SOLVED - The GL Collaborative Meta-Puzzle

[Oscar]

Aha! These are books/films which have been turned upside down:

1a A European picture of mental health - AMERICAN PSYCHO
1b Lunch for losers - BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
1c Flag the later guidelines?
1d Niceness above the moon - EVIL UNDER THE SUN

[Elethiomel]

1c. The lager flat guidelines - THE CIDER HOUSE RULES

[Gomez]

Good work fellas!

[Suspence]

During test-solving, I solved LUNCH FOR LOSERS first and I immediately thought DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[gpagano]

Part 2:

ROSE MAR HE'S BAY BEE + KING= ROSEMARY'S BABY
EPOCH ELLIPSE KNOW + BIN = APOCALYPSE NOW
FILM MET HALL JACK HET + TEQUILA= FULL METAL JACKET
DOUR HAIR HE TEE + BOARD= DIRTY HARRY
THESE HAMS HENCE HEIL OFT HELL+ MA = ?

All of the excess bits suggest another title:

KING BIN TEQUILA BOARD MA= TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD + BIN

So I would assume BIN is the bit we need from part two.

As for part 1, have we considered the locations of each film? The Miami Florida bit suggests locations may be needed.

As for part 3, Perhaps we have to order the colors in some way?

EDIT: No wait...perhaps we have to dot our i's and cross our t's here.

Taking each color as a separate letter, and counting the i as dots and t's as dashes gives me
. - . .-. -. .- .-.. .-.. --- --- .--. ... .-. .. ...- . .-. .-.. .. -.- . .- .-- --- -. -.- -.-- .-.. .. -. . .--. .-. . .. .. -.. . . - ... ..- --. .. .--. --- . - -. ..- .-. - ..- .-. . ... -... .- -.. -. .. --. .... - --- -. . -- .--. - -.- -

Which I translate to:

ETERNAL LOOPS RIVER LIKE A WONKY LINE PREIIDEETS? UGI? POET NURTURES BAD NIGHT ONE MPTKT?

Obviously some errors, PREIIDEETS seems like it should be presidents. Feel free to make any corrections.
_________________
Puzzle mad.

[LordKinbote]

[gpagano]

Ah, thanks LordKinbote. Confirms my theory about the "BIN" being the lone bit.

Okay, So I have a lead on part 3. Take a look at post 125 to see where I'm at with it. Still not sure to make of the portions we can read.
_________________
Puzzle mad.

[3iff]

Brilliant work...seems so obvious once someone points it out.
I had the morse code idea for part 3 but am so hopeless at morse code that none of it made sense.

I'll see if I can make a contribution.

[3iff]

Perhaps part 3 splits into more file titles...need to visit imdb.

BTW, why don't I see colours in part 3? I just see black text.
I'm seeing colour references in the html source for that page but I'm not otherwise seeing the embedded colouring...which makes solving the puzzle even harder


ETERNAL LOOPS
RIVER LIKE A WONKY LINE "The river wild"?
PREIIDEETS? UGI?
POET NURTURES BAD "Dead poets society"?
NIGHT ONE MPTKT?


.

[novice]

Brilliant work. I double-checked the morse code, and I got

ETERNAL LOOPS RIVER LIKE A WONKY LINE PRESIDENT HUGS POET NURTURES BAD NIGHT ONE MPTKT

So MPTKT is correct, the rest was typos.

[novice]

Actually if the final K and T are taken as one morse letter, we get

ETERNAL LOOPS RIVER LIKE A WONKY LINE PRESIDENT HUGS POET NURTURES BAD NIGHT ON EMPTY

The K and T are the same color, just separated by newlines, so that makes sense.

[novice]

[3iff]

Thanks, novice, you're right. Span doesn't seem to work but I have an old firefox and that shows it.

It looks hideous!

[Gomez]

Excellent work so far, guys. You've correctly solved part 2, and have one stage left on parts 1 and 3. To just nudge you in the right direction on part one, because it is very slightly ambiguous, you may find it helpful to know that I'm a literature grad

I can confirm that novice, in post 131, has correctly decoded the morse code, although big props should also go to gpagano for making the leap in the first place and correctly decoding 90% of it, as well as nailing part 2 single-handed. Excellent solving, sir!

Happy solving!

[3iff]

Assuming we're missing film locations from part 1... I have

American Psycho: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Breakfast: Twin Falls, Idaho
Cider House: Bellow Falls, Vermont
Evil under the Sun: Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain.

Although probably authors are more relevant

Bret Easton Ellis
Kurt Vonnegut
John Irving
Agatha Christie

All the films in part 1 came from books...

Call in BOOKBINDERS or BOOKBINDER

[Scurra]

(Grrr. I go away for a week and completely miss almost all of this! Hey ho.)

But all the answers to the overall puzzle so far seem to be one-word movie titles. BOOKBINDERS doesn't seem to fit that pattern.

Can you tell I do meta-puzzles quite a lot? My first instinct when getting to this sort of point is to look at previous answers in the hope that they might provide an obvious clue... As for the meta itself: I'm not at all sure if we can yet assume there are only seven answers? Was Suspence's puzzle a replacement for one or an extra one? I can't see anything obvious that the films have in common other than that they are possibly adaptations of earlier works - not sure this works for Xanadu though. But "Back in the old days" might be suggesting that. [Because I have written quite a lot of metas myself, I know how hard it is to make a puzzle that works just from a set of answers with perhaps a vague title pointer.]
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[3iff]

Funny, I was just wondering where you were as these things are the sort of puzzle you solve in your sleep...

I concur about the puzzle answers so far...all one word film titles, so Bookbinders is probably (almost certainly) wrong.

I'm fairly sure there are 7 puzzles and I have inside knowledge about the one I had a go at but had to pass onto someone else to do... (I'll say nothing about that puzzle).

[novice]

[3iff]

I just looked at that and could spell out VICE but didn't add it to Miami...I like that idea.

Don't know what to do with it though.

[novice]

Yeah I think VICE might fit, being clued by "on location in Miami".

Similarly BIN is clued by "And, by extension..." (.bin is a common file extension)

[Scurra]

Part three may be cryptics. Unfortunately, the break points aren't necessarily obvious (unless there is something in that garish colour thing that helps - I haven't examined it closely.)
My first guess at the splits is:

ETERNAL LOOPS
RIVER LIKE A WONKY LINE (which appears to give NILE)
PRESIDENT HUGS POET
NURTURES BAD NIGHT ON EMPTY (something like THING?)
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[3iff]

Possibly...

We need to solve part 3 but yet again I'm meeting a brick wall.

In the part 3 intro, there's the odd phrase, "you'll end up cutting your own head off, with a bit of old tin." I'm guessing it's flavour but maybe it's an instruction for what we get from part 3.

[Oscar]

I was just about to post NILE plus NOTHING for the last clue! (Bad night on empty)

[Thok]

[3iff]

ETERNAL LOOPS could be SPOOL ? or POOLS ??

[Thok]

PRESIDENT HUGS POET NURTURES feels like it has a CARESSES/CARES thing going on with the word play.

[Scurra]

Has anyone tried morse decoding on the intro text for part 3? I imagine it's not possible without colours and given that the other intros have been related to the answer part rather than how to solve, it's probably not meant to be done that way anyway.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[novice]

[Suspence]

BOOKBINDERS is not correct
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[3iff]

PRESIDENT HUGS POET NURTURES

Suggests a possible president name surrounding a possible poet name, as in...

PPpoetPP to make a word meaning nurtures...

Yes, I know you all KNOW this...unfortunately I don't know many poets and a quich search lists hundreds! I'm mainly thinking out loud for my own benefit.

[novice]

The two solved cryptics make sense, otoh I have a hard time seeing how Eternal Loops can be a cryptic. And the first two parts involve movies - shouldn't the third part do that too?

ETERNAL LOOPS - Neverending story
RIVER LIKE A WONKY - River wild
LINE PRESIDENTS HUGS POET NURTURES BAD NIGHT ON EMPTY - ???

[Scurra]

The reason I don't like "The River Wild" as an answer to "River like a wonky..." is that a good cryptic doesn't include any part of the answer in the clue. If the answer contained "river", then the clue would be more likely to be something like "Flower like a wonky..." (Of course I am not necessarily including the difficulty of doing the morse code setup in that!)

And whilst I agree that the other answers have been movies, that doesn't stop these leading to movie titles as well. I was toying with the idea that they might all be partial titles with the same "missing" word, although there aren't many movies with NILE in them! (Death on the Nile and Jewel of the Nile were the only two that come to mind.)
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[3iff]

I have to say RIVER LIKE A WONKY LINE (= NILE) fits perfectly.

When I guessed "The River Wild" I wasn't seeing the clue as a cryptic, but I'm sure it is. Ditto for BAD NIGHT ON EMPTY. (= NOTHING)

It could be the other 2 are not cryptics, but it would be odd to switch those two to straight clues. The President one 'looks' cryptic.

I'm sure a film title is going to be the eventual outcome...

[Oscar]

I think it's a sort of double cryptic:

Eternal loops = ENDLESS
River like a wonky line = NILE
President hugs poet nurtures = PR(OVID)ES
Bad night on empty = NOTHING

giving NIL

Hence we probably have VICE, BIN & NIL

[3iff]

Nice...and nasty. So it's PRES from president...

[Elethiomel]

CALL IN INVINCIBLE

[3iff]

Rats, it's an anagram...

You were right Gomez...it was a tough one.

[Suspence]

INVINCIBLE is correct. Nicely solved all.

Here is the final puzzle:
Dizzy Spell by Jack_Ian

Given that all the puzzles are out there, I'll give you the link to the meta-page as well, though there isn't anything you don't already know:
Back in the Old Days by Suspence
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[3iff]

This next one was the one I was going to do...but I didn't...so I won't be involved in solving this one.

[Oscar]

I know I shouldn't do this but....

Call in VERTIGO

Now to try to solve it....

Oh for the meta:
Call in ROMAN
Call in Roman Numeral
Worth a guess