One Word Wonder

Welcome to my after-after-after-after-Oscar party! Where all the best actors and actresses come to be seen. I'll be over at the bar with the salt shaker if you need me.

Welcome newcomers –
For all the newbies here tonight:
This is the primary blog for the daily fun puzzle discussions. It is a marvelous place to discuss tonight’s puzzle and to find intelligent, witty, and clever clues to help you solve.

There is another website that the Tangans also use to share questions and answers about the Tanga puzzles and to post more blatant hints than you will find on this blog.
This has a separate Ze puzzle discussion (see the Ze discussion for that link)
The first post for tonight's Regular Tanga puzzle starts at: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1366450#1366450
You need to be a registered user to post questions and send and receive geekmail (or GM)
Don’t forget to go check to see if there is a “next” page.
Also, if you are interested in the definition of some tangaisms you may encounter here (e.g. the use of the word “salt”) please check out the first post of
https://secure.tanga.com/blogs/461-Ze-Frank-Puzzle-2-17-2007-Blog
Enjoy!

Got the clue, now to figure out what it means.

no idea who half these people are. . .

i know who most are... now just need to figure it out...

# It took you 5 minutes and 17 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 1st Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

w00t! Other than the identify-the-person aspect (which can be hard to search for), I really liked this one.

Got the first part now have to figure out the next step.

Not everyone is a celebrity buff....salt will be needed on my end.

[4] While knowing their names will give you a clue, the puzzle can be solved without it (although it would be a lot harder). Remember, celebrity isn't everything.

Took a stab with "Bacon". Six degrees of wrong. DOH!

...totally lost. I have no idea where to start with this. I think I'll just buckle down with homework and give this a pass. I think I can identify three people there, and have no idea what the rest of them are even from.

Definitely found the hidden clue, but don't know what to do with it.

maluba, same boat here

Leadfoot, I think the correct link for BGG should be http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1366450#1366450

You're linking to yesterday's discussion.

(12,13) me too... got the clue pretty quickly, can't for the life of me figure out what to do with it.

[comment removed, other people said it better]

I go the phrase...but damn it don't help me. Gah please no more "popcorn like" puzzles!

A little salt for those who have the clue and are stuck... you've identified the people, now try just looking at them.

is it maybe a math reference?

i didn't get the clue
when "just looking" at them, are their looks important or their names and similarities between them

I'm thinking gender plays a part here....

Ladies first

OK, cool once you get the names

[20] Once you get the clue, their names are no longer important

[22] Good salt, maybe that should've been written in the puzzle

now i think i even know which one pic is being referenced in the clue... and i STILL can't find the one word answer that would go with it.

grrrrr.

# It took you 25 minutes and 7 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 17th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

myheritage.com is a somewhat useful way to get names for celebrities, but use your good judgement (One of the ladies is Manny Ramirez according to it)

Not sure how you're supposed to get that without the clue unless you guess, but gender does play a part.

I had to use a calculator.

[20] it's not their similarities, but the most fundamental difference between them that counts

Sorry this is so challenging -- I guess this is what I get for testing the puzzle on engineers and physicists.

It's not too bad - I got the concept right away, but thought I didn't have enough pictures to work from. Once I realized that the first three pictures in each line would always be the same, and that's why they were invisible, all was well.

I think my brain is fried from too much popcorn last night. I have the secret message and understand the fundamental difference between the photos, but I just can't make the connection to the next step.

barneshome, me too

I prefer ASCII.

I'm sure this would sneak by nary a geek.

Woo! 3min, 54s... I guess that means I'm a geek.

Finally got it. Tried to make the last step too complicated.

Finally got it, too. Wow. I don't think I would have made that final step without a bit of salt.

Ladies first is the right bit once you've made that last leap. If you let the guys go first, it doesn't work at all.

I'm throwing in the towel for tonight. I don't like it when it takes me this long. I could've been flipping channels!

I had to do something Initially.

Then, I realized, Girls are number 1!

Had to go over to Dr. Math to brush up on the base-ics...

[36]
yes, me too. after i got the four important numbers, i don't know what possessed me to add them all up. and when i got the total 61, i didn't know what to do. then i remembered that i was doing tanga.

Very pretty. Nicely done, ahecht!

I have the clue, still lost about what to do with it. Do I need to understand [30]?

Finally got it. Clever change of pace, ahecht.

[42]
five pictures per line was all we needed

Very nice concept ahecht. I would have posted earlier, but my verizon DSL has been out for most of the time. Ah well.

[edit]
The main problem I had with this puzzle is that if you didn't know the celebrities - you were pretty much out of luck without help. It is true that there could be an leap made without knowing, but it's not a leap that most of the population would make.

But what's the new phrase?
It's better than colonal?

leadfoot - help! can you gm me?? I am so lost after step one.

[46] kswitz
gm is there...

Six minutes. Nice puzzle.

-MMM

*grumble* Got it now. Did some bad math originally

Like many of you, I got the "initial" clue without any salt since I knew enough of the people in the pictures. But using that clue requires a pretty strong math (or at least computer science) background. No problem for me being an engineer, but I don't see how you expect this to be solved without some special knowledge.

I give this one 2.5 stars (great cast, but weak script).

I liked this puzzle. Clever, a little different, multiple layers, not too hard, but not too easy. A little but much of a leap between step 1 and step 2, but still ok in my book.

I still don't know who the woman in black-and-white and the guy with the stupid hat are. (I was sure I knew the woman from a well-loved Xmas movie, but apparently that doesn't fit. Whey does everyone from like the 40s and 50s look exactly alike?) I was surprised how many people were stumped on some of the more recent (and, for my money, better known) celebrities, but I'm stumped on (I assume) the oldest one. Guess it says a little something about the average age of Tanga residents? ;)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Next time I'll test my puzzles with the liberal arts majors as well as the engineers, and definitely provide more salt in the puzzle itself.

[51] tempus42
Ah Casablanca! A Classic movie!

And we ain't all that young. Maybe that's why we were stumped on the more recent celebrities. I think it's pretty cool that Tanga brings together such a diverse set of people to interact!

[51] For the woman, think, "Here's lookin' at you kid." For the man, broadway, The Producers, and The Lion King.

This wasn't too bad. I needed a nudge to get the first clue, but I don't think that was a flaw in the puzzle. Sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn't. It certainly wasn't too bad for the final solve. Making the leap to boys and girls was the most challenging aspect for me. After that there are only 4 possible answers (and at least one eliminates itself by containing a number that's too high).

There was one element of this puzzle that was particularly nicely done. I like that the puzzle tells you what order to read the digits in. If you do it the wrong way on the 2nd line, you get a number that's too large, telling you to read it the other way. All the others can come up with 2 different 'appropriate' numbers. I don't know if it was intentional, but I appreciate that sort of key, or self correcting element in a puzzle.

NEVER MIND!!!

[50] Or you could just use the windows calc program once you lookup the clue in wikipedia. Of course that requires the knowledge that it has a scientific mode.

[50] Please, please! Popcorn I could get, but a degree in Classical Languages certainly does not lend itself to solving this one!

I got the initial clue with no problem; even figured out that ladies are first; but how to solve it after that is absolute Greek to me.

Well I feel like an idiot. I missed the first part, but got the answer from the numbers. I thought THAT was the clue everyone was talking about

OK, like many, I figure out the clue pretty quickly. But, being math challenged, I have no idea what to do next. Help! Can someone GM me with a slight nudge. My Tanga and BGG screen names are the same.

[edit]Nevermind. I found some helpful salt.