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kalisco
Hmmmm.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 5:49 am
Peter Blake
FairmontKing wrote:
...the "first name only" on the solve page threw me off. Ironically, that prompt is what allowed the correct solution to be guessed because it is such a common first name.

Yeah, the "first name only" was a late addition - and it hindered more than it helped. I mean, it's not like anyone would complain because

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Joseph son of Jacob


wasn't accepted.

Quote:
You didn't author Shuffled by any chance, did you? Laughing

I wish I had, but no. Wink

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:41 pm
FairmontKing
Ditto on the thanks for the explanation. Before I saw the solve page, I wondered if it was a Bible character, but the "first name only" on the solve page threw me off. Ironically, that prompt is what allowed the correct solution to be guessed because it is such a common first name.

You didn't author Shuffled by any chance, did you? Laughing

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:51 pm
aliendial
Oh dear. So we didn't even have a good guess (i.e. that it was someone to do with electricity). We just got lucky. Fiendishly hard, I'd say. Or possibly we just missed the point. Some bits of the solve were isolated in our discussion but went nowhere - one posted the colors but got nothing from it; Brianenigma did postulate the appropriate use of the gates, but nobody picked up on it... Thanks for the explanation!!

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:42 pm
GasparLewis
 
Whoa... Shocked
Just... um... wow...

And... but... with the... when...
Whoa.

That was utterly fiendish, and pretty far abstracted there, if I may say.
But still, bravo, you wonderful nutter, you.

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:42 am
draggles
...
Ohhhhh
It was pretty vague, I'll admit. How someone was supposed to obtain...

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
"envy" from "green, green, green", "wine" from "red, white, violet" and the gates' relevance was craaaazy.


Ben
Smile

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:53 am
Peter Blake
A confession and a solution
I have a confession to make - I wrote #235 Circuitous. One or two people have asked for an explanation of how the card was intended to be solved, and now that Season 1 is long gone, I think it's safe to provide one...

(split into sections and spoilerised for your viewing pleasure)

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The circuit itself is utter nonsense - it's the components and their configuration that are important.


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Von's hint "Resist guessing" clues that the resistors are the easiest components to tackle first.


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Resistors have colour-coded stripes, which have connotations as follows:
  • 230kΩ - red, orange, yellow (rainbow)
  • 5.5MΩ - green, green, green (envy)
  • 2.2kΩ - red, red, red (passion)
  • 290MΩ - red, white, violet (wine)
  • 110Ω - brown, brown, brown (bread)
  • 770MΩ - violet, violet, violet (royalty)


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Now look at the shapes of the logic gates in conjunction with their adjacent resistors:
  • OR gate = moon
  • NOT gate and its outputs = wine glass
  • AND gate = slice of bread
  • XNOR gate and its outputs = cow


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Reading clockwise from the main battery, the components we think we understand come in the order:
  • Rainbow and moon
  • Envy
  • Passion
  • Wine and a wine glass
  • Bread and a slice of bread
  • Royalty and a cow


Now for the "aha" moment: perhaps it's the...
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Bible story of Joseph


Then the other components confirm the answer:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
  • 12V battery - 12 brothers
  • Telegraph key - travel
  • Diode shape - woman
  • Speaker - Joseph speaking for Pharoah
  • 0.2F capacitor - 20% of the harvest stored
  • Earth - barren ground
  • Battery - some brothers
  • Lamp - cup in a sack
  • Return to 12V battery - family reunited


So, to summarise (skip straight here for the big picture):
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
  • You need to read clockwise from the main battery.
  • Resistors represent characters.
  • Logic gates represent dreams that particular characters had.
  • All the other components fit into the story somehow.
  • Putting it all together gives a person who is known only by his first name.


Feel free to ask questions, make comments or just throw rotten fruit. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think this puzzle was too hard?

Best,
Peter

PostPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 7:55 pm
FairmontKing
But then why would they need to specify first name only? There is no last name.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:49 pm
Peter Blake
Revisiting Circuitous
relissh wrote:
perhaps when (if!) the cube is found, MC will put up some explantions to the puzzles?


I've no idea, but from looking over the discussion here, I believe Kalisco was on the right track:

kalisco wrote:
I think we should pay more attention to the fact that the answer asks for the first name only. This makes it unlikely that it's going to be someone who wouldn't normally be identified by just their first name.


Working on that assumption, Wikipedia has only two pages that fit the known answer:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Joseph_%28disambiguation%29
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_%28Hebrew_Bible%29

That's a total of five people.


Perhaps we can attempt a back-solve?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:08 pm
almagest
Hmmm. Well inductance makes more sense than heat, I suppose. At least the counting works.

I am not sure about the early circuit stuff - as many people have pointed out, it is an obvious nonsense circuit

I still think this is a fairly awful puzzle.

Indeed, it is distressing that PC's idea of hard puzzles seems to be either (1) requires a large number of guesses, or (2) requires a large amount of computer time. If you look at the silvers as a whole, there are not many puzzles I would call good! (Unless, that is, we are missing something on the unsolved ones).

PostPosted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:49 am
obrienk
to be fair, that makes far more sense than my answer

PostPosted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 12:42 pm
AngusA
Nice one Ringtail. That sounds fairly plausable. I went down the telegraph route and was convinced it was Gauss.

PostPosted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:51 pm
Ringtail
Everyone seems to be getting the correct first name but there seems to be a lot of dissagreement over who it's actually supposed to be and how it links in with the puzzle.

When I guessed the answer I was working along the thought pattern that the circuit we were looking at was

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
a very early version of a telephone circuit with a speaker and a light in the stage of transition between telegram and the modern phone.


This lead me to investigate the history of the phone and I came up with the quote..

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
"But for Joseph Henry, I would never have gone ahead with the telephone." - Alexander Graham Bell


and after further researching on this name I discovered...

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
In 1893, Joseph Henry's name was given to the standard electrical unit of inductive resistance, the "henry."


Which made perfect sense considering Von's clue.

It worked for me and if you can prove me wrong please do so we can all learn something. Smile

PostPosted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:26 pm
Furry Mark
almagest wrote:
Does anyone have anything to say in favour of this card? For goodness sake, the required answer is not even his first name (it is his third)!

It is the custom in parts of Europe to put the "first" name (the one everyone calls you by) next to the surname, so maybe that is the source of the confusion - or maybe we have the wrong person but the right name... Rolling Eyes

PostPosted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 8:10 am
relissh
perhaps when (if!) the cube is found, MC will put up some explantions to the puzzles?

PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:52 am
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