Discuss It's As Easy As... Here

[Neo]

Link to the Puzzles

Happy puzzling!
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[ralphmerridew]

Grid is 7x11. 3 symbols appear once; 2 appear twice; 4 appear 3 times; 12 appear 4 times; one (the dash) appears 10 times.

32d1cb8
c--gfha
3ef28-i
43e571a
bgfgbhj
d1e-6-b
424d7ci
al-ehd7
93k86j6
25-457-
1-a65-c

[Salty]

This is the puzzle that I made least progress with in the competition (as in absolutely no progress whatsoever). I know someone solved it though, so maybe we could get a clue!

[phw]

Ralphmerridew's character count is very relevant, but noting which have 4 occurences and which have fewer might help even more. Comparing this with the title might yield a clue about what to do next.

[Gomez*]

I spent ages on this one and got nowhere. Could anyone please give me a hint? Cheers.

[Logain]

I have to admit that phw's hints are pretty cryptic.

Without really giving things away, I will say this much...the title is much more important than any flavortext.

[phw]

Fine, I'll try something specific. My earlier hint is suggesting that you try something that can be done in 189321481108517289984 ways. One of them will give you something meangingful.

[Gomez]

'Fraid I'm still clueless. Could anyone drop a (much) more obvious hint? Cheers.

[ralphmerridew]

That number is 2^42 * 3^16. And likely pi is involved.

[Logain]

Maybe I'm just assuming people instantly think this when they hear it...but have you googled the title? If so, one easy idea to try should jump out at you.

[L'lanmal]

I'll try to contribute, since I didn't get this one.

Since the number of copies decrease as you get later in the alphabet/numbers and the flavor text and the Jackson 5, the obvious thing to do seemed to be divide into 4 regions, each of which contains the numbers 1, 2, 3.... (using all numbers on the grid) and/or the letters A, B, C, D...

Unforunately, I found multiple ways to do this individually, and no way to do this simultaneously. Perhaps the regions are meant to take the shape of letters, giving an eight-letter word as the answer?

[Naboo*]

Anyone making any more progress on this? I've tried everything and I can think of and I'm still completely clueless.

[Oblivion*]

Some of it makes sense, and then i get lost. I will ponder it a bit more, but i doubt i will come up with anything.

[Naboo]

At this point it's pretty clear that no-one else is going to get this without some serious and specific hints. Anyone care to oblige? Personally, I would appreciate it if someone would PM me a spoiler. Thanks.

[phw]

I've uploaded pictures of the puzzle solved.

For the letters
and the numbers

[Salty]

wow. that's really nice. Great solving phw and great puzzle Logain.

[Naboo]

I'm a bit confused. Invisible quibble:

How do you know which A to start at, and which B to go to next? I selected a random A, went to the nearest B and so on and came up with a random squiggle. I did this several times. It seems like there would be a lot of trial and error involved in figuring out how to join up the letters. Also, what part do the blank spaces play?

Am I missing something?

[killer*]

i dont no how to do these. can someone help me

[killbill*]

dude this is really hard!!!!!!

[mariathepirate*]

Even with the highlighted answer, the solution doesn't really make sense. And I agree with the person above me. Invisi-text: There's no way to tell which number/letter to follow. And the solution . . . . Jacks Son? Son Jacks? Sons Jack? What what? I thought the numbers of each of the letters and numbers was important . . . but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[ralphmerridew]

Answer is Jackson 5. Explanation

[Gomez]

I'm inclined to agree with Naboo on this. How are you supposed to know where to start and where to go next? There's no discernable pattern as far as I can tell. Is it just a case of trying every single one of the God knows how many hundred possible permutations until you hit the correct one, or is there something I'm missing?

[gurlucanthave*]

I agree with ralphmerridew. The Jackson 5 had a hit song called ABC which goes like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-16fDpOW948 lyrics: ABC, Easy as 1, 2, 3 which correctly corresponds to the title: Its As Easy As... (1,2,3)

[Logain]