One Word Wonder

No comments???? Where ever will I get salt?

Ooookay... Got the first handful, guessed the solution correctly, then found out I couldn't backsolve the last few the way I'd solved the others. Nice, though!

Note: The lack of shadow on New Mexico is insignificant. That's just the way the picture was.

[2] Ditto - but now I see how to solve the rest. There's a reason that Illinois and New Mexico are overlapped...

Need...s...a..l..t..

completely lost & not comfortable about it

[5][6] Standard Tanga rules apply -- you just need to find some numbers to which the rules should be applied. [4] is important.

I'm applying standard Tanga rules and coming up with several lists of gibberish.

[9] Yep. Me too. Several LONG lists of nothing. LOL!

I am completely dazed!

nice! Think what you can do when numbers seem to go too high...

[11] Thanks. That helped me get 84th. Complete WAG, though.

Huh? I'm with [13]. I would have liked it better if it spelled something that fit the image.

[12] There are several ways of reducing big numbers. Shouldn't the puzzle contain a clue as to which one I am supposed to use? Or does it?

[16] It does; see [4].

Hmmm, I got a sensible couple of words out of that, sort of. But it doesn't lead me to a sensible one-word answer. Can I TG you the words to see if I'm on the right track?

As several have deduced, there's a twist with the big numbers. Look at the two center coins ... either of them will give you the fifth letter of the puzzle.

I bet most people figure out the first four letters, guess the answer, and get it right.

[13] I agree that there's a perfectly acceptable pool of numbers to draw from, but I wanted to tap into a ten year run of new quarters that is almost over. How else could we use the most recent quarters without a twist? I think that if you get the middle, then the rest is intuitive.

[18] If you're talking to me, you sure can.

Interesting... what would you have to do to Mexico to make it equal Illinois????

great puzzle!!!

Gah! It's not MEXICO, but NEW MEXICO. So... what did you do?

[19] And if you don't get the middle, you're stuck? I have tried many many ways to reduce both dates (mod squad, hex spells, etc) and nothing tangas into anything useful. Any other salt?

This was a lot easier than the easy one today, which I am still lost with. :-(

still lost, not unusual on a hard one, just discouraging when my brain doesn't really give me a starting point. :o(

[13][19][25] There may be a "YMMV" component to this aspect of the solution. For me, I'd already hypothesized the switch for the puzzle; the overlapping quarters were a clean confirmation, as well as a nice transition from the first half to the last half. Well done, IMO.

Fun. Different. Pretty.

Now that I have the answer, I see almost a pun based reason for the union of those two coins. (Though, I don't think it helps much until you've got the answer.)

[26] Really? At least with the Easy one you have a starting point, and the tangables (is that a word?) are right in front of you. With this one I'm floundering like [27]. I'm feeling the key to this is like the rake in the yard full of leaves... you can't find it until you step on it and the handle whaps you in the nose.

I am among those who solved it from guessing from the first four. When I saw the numbers from the fifth I assumed what was probably needed and just decided to try a guess first.

well, it's not quarterback...

OK, i'm stumped - must be getting the wrong tanga numbers. I see a way to get the middle two to give me the same letter, but when i apply the same technique to the other coins, i get NNRANUROK, which happens to be the name of my oldest child but apparently is not the answer to this puzzle. Additional salt please?

Awesomely, I've devised all sorts of fun new ways to make Illinois and New Mexico match up, none of which have led to the solution. Gonna keep plugging away at it, but this one is definitely a bit rough.

[34] magicode, [35] jwiv
TG me on how you are getting your tanga numbers, and I'll nudge you in the right direction...

[35] Look at the step BEFORE you get a letter. Treat Illinois as if it were alone. Now consider what you would get if you treated New Mexico alone. Do you see any relation between your first step values for the two?

[30] thank you, for some reason that makes me feel better even if I don't solve this one...lol

[36] Thanks pb. Finally got it.

I'm hitting nothing but dead ends here. I can only imagine there is salt somewhere in these comments, but nothing is even remotely useful to me. I can't find any way to get anything from the center coins. I can't get anything from the first four that might help me guess the answer. My hat is off to those who have made any sense out of this... I am at a complete loss.

Same here [40]. Illinois and New Mexico only seem to line up with an 'I' in their seventh letter, but I don't see any way to generate a 7 from those coins, so I'm probably off track. Maybe it has something to do with the state slogan, but South Dakota's coin doesn't have one so it's probably not that either.

[40], [41] I had to go to wikipedia to determine the correct tanga numbers...

I've managed to get a common letter from Illinois and New Mexico by adding each individual digit of both years for each of them. But that same act on the other coins nets me random alpha-stu. So I don't think that is it... although if it is, then my comment is a bit salty by accident.

[43] You don't need to add anything together. As was mentioned above, they are together, overlapping, because they give you the same number. Figure out how you get the same number you got for Illinois from New Mexico, and then apply that to the ones that follow.

[8] is actually pretty salty

just guessed after a few letters and it worked - not back solving the rest right now.

bah... got it. I've nothing more to say.

Nice going [47]! So, was any of the salt here particularly helpful?

[48] not particularly helpful in solving. like a lot of salt a lot of the time... it makes sense once you get it. some early salt got me onto Wikipedia for something else that didn't pan out but once there I found some other things to try and one of them worked.

Finally got this one! [42] and [8] were probably the best of the salt so far. You're right [48] ... it does make sense once you solve it. Even the overlapped coins make sense.

VT WV IA CA!

I agree with [45]. Thanks.

I like this puzzle. Too bad the answer was guessable after the first 4 letters.

sigh...another one bites the dust...I am totally clueless and out of time and patience...I am sure it is a great puzzle for those whose brain is wrapping the right way, but I have no idea's. thanks for the salt folks, but no help for me.

Finally ... [37] was what ultimately helped me find the epiphany that I had been looking for.

[52] yelowflower

check your tangagrams (see the upper right hand corner of this page for a quick link)

Good grief. Thanks to [45] and [50] for telling me that [8] was salty. I had gone down that path too, but not to the right level of detail. I would have preferred a "related" answer like LOUISIANA or WISCONSIN, or even ANNAPOLIS or NASHVILLE.

And may I have a little cheese with my whine? ;)

EDIT: Ah, and I see the relation now... I've been there many times, even found a geocache there.

Well solved it, though I may die now from the amount of salt required to get there.

Personally, I think [25] makes a lot of cents; he was right on the money. It was just not fun. I consider this puzzle about a 2 on a fairness scale from 1 to 5.

The biggest problem is that the picture is littered with red herrings, and eliminating those takes quite some time. To add on, crucial information is missing from the picture. The doubled 5th clue was ambiguous as to its purpose. Even if you knew that the doubled 5th clue could give you the key, there were still tons of relationships between the two that could have been the key. (All of which count as UNCLUED red herrings!) Eliminating those was what proved the most frustrating for me.

There's an extra step needed before you can do the truly standard Tanga thing, and I recognize that some of the more experienced Tanganites may even consider that step to BE part of the standard Tanga thing, but this is the first I've seen it, and the whole concept of "standard Tanga thing" is less useful if that other thing is part of it. So I reject it as standard; it is an extra step; it just is.

That means there were 3 steps necessary to solve this puzzle:
1) Find the missing info on Wikipedia or anywhere.
2) Crucial non-standard step of peril and doom.
3) Tanga.

And the nail in the coffin is that people who do steps 1 and 3 and not 2 still get half the answer and can easily guess. I'm not in the camp that wants the One Word to be thematically related; it's cute when it is, but if it's guessable, that just detracts.

But again, why should anybody expect to have to go to Wikipedia when there's so much data in the picture already? I tried dozens of ways of utilizing the years, and some of them produced encouraging results for the doubled clue.

Well I'll tell you what's not the answer: Scumtwirl, curlytwit and foamedhick.

There's so much salt out there that the salt is making my head hurt.

[57] I don't think the second step is standard or non-standard... but acceptable. I have seen it discussed and have an unpublished puzzle that uses it. But I'd agree with you about not thinking of Wikipedia right from the start when there is SO much viable data right there in the picture.

I thought the puzzle itself was rather clever once you got passed the rather unclear entry point.

In all fairness
this is the *HARD* One Word Wonder

That means that there are often more steps, or more internet searching, or more thinking outside the box, or all of the above... That's what stretches our minds.

We've seen much worse puzzles (MUCH MUCH worse)

Personally, I liked this puzzle, and a lot of work went into the conception and construction of it. The solve method was not that much of a stretch, and didn't include the extremely difficult task of searching for images of people or images on the internet, or needing to know some obscure fact about a pop culture figure many have never heard of.

And we've seen this kind of treatment of tanga numbers before (and even if we hadn't - that's where we stretch).

[60]thank you - got it. Solved due mainly to your patience. This is most definitely a HARD OWW and I do believe I learned something today, don't know if it will stick, but I learned it. I think the puzzle was very well thought out and put together and agree that it was well done. It was hard, but not impossible with a bit of experience, luck and logic.
Thank you all for your help.

I knew all of these by heart (again, the upside of teaching 5th grade) and I think that made it harder for me. I'd count them in order on my fingers and then apply them, so the switch threw me until I did some math and realized the difference.

In short, don't complain to much about having to search. It might make things clearer to look at a list.

[60] You're entitled to your opinion, of course.

And I agree with you that it should be hard.

But the difference between a mediocre puzzle and a great puzzle is NOT an interesting solve method. The difference is that when, knowing the answer, you look back on a puzzle that gave you trouble, you should be able to see clues that you missed before. You should think, oh, I could have used that to point me in the right direction. When I look back at this puzzle, I don't see anything like that.

I think this puzzle could have had clues that made it clear the minting years or statehood years were red herrings, or that the two center coins should resolve to the same letter, or that outside information would be needed, and it wouldn't've been any less Hard, but it sure would've been more fair.

[64] fishboy

Well, You too are entitled to your opinion

I thought the fact that the two center coins overlap does indicate they should resolve to the same letter - at least that was my interpretation

Red herrings are just that - and usually not pointed out in a puzzle.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and there've been plenty of puzzles that some thought fun that I thought were just tedious.

Onward!