At last, a red haired dead American author with glasses. Also the "endless joke" clue helped.
David Foster Wallace.
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At last, a red haired dead American author with glasses. Also the "endless joke" clue helped.
David Foster Wallace.
Yes!Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
http://ts4.mm.bing.net/images/thumbn...avidfoster.jpg
I have to admit, Mr. Wallace could've used a few extra pixels. I figured him having such a recent/modern-looking photo AND being dead would be enough to get him figured out--but that's easy for me to think, starting from the original. Still, took a lot of clues... Great persistence everyone!
...and now just one more that none of you can see!
The letters so far: O, W, A, H, T, N, I, B, O, C, N, W (a hit pop song, not current)
We can't see him because he is an Invisable Man.
Ralph Ellison.
That's it, Mick. Ralph Ellison... Sorry everyone, I think I might've really underestimated just how long a Top 100 list can actually be, I think. (Also, for clarification, it isn't the H.G. Wells type of invisible, in case some people aren't familiar.)
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/e...ges/EL009A.jpg
O, W, A, H, T, N, I, B, O, C, N, W, E
(alphabetized)
A, B, C, E, H, I, N, N, O, O, T, W, W
Rearrange the letters to spell the title of a hit pop song, not current...
billl,
I spent a little time scrambling letters this morning.
I cut out letters so I could slide them around qucikly.
Each combination was typed, but nothing translated into a popular song I've heard of.
Nevertheless, since they were already typed, I figure I would share the thought process.
"Bow to new China" and "Chow in new boat" got me excited for a moment.
Who can win ebot?
Bonawone witch
Bow to new China
No cow bath wine
No white cow ban
Wow, Annie Botch!
We can’t win hobo
Chow in new boat
.
Gilliat, that is absolutely fantastic, what a selection. This puzzle is very much on the verge of being solved by someone, and it'll likely be because of your labor on that part right there.
Are you embedding clues again billl ?Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
It'd be a mistake to make a lot of hay about clues in that post, Mick. There's only one there, and it's pretty indirect, although the rest of it looks "clue-y", I admit.
Actually, I am, at this moment, NOT providing two clues that would possibly make this all too easy (but would make me look "clever"). Instead, here is an official clue that might be OK, I guess:
Longest word(s) in the song title = three letters long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swQi4CAzmrA
If that's it, I should say that I got it by a process of rearrangement and google, because I'm not sure I've ever heard of the song.
And this is probably why...
[The single] went on to reach number one in the USA and number 45 in the UK in 1982...
Yeah, that's it (for the record: Men At Work's "Who Can It Be Now")--and I'm surprised at it only reaching 45 in the UK, that's a crime. Come on, they aren't Americans, just like you guys!Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
What did you use to make the pictures?
A couple years ago (or so?) I encountered this "demonstration" called Grids Of Lines.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/GridsOfLines/
It's free to download the player, and there's tons of other interesting things to mess around with--but this one in particular got me thinking… What if, instead of black and white, I used images? I wanted to see if it was possible to simultaneously recognize two images in the same space.
Earlier this year, I realized that 1) finally upgrading my Mac to a particular OS (Snow Leopard) would be extremely inexpensive, and 2) it would come with a suite of professional-grade programming tools, absolutely free.
So, after a month of reviewing "how to program" stuff (I used to do it as a hobby back in the day), my second "interesting" project was to make this image compositing program, based on that grid demo. The most difficult parts are taken care of by the amazing programming environment, and the concept is pretty straightforward--but it did take some time to find some shortcuts and get little technicalities ironed out.
Anyhow, this has been pretty fun finally using it here for the puzzles (it's been on my agenda for a while now), and in some cases it seemed to work pretty well. The needs of the letter-scramble sort of "forced" things in a couple cases, and there was the warping issue, as well, so… But finding a "right" balance of images ended up making it a decent challenge in each case--the roughest part was our limited knowledge of author portraits, of course.
By the way--images made from 3 or 4 originals are actually the result of combining two, and then combining that result with another image (or another combination of two images). So, if you look at the top-left corner area of the 4-album image, you might be able to recognize how Thriller and Abraxas were combined together before being mixed with the other combo-image (which had slightly more narrow gridding).
Anyhow, some of them I really thought were pretty nice-looking. Portraits have certain obvious conventions, but they are an "artistic" form, and so combining them creates some nice "artistic accidents", when the mix is just right. I thought the Orwell/Woolf combo was beautiful, and the three-in-one looked even more like some kind of "difficult" cubist painting.
Ahh, Men At Work...featuring Colin Hay.
Your use of the word hay was obviously a hint, but all it did was fool me into thinking that the word cow was in the song title.
Also, "It's a Mistake" and the earlier lame attempt to paint Gilliat as just one of a group of Men At Work on the solution.Quote:
Originally Posted by Basil
I thought it was a pretty lucky break when I started putting names and faces together and "Who can it be now" eventually presented itself as a possibility!
http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/q...ollageQuiz.jpg
You're looking for a placename that's the title of a novel. As ever, I can't tell whether this is much too easy or completely impossible.
To begin with, I need to point to the narrow black bar near the end, right between the "n" with an umlaut over it and the white "s" at the end… It's just part of the image cut out for the "s", i.e. it is a section of black bordering, not an "i" or "l"--but it did have me scratching my head for a minute, so in case anyone else wonders about it…Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
So, here's the letters I see. The ones I recognize are all letters from the printed name of a band, on the cover of an album…
1. "S" from a Genesis album called "The Lamb Lies DOwn On Broadway".
2. "B" It's backwards, and I'm pretty sure it is from "ABBA" don't know which album yet.
3. "P"
4. "S" from Aerosmith. "Toys in the Attic" album maybe?
5. "K" for Pink Floyd, definitely off of the album called "The Wall"
6. "c" and this one is on the tip of my brain, but I haven't pulled it yet. (Sonic Youth? EDIT: no, I don't think so...)
7. "A" is from Green Day's album called "America Is It!"
8. "s" is from the band named "Oasis", not sure which album.
9. "n" is from Spinal Tap, I guess it would necessarily be from their second album, "Breaking Like The Wind"
My gut is initially telling me that we are going to be using the first letter of the band names to solve this one, because tracking down the albums might lead to more than one use of the particular form/font of the letter. Until I've given this strategy a fair shot, I'm not going to bother with finding the album names.
Anyhow, so far, I have
Genesis, Abba, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Oasis, and Spinal Tarp, with three unknown.
initial letters = A, A, G, G, O, P, S, with 3 and 6 to go.
Damn. Much too easy then.
They're all (nearly all) logos that were used over some time, rather than for one album - because, as you say, it would have been cruel to expect people to find the specific album.
I was going to do something with Wolfram, but having downloaded it, I couldn't figure out how to make it work.
Number 3 looks Led Zeppelinny, but I couldn't find an example, so... Maybe not. Number 6, man, maybe I'm just imagining that I know it.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
RE: the Wolfram download (CDF Player)
I just now downloaded it myself (I used to have it, but ditched it for disk space a while back), and I also had trouble with it. Basically, once you start it up, it expects us to choose a CDF document to view. But we don't have any CDF documents on our computer yet, and the program doesn't seem to be pointing to any, or suggesting how to get them. (I think the idea is that this is supposed to be like Adobe PDF reader or something, which similarly wouldn't be suggesting links for pdf files. But it really hasn't quite reached that level of usage...)
So, I went back in this thread and clicked on the link I had posted a few posts ago, visited that webpage, and downloaded the demonstration for Grids and Lines from there. The link to download it is on the right side of the page, look for "Download Demonstration as CDF »"...
There are also more Demonstration pages right below that button/link ("Related Demonstrations"), and you can really get yourself completely overwhelmed by clicking on TOPICS at the top, and then browsing all of the available demonstrations.
ANYHOW, after downloading any one of these, you'll end up with a file of type ".cdf" (e.g. GridsOfLines.cdf). It might be on your desktop, or in a "Downloads" folder somewhere, wherever downloads usually end up for you probably... All that remains to be done is to open that file using the player.
A, A, G, G, O, P, S plus 2 more... looks like Galapogos. Guessing the Led Zeppelin was right. And whatever number 6 is, the band/artist starts with O.
Just discovered it's a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
Credit goes to billl of course.
GalapAgos.Quote:
Originally Posted by jajdude
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zq991CvvcD...0586090459.jpg
The missing one is Atomic Kitten. I thought that might throw you.
Over to you, j.
Ah, spelling thing. Figure billl did the main work if he wants to do next one.
I can try to get something together if you want, jajdude. I might take a little while, I don't have anything in mind. But it's the weekend, which sometimes doesn't see a lot of action with these, so maybe that's OK.
But if anybody wants to jump in with a puzzle, please feel free to do so.
Here's an old-fashioned one.
Eleven books, five films and four songs with colours in the title. If it proves difficult, I'll tell you which is which. But given the likely colours, there aren't many choices as to which letter is the colour, so it might not be as trying as it looks.
- ACO
- BM
- CG
- CY
- FA
- GEAH
- HGWMV
- RRW
- ROTPS
- SG
- TWTCITB
- (TAWWM)RS
- TCP
- TLHM
- TRATB
- TSL
- TSC
- TC:W
- VW
- WF
- ACO - A Clockwork Orange
- BM - Blue Moon
- CG
- CY
- FA
- GEAH - Green Eggs and Ham
- HGWMV - How Green Was My Valley
- RRW
- ROTPS
- SG
- TWTCITB
- (TAWWM)RS
- TCP - The Colour Purple
- TLHM
- TRATB
- TSL - The Scarlet Letter
- TSC
- TC:W
- VW
- WF - White Fang
15. The Red and the Black.
10. Soylent Green.
3. Charlotte Grey.
8. Red Red Wine.
14. The Lavender Hill Mob.
12. (The Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes
Good start. I will just say that when you come to add up the songs and books and movies, you'll find that one of these, though it works, isn't right.
9. Riders of the Purple Sage
It might be 'Blue Moon' that doesn't work.
Actually, I'm going to give you Blue Moon, as I've just realised that the book title I meant it to be is actually a partial subtitle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
ACO - A Clockwork Orange
BM - Blue Moon
CG - Charlotte Grey
CY
FA
GEAH - Green Eggs and Ham
HGWMV - How Green Was My Valley
RRW - Red Red Wine
ROTPS - Riders of the Purple Sage
SG - Soylent Green
TWTCITB
(TAWWM)RS - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
TCP - The Colour Purple
TLHM - The Lavender Hill Mob
TRATB - The Red and the Black
TSL - The Scarlet Letter
TSC
TC:W
VW
WF - White Fang
(I guess) That's why they call it the blues (Elton John) ?
Yep....
TSC = The Silver Chair?
TC:W = Three Colors: White?
Yes and yes.
Chrome Yellow
Forever Amber
ACO - A Clockwork Orange
BM - Blue Moon
CG - Charlotte Grey
CY - Chrome Yellow
FA - Forever Amber
GEAH - Green Eggs and Ham
HGWMV - How Green Was My Valley
RRW - Red Red Wine
ROTPS - Riders of the Purple Sage
SG - Soylent Green
TWTCITB - That's Why Thay Call It the Blues
(TAWWM)RS - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
TCP - The Colour Purple
TLHM - The Lavender Hill Mob
TRATB - The Red and the Black
TSL - The Scarlet Letter
TSC - The Silver Chair
TC:W - Three Colours: White
VW
WF - White Fang
One song left. I'll give it twenty-four hours.
Well Mark, it must be Vanna White. Wait, is she a song? She sure looks like one..
http://www.amazon.com/Vanna-White-Ma...8236599&sr=1-7Quote:
Originally Posted by jajdude
?
The remaining one is Violet Wine.
Without having counted up the right answers, I think Scheh's next.
A very easy one to revive the thread.
Books...
1. SAS
2. PAP
3. MP
4. NA
5. P