Feb 02, 2007 One Word Wonder Puzzle

Yes. Just trying to figure out the order.

yes...

Yeah, working on it. Got sort of a theme, but I'm hung up on one and I'm having trouble assigning what goes where. My first thought was a dead end.

ditto and thanks for the game from the Puzzlethon. It arrived on Wed.

It took you 9 minutes and 6 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 2nd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
Average solve time: 9 minutes and 30 seconds.
Median solve time: 9 minutes and 54 seconds.
3.390% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

The whole picture is important today

I have been trying to match plates with their specific clues, but some seem to be able to have more than one possibility...

I've got five of the six clues figured out now I'm trying to figure how they go with which license plate.

I'm lost.

Clyde was dead long before any of those years. And one doesn't even have a year.

[9] I was doing it based on city, not number and am still lost....

The puzzle is working, the AUCTION is not, and I don't see a blog for it, so I'll mention it here. How are we supposed to get what we bid on?

{Aaron here}

I just made a Geek Gold Auction blog.
Thanks for pointing out the lack of it.

Any hints for Everett? I think I have the right idea.

5th in 20 minutes. Never got the right ordering, so got the answer by fiddling.

[11] dlp, I e-mailed Tanga about the Auction -- they rtold me that they notified Aldie, who should be giving us instructions soon on how to claim our prizes.

Yes! An avatar awaits!

-K

I have the hint but can't figure out how to get the right answer.

No clue on Everett, but I have an order now (although it may be reversed)

...and still no answer

(this edit window is strangely narrow)

I think it is east to west. Yep, I was right.

[17] I tried that and reversed it, and neither got me anything that looked like an answer - but I may have the states in the wrong order. did it without looking at a map.

[18] kswitz

Look at the map, it will help.

Huh. When trying to backsolve the ordering, I see I had the wrong answer for Jake. (TV Series? What was I thinking!)

I just did and I had them in the right order. Ugh. guess I will go back and check my work.

20 tinhorn-

I know what you mean. I was thinking the answers all were the same type but not the case.

Don't let the answer for Jake make you blue.

Anyone able to logon to BGG?

[20] Are you saying it's NOT the TV series? if so, that would explain why nothing is working for me...

[23] I have been trying for the past 5 minutes to no avail...

[24] kswitz

Originally, I thought it was but now I know I was wrong. Put on your sunglasses and see the light.

Got it... with 2 missing letters and 2 incorrect ones

EDIT: Wrong Jake

Jake messed me up. Never did figure the answer for Everett.

Got the answer, and backsolved one of the two ('Jake'). I think I know the 'Everett' one; if I'm right, Everett and ****** are actually two of a set of three. (My answer does fit, even if it wasn't the intended answer.)

I finally got it. I was going with the TV series like [20], but then I tried something else that was feasible (which seems to be wrong also). So, I got the answer, but I don't know Jake or Everett.

Oh brother, I just figured out the two I missed by backsolving!

what he said ^

Yep, that's the one!

who he?

I still can't get Everett or jake even with the salt that has been splashed.... and I am still unsure of the order. I have tried following the route e/w and w/e and leaving Everett and Jake blank, but I don't get an answer that make sense with a crossword solver.

35] kswitz

Funny that you say this because that is EXACTLY how I solved it. Maybe you have a wrong answer elsewhere.

kswitz, my crossword solver found it via that same method... I use A2Zwordfinder.com

So this is my puzzle tonight, and I confess, I am surprised nobody is stumped on Snowman. My test-solvers were ready to skin me for that one. And they thought Everett broke the theme, being one of three instead of 1 of 2, but if you think about it, Snowman is also 1 of 3.

I recommend www.unscramble.net

[38] InfinityMax

Nice puzzle. Snowman was one of the first I got, because I liked it so much. As far as Everett goes, that does break the mold so to speak and it is the only one I had to backsolve.

Good job InfinityMax!

either direction that I do this I end up with a non-existent word... maybe I have the wrong answer for snowman. I know that my answers for clyde and thelma are right, and my answer for kumar too..

Does the answer for snowman involve flight?

kswitz, you're on the right track there.... are you sure you've got the order correct?

Finally got Everett!! It's only one of my favorites for crying out loud. Is saying that his counterpart was labeled to as a paradigm too salty?

[43] for order I tried following the route in both directions and filling in the blanks starting with the answer for clyde... both ways get me nothing that works in a crossword solver. I double-checked the map and I have the right order... I'm losing my mind.

[42] kswitz

Yes. It does involve flight.

You can solve with the 4 you have, kswitz. As someone said on BGG... it helps to sing along.

I don't think that's too salty, [44]. Of course, I may be biased - I'm the father of this puzzle. You might say I'm the pater familias.

>>I am surprised nobody is stumped
>>on Snowman. My test-solvers were
>>ready to skin me for that one.

But they had no trouble with Everett? (And, just curious, but if test-solvers were ready to skin you over a clue, why not change it?)

[42]follow the sun
Jake: he was on a mission from God.

Don't let the answer to Jake make you blue.

I finally got it! couldn't get on to BGG, though i have been trying for a long time. I had put some wrong letters in one of the numerous times I tried to solve using the correct method... This time I left something out and all of a sudden, even without 4 letters it was clear. Thanks everyone for all the help!

For the sake of clarification (and I hope it does that, instead of making things worse), there are two possible answers for Clyde. To eliminate one, I'll tell you that the correct Clyde is not a monkey.

I got Snowman right away. Then again, I'm old.

Nice puzzle. Clever enough to require effort, but not so much that I feel bad about myself.

[52] kswitz

I did the same thing- sometimes less is more. It cleared it up for me too.

[48] InfinityMax

Watch out for the train.

Nice puzzle... Some of it had me a bit frustrated (I still don't know Everett yet), but it was fun to solve, because I knew what to do right away.

[49]tinhorn - No, Everett was one of the first ones they got. Maybe because we have a tendency to ask each other if we would like some gopher, and I'm constantly telling them that I work for no man. And I didn't change Snowman because:

1) It's a pretty non-critical answer. If you get the others, Snowman only leaves you with one blank.

2) Once one of my solvers nailed the theme (without Snowman), one of the others (a fan of the source material) figured out Snowman. So I knew it was possible, just a little obscure. I mostly came up with it because I have fond memories of that source, and it was one of the first answers I pulled up.

3) It was really hard to find answers that fit all three elements of the theme and still had six letters. I had one source I desperately wanted to use, but there were no 6-letter answers, and I also really wanted to use the wrong Clyde.

Good puzzle, Max. The answer was a little disappointing (couldn't you have come up with something more thematic?), but the rest was enough fun for me to get my kicks with it.

The clues I did get fit a nice clean pattern. The ones that people aren't happy with are ones that imply there's no pattern after all (or possibly one that's just less elegant).

Maybe if he had Jennifer Grey and ____________ , then it would have lead to the final answer (tangentially).

I explained the theme I had at the Geek. The fact that Everett was 1 of 3 rather than 1 of 2 I thought was OK, because it otherwise fit the theme perfectly (better than Jake, probably).

I just went and answered so I could see how many people are getting this, and I was 71st of 71. I'm sorry - I didn't mean for it to be this hard. Seriously heavy salt at BGG.

It's hard because the ordering of the clue names is not obvious. Without that, there are thousands of nonsensical combinations.

I still have no idea how the states match up to the clues, or how order is supposed to be determined. It was not that hard to resolve most of the clues (though Jake is still a mystery), but from there on it was hit or miss. Only two were familiar to me. Wikipedia to the rescue.

Was I the only one who had "Fat Man" for Jake?

(Edit: Yup, just saw the same comment on BGG)

Max, I enjoyed this one! Didn't need much salt, except finding out I had the wrong Jake (I would have doubted other answers before that one).

Now, to try to get that song out of my head...

Edit: [69] No!

Got here late - shouldn't have even started tonight.

Even with the "seriously heavy salt" at BGG I must be so out of the pop culture. I have ideas for two of the six, but after that nuthin!

[68] Joe, I was a little thrown off by it, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Could I ask what you were trying to improve by revising it? (I don't mean that in a cynical way - I'm just curious.)

Jake and the F***** was the first thing that popped into my mind.

Thanks xpsdude - now I can get some rest!

[75] TangaJoe
I appreciate the cursor remaining in place! Especially when I enter wrong answer after wrong answer after wrong answer.....

I see there is one fewer statistic included in the statistics. :-( (I was lobbying for more)

I do like the fact that all the statistics are in one place rather than top and bottom.

jake and the fatman was a TV series which does not fit the theme. I started there anyway. I got Clyde right away probably because I am from Texas. I never even thought of Eastwoods monkey. I think you can google these pretty easily if you get around the operater problem. Google assumes one of the woords is an operater

I miss the fastest time stat even thou it seems to have become useless except for the first few solvers who had real times.

[68] TangaJoe

Why does the new puzzle page now omit the line about being the "nth" fastest solver? Should I look for it somewhere else?

I do like the fact that you don't have to go back to the puzzle page to see your stats. So, yes, nice change.

As for the puzzle: I think it was pretty good; not quite great, but pretty good. I didn't like having "Everett" in there; it differs from the others in more than just being part of a larger set, in that they're just not referred to as "Everett, ____, and ____". (Hope that's not too much of a giveaway about the theme; I think it's probably pretty clear that that's what's going on here.) And it's a shame about ambiguous things like "Jake". But, overall, fairly nice.

It took you 1 hour, 16 minutes and 3 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 146th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
62.393% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

OK, My recommendations are 2- 1. Definitely use an atlas
2. Don't get stuck assuming one cardinal direction is correct.

(63) ended up being helpful (in hindsight)

My husband and I did this independently and got two different answers for Clyde, and two different answers for Snowman. In both cases, either one leads to the right answer. Was the puzzle designed that way or is it "unintentionally robust".

EDIT: I see where you said "not the monkey", but the monkey answer also works. If so many people got Snowman so quickly, I think it's because there are two answers for Snowman that work. One is more obvious to some, the other is more obvious to others. Though only one fits the theme, the other fits the puzzle and gives the right answer, anyway. The Fat Man, however, is not interchangeable... :(

Oh, man. I would *never* have gotten "Jake" without all the salt here. I, too, succumbed to morbid obesity. "Snowman" was a lot easier to Google. And as of solving, I still don't have the faintest clue for "Everett." Going to check BGG for salt now.

...

Okay, yeah, by Googling some of the quotes in the salt there, I was able to figure it out. I think I saw that film once and found it largely forgettable, sorry. I'm honestly not sure how in the world, if you didn't just _know_ the name groups here, how you were supposed to be able to figure them out. I also managed to start with the wrong direction twice, both with and without my Jake's heavyweight partner. The ordering method was clever enough, although I have to admit a starting point would have been nice. Yeah, I got the theme slightly wrong, mainly because I wasn't enough of a movie-watcher to pick up on a more exact theme.

Or maybe I'm just cranky because my solve time is just shy of six hours (I had to go somewhere in the middle).

[83] dajagr "largely forgettable"

That breaks my heart.

Okay, I was cranky due to the hour and the frustration with the solve time. The ordering method was original--it just didn't gibe with me because I wasn't familiar with the genre. I'm not sure what to say about pop culture puzzles. There has to be some assumption of common knowledge as a basis for starting to create puzzles. Maybe I'll just have to accept that some might not be as easily accessible because of that. Somehow, I think I'll still manage to survive. :-)

I feel sooo dumb! I got all the name pairs (thanks to salt here and google), and the states in a certain order but I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. I know the numbers mean something but I don't know what. I haven't figured out what the name clues have to do with the states yet either

OK, I think I understand the correlation of the names and the plates, but i"m still not getting it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong

Wait, the solution to SNOWMAN is...SNOWMAN?

[87] That must be a typo. Apparently it's BANDIT.

I think people were thinking it was famous pairs in the form "somebody & somebody". As in, Thelma & Louise, Bonnie & Clyde, Harold & Kumar and Falcon & The Snowman.

I think the original must have been SMOKEY and the answer was BANDIT. Then it got changed to SNOWMAN, for which the answer should be FALCON.

So it's a double-typo in the solution, I think.

[88] That was what I came up with, too, which is why I ended up with the disastrous "Jake and the Fatman" and el zippo for Everett. I didn't realize that there was a "Bonnie and Clyde" film, so the concept of "road trip movie" just never occurred to me, and it's why I thought "Jake and the Fatman" fit. And I spent fruitless hours Googling "Everett and" and "and Everett."

[89] Actually, it turns out that the characters in "Smokey and the Bandit" were "Snowman" and "Bandit" (never having seen the film, I had to go look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_and_the_Bandit#Plot), so that's what it should have been. Just had to do more research _even with_ the solution posted. :-)

[Edit] I'm impressed that I managed to use three consecutive "and"s in the first paragraph. Not that anyone cares...

Yeah, I did the "and Everett"/"Everett and" Googling as well. I very much think that, though I love "O Brother", it utterly fails to fit the theme, insofar as (a) it's not really a "road movie" in the same way, and (b) there are three of them, not two. (Not that the Blues Brothers is particularly a road movie either; there's a famous long drive at the end, but that's it.)

The fact that "Bonnie & Clyde" and "Thelma & Louise" were easy to spot meant that it really, to me, looked like titles. Hence "The Falcon and the Snowman", and hence "Jake & The Fatman".

Man, that's awesome. The solution is wrong.

They left Snowman in place of Bandit :)

I was wondering whether they had cleverly used a movie with Snowman and Snowman as the main characters. I've never seen 6 of those movies, and only know Bonnie and Clyde from other sources. Naturally, I immediately thought of the FALCON and the Snowman when people in here said it was six letters, and involved movies, but that was obviously not enough to solve it even if it had been right.