Discuss TV scramble puzzle here

[Dragon Phoenix]

Go ahead....

Puzzle Link
TV Scramble

[This message has been edited by Logain (edited 10-02-2002 11:44 AM).]

[Suspence]

The two buttons you used to use to fix old TV's when they screwed up were vertical and horizontal. I don't see how that relates to the puzzle as yet, but it probably should somehow.

------------------
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature

[porcupine]

So... Using that fact, I tried "turning" those knobs at once... shifting every other row horizontally and every other column vertically. And after doing this a couple of different ways, all I'm getting is gibberish and dizzy. Has anyone tried anything else?

[margitsw]

Hmm, I'm only familiar with early European TV's.
AFAIK, the only controls were On/Off, Program and Brightness.
Vert and Hor were done by "twisting" the "electronics" on the
end of the tube.
And remember different standards.
Something special with USA TV's ?
And why does he say "Giving each button one turn", when
"dial" must be more accurate ?

[IT 3]

I don't know about TV's overall, but I'm in the US and I've got a semi-ancient old TV in my basement. On the back of the TV are the two small white knobs, one adjusts horizontal and one adjusts vertical. It has other knobs on the front, like brightness, color, tint, etc. I was under the impression that on really ancient TV's (i.e. B+W) the only adjustment knobs were vertical and horizontal.

This poem by the preeminent literary force of our time, Shel Silverstein, seems to confirm my suspicions:

"Jimmy Jet And His TV Set"

I'll tell you the story of Jimmy Jet--
And you know what I tell you is true.
He loved to watch his TV set
Almost as much as you.

He watched all day, he watched all night
Till he grew pale and lean,
From "The Early Show" to "The Late Show"
And all the shows in between.

He watched till his eyes were frozen wide,
And his bottom grew into his chair.
And his chin turned into a tuning dial,
And antennae grew out of his hair.

And his brains turned into TV tubes,
And his face to a TV screen.
And two knobs saying "vert." and "horiz."
Grew where his ears had been.

And he grew a plug that looked like a tail
So we plugged in little Jim.
And now instead of him watching TV
We all sit around and watch him.



[This message has been edited by IT 3 (edited 10-01-2002 08:14 PM).]

[xer0x]

I think we should ask Sofis what it was meant by the instruction in the puzzle i.e. the turning of the 'knobs' when we don't know what they do at all.

------------------
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

[margitsw]

I agree. A "button" is to be pushed and not "turned"
To Joe McCrae - What are these "buttons" that can be "turned"??

[Logain]

Button equaled knob in this case. Sorry for any confusion on semantics. Thanks to Antrax for updating the puzzle text for me.

[margitsw]

Logain = Joe ?

[ZutAlors!]

Dragon Phoenix, can you splice in a link to the puzzle in the first post? For this and other puzzle discussions, seems like it would be handy to have the original puzzle text just a click away. At least for me.

[ZutAlors!]

Hey, now that's service! Thanks Logain.

[Logain]

No problem Zut. I made the change in the other current puzzle as well.

*checks profile quickly* Yep margitsw, that's me

[jatill]

I can't help but notice all the repetition in the puzzle. Lines 1 and 3 match the t e, but also both times they appear o is mapped to s.
There are lots of similar patterns.

My guess is that to solve the puzzle, the rows and columns need not to be shifted, but expanded and/or contracted, such that the letters will appear in new formations. I would guess from the patterns that the letters might overlap themselves in some cases.

Then again, maybe not!

[mathgrant]

I was around to see its debut. Hint: I think it involves at least 20 TV shows.

[Duphrates]

For those of you interested, and to save you bothering, cast appearances are as follows

code:

---

a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j  k  l  m  n  o  p  q  r


16 2  3  4  21 2  5  5  13 1  1  5  5  13 15 5  0  14








s  t  u  v  w  x  y  z 


12 11 5  2  3  0  5  1

---

so it appears that no decrypting is needed.(he says)..maybe.

[Zot]

On old TV sets when the Vertical hold needed adjusting often the bottom half of the picture appeared on the top half of the screen and vice versa. This may help.

[margitsw]

So, having dug out in our village a SW TV,
Knobs to turn are:
Vertical Hold
Horizontal hold
These are, at least here, to adjust the frequency.
These are NOT to adjust the [bert/horz] placement !

[This message has been edited by margitsw (edited 10-13-2002 01:53 PM).]

[Fliptop]

Nice puzzle Logain!!

Invisible hint:


Look at the bottom right hand corner.


I'll spoil in a few days if no-one's got it.

[Duphrates]

I've been looking at this one for far too long!!! My head is telling me that we need to snake through the letters to spell something due to the regularity of the letters [post 14] but the only thing I've come up with is (h)appydays

[Skellum]

I'm not making much progress with this either. "Baywatch" snakes in the lower right corner. "oveboat" runs down in the 12th column and "L" is the 12th letter, "impsons" snakes in the 6th row and "S" is the 6th letter in the second half of the alphabet. Maybe we have to add a column and a row, but I'm not sure where.

[ZutAlors!]

More:

"Nightrider" starts with the fourth letter in the bottom row, reading left
"*riends" starts with the second letter in the third row, reading up.
"*iami vice" starts with the ninth letter in the bottom row, reading left
"*etsons" starting in the top row, fourth letter, reading right
The suggestive "Magnu" (m PI?) starts third-to-last letter in the fifth row.

If you graph all these out, you get....uh....something.

[mikeamok]

code:

---

        i       o        


            u            


    t             h      


                  r      


                         


            e         e  


          l              


                         


                         


                         


  e     t                


      t e         r      


        s                

---

airwolf
baywatch
cheers
dragnet
earthtwo
friends
gijoe
happydays
i
jetsons
knightrider
loveboat
miamivice
nypdblue
o
pokemon
quantumleap
roseanne
simpsons
tarzan
u
voyager
wings
xfiles
youngamericans
zorro


[This message has been edited by mikeamok (edited 10-17-2002 04:20 PM).]

[mikeamok]

of course, i have no idea what that means.

[mikeamok]

i spoke too soon.

compliments to Logain for a fun puzzle, and to Fliptop for apparently solving it first.

[This message has been edited by mikeamok (edited 10-17-2002 04:47 PM).]

[Gamerdudeman]

If it is true that it is alphabet soup, the answer to R=ST5^t is not correct, thereby proving that it is the emergancy broadcasting system letting people now of a impending hurricaine name Andrew nearing south Florida. the letters are all there!

[Fliptop]

Just for the record I think the announcement was

I Owe You 3 more programs

or something along those lines.

[jatill]

Exact solution, just in case it's still a mystery:
IOU Three Letters
Now, since there's always an unsolved puzzle on the site, I'm ready for the new one!

[This message has been edited by jatill (edited 10-18-2002 10:01 AM).]

[ZutAlors!]

I still wanna know what the two knobs are supposed to do though. I'm guessing that they "spin" the letters, but I can't quite make out how.

[Logain]

Congrats to everyone who solved it so far. Since the official solution isn't posted yet, I won't spoil anything without invising.

Zut, the knobs were the horizontal and vertical hold dials. In the intro, I mentioned that one turn from each would clear up the picture. Translation = each TV show had both a horizontal and vertical direction, but only one of each...forming an "L" type shape. The clearing up of the picture was a reference that every letter used is only used once, and that a message would be revealed by left over letters.

Hope it was fun to solve.