to deliver a cytosine deaminase gene to tumors. The cytosine deaminase can then convert 5-fluorocytosine (which is nontoxic) into 5-fluorouracil. 5-fluorouracil happens to be a chemotherapy agent. That means you get a lot of chemo produced specifically at the infected cells, which would theoretically deliver a high dose to the infected cells as well as any cells nearby that haven't been infected. Those cells would be exposed to a toxic dose of chemo, but by the time it diffuses out of the tumor where it's produced the concentration would be much lower and not have the same side effects as standard chemotherapy now. Variations on the theme are emerging, too. A lot of interest is being drawn by the fact that the immune system can to some degree attack cancer cells, but doesn't do a good enough job of it in patients who have growing cancers. People are trying to use viruses to make cells express the abnormal proteins characteristic of some tumors as well as immune stimulating signals, hoping that the immune cells will see them in the setting of those immune activating signals and therefore have a better chance of learning to recognize them as targets. So far, none of these has made it through all the clinical trials and shown enough effectiveness to get FDA approval. And ever since the clinical trials of gene therapy for SCID that resulted in some of the patients later developing leukemia (due to the fact that the virus they used has a tendency to insert its DNA near a growth-promoting gene in the host cell) a lot of the inital enthusiasm for things along the lines of gene therapy such as oncolytic viruses has dissipated. It's still an evolving field, and very cool science, but no blockbuster drugs have come out of it yet.

And

dms nailed this one. Always a good sign when other people see the answer and say "that's just got to be it". And it's also a little bit humorous that plainglazed and I simultaneously came up with riddles on almost the exact same thing but couldn't figure each other's out.

Not a pair of trees, there aren't any famous white-and-black combos that I know of for the opening clue Neither a soccer ball. I'd like to have seen more bicycle kicks in the world cup for the head-over-heel clue, but it has no heart of diamond P.S. I don't have a kid, but I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid, hence my English knowledge That's a really good answer. It fits the first stanza perfectly. The head-over-heels could refer to image inversion when a picture's taken, and snow if safeguards fail might be a completely white film or maybe blurry image if the process is fouled up. The diamond could refer to an enlarging lens used in the film-to-paper exposure process. If there's a good way that it could fit the clue about the mark of Superman I'd call it an acceptable alternate answer, completely unrelated to what I have in mind. It gets some of the clues, but leaves things like sunbeams and diamonds unexplained. Unless you mean a suit of cards which would explain the diamonds, but would call for red and black instead of white and black. Definitely fits the last stanza, but I'm not sure what the black part of the white and black clue would be or how it would refer to twins.

It isn't anything esoteric, I always make my riddles about something that >99% of people know about and will recognize. And they're almost always about a concrete object unless I say otherwise. It seems like those tend to make for the most satisfying, slap-your-head-when-you've-got-it type of riddles. The yin-yang symbol has a lot going for it, but leaves open the clues about sunbeams through the cracks and about the snow. still working on a verse worthy response. Hi plainglazed, nice to see that a lot of the old crew is still around. Not a magnet, the clues about sunbeams and diamond would still be hanging. But this one ought to be enough of an "OMG that's got to be it" riddle that whoever solves it will know that it's their chance to give a poetic response unraveling the clues and giving the answer. Thanks, hambone. A TV/monitor really fits well with a lot of the clues, especially the sunbeams and the snow (back in the analog days) that have been pretty elusive so far. But the twin in line 2 and the part about going head over heels are left open. He he, sounds like you have a little one around, or else a very vivid memory. I vaguely remember that little skirmish. As your hunch suggests though, I can't find any way that he'd fit with the snow clue. Nope, no specialized knowledge required for this one. Anyone ought to be able to come up with the answer, and if they're given the answer then they should definitely be able to go back over the riddle and read it couplet-by-couplet and recognize what each of the clues is referring to without needing much if any further explanation.

Hi DD, nice to see a familiar face in the riddles section. No pwnage on this one, I'm genuinely staying away from anything having to do with chess. I'm afraid I've never read The Snow Queen before and had to Wikipedia it to see what it's about. (So obviously it's not the answer I had in mind.) Perhaps Kay and Gerda could represent the twins in the riddle, and the shattered mirror could be the riddle's diamond in the heart. But there are other clues like the sunbeam through the cracks and Superman reference where I can't see an analogy with the story, at least based on what I could find readily. hi plasmid..... cool riddle..... Hi EDM, and thanks! That answer works really well for the first stanza and a half, but the Superman clue is an important one to be incorporated into the answer, and the bit about going head over heels is also a reference to an aspect of the answer.