Diagram Puzzles

[impossibleroot]

Easy one for starters. Feel free to contribute your own!

Please post answers as Spoilers.

IR1:


For those new to diagram puzzles, the idea is to build meaning and significance into a diagram representing something well-known. The best ones are strange and seemingly random until solved, when all the details of the diagram become clear and obvious. Numbers, letters, or other characters should not be used.

[mikeamok]

excellent diagram, though i think that bottom left symbol should look something like this:

[impossibleroot]

Well, let's be realistic!

[Oscar]

Looks like presidents of the US to me, where 22 and 24 are Grover Cleveland and 44 could be just about anybody, depending on how Jeb Bush rigs Florida this time.

[The Cruciverbalist]

Shapes represent political parties; blue triangles are Democratic-Republicans, orange squares are Whigs, green pentagons are Democrats, and yellow hexagons are Republicans. I'm not sure why Washington and John Adams are different shapes; every resource I looked at shows both as Federalists. The lighter colors indicate non-violent death in office, dots indicate assassinations in office, and the slash is Nixon's resignation.
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"Who slipped th'surly bonds an' kinged you the linguary?"

[Lucky Wizard]

Washington was independent and in fact warned against parties. Adams was a Federalist.

*walks away pondering what he can represent in a diagram*

[Nsof]

Hi
Circle colors don't mean anything, but their relative location and sizes do.
Line colors have a meaning.

NS1:

[impossibleroot]

Here are my old ones -- some so old that even I don't remember the answers! There may be an archived thread with these somewhere, so if we need to, we can probably pillage that for the answers.

IR2:


IR3: (breaks my own rule of no symbols, but hey...)


IR4:


IR5:


IR6:


IR7:


IR8:


IR9:





IR10:


IR11:


IR12:


IR13:


IR14:


IR15:

[Lucky Wizard]

The original thread was here: http://www.greylabyrinth.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=2642&start=0

(wow -- that thread's been dormant so long that most if not all of the images are red X's.)

[yuethomas]

IR4 has the digits 1 through 0 on a seven-segment LED, inverted - am I supposed to do anything else with that information?

[The Cruciverbalist]

For IR12: There are twenty-six bars, and the fifth one is the tallest. If that's not a clue, I don't know what is.
_________________
"Who slipped th'surly bonds an' kinged you the linguary?"

[referee]

ooh, thanks CV Though there are 27 bars

IR 12: scrabble tiles from A to Z, then blanks. Bar height is the frequency and bar width is the value of them (note 0 for blanks)
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Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Termital]

NS1 seems to be a map of the americas, circle size prolly related to area, lines indicating borders.
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_{Better ways to push & pull!}

[Nsof]

NS1 is solved by Terminal

[impossibleroot]

Yuethomas is correct on IR4, though I realize now that it isn't really a diagram puzzle in the slightest. It was back when I was figuring out the format...

Referee got IR12. Thanks LW for the old link -- don't look if you don't want to know the answers!

[mole]

Just checking in to say how much I loved the old thread!

[impossibleroot]

Well hopefully I'll think of a few more good ones and we can start the thread up again. That first one on this thread was just too darned easy! I've got one brewing, though.

[ralphmerridew]

IR6: Proof of countability of rational numbers
IR7: Zork I Maze

[impossibleroot]

Ralph, yes to both.

Here's IR16: (it's a bit too picture-y for my taste, but I couldn't think of a better way to do it without making it obscure. It is kind of funny, I suppose...)

[impossibleroot]

No takers? It's odd, I know, and a bit silly, but it shouldn't be that tough...

[Zag]

I find it truly amazing that anybody ever gets any of these. Heck, I remembered the original thread and, remembering some of the solutions, I was barely able to match those up with pictures.

For this last one, did you write it in 1998 or 1999? Is that significant? (i.e. is each square a year in the last century?)

Are these appropriate interprations of the pictues, or will it be important to get the right specific word for one or more of them? Baseball, Huckleberry Hound, Construction worker, Earth, Kid playing, No Baseball, Sheep.

Is the following likely to help?

1-6: Earth
7. No baseball
8. Sheep
9-14 Earth
15. Baseball
16. Earth
17. Missing!
18. Earth
...

[impossibleroot]

They're meant to be gotten in 'a flash of insight' -- so I consider it a success! But I know how frustrating they can be, believe me. In a way, they're more fun to create than they are to solve...

To the point: I created IR15 yesterday, October 11, 2004. That fact IS important.

A couple of hints on your identifications:

2 are too broad, 1 is only the second word, 1 is focusing on the wrong part of the picture, and 1 is a REAL stretch -- but there aren't really any other things I could for it that wouldn't make it totally obvious.

I never wanted this puzzle to be about the 'icons', but I guess they're really the only way to figure it out.

I'll be around with more hints if you want to keep asking!

[The Cruciverbalist]

Is he right about the squares representing years?

Does the boxes refer to some sort of event that occurs annually (presumably starting in 1907), with the color representing the event's outcome?

(Edit: After posting this, I googled the phrase "except for 1923", and the first site to come up was this. Those are some VERY promising-looking categories on the left-hand side...)
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"Who slipped th'surly bonds an' kinged you the linguary?"

[impossibleroot]

Very promising indeed! Nice work. I'm surprised (and pleased) that Google could track that down from 'except 1923' -- good search.

So, since Cruci's link 'solves' it, I have to ask: what symbols would have been better? What would you have used if you were putting this diagram together? Is there a way to do it without the 'icons'?

[The Cruciverbalist]

If you were in a particularly mean mood you could have just given us the string of squares.

Seriously, though, I mostly ignored the pictures until I found the Westminster connection*. After that, the pictures were a nice confirmation, although I suppose I could have combed through the records and matched up the first few if the pictures weren't there. As for the pictures themselves, they all seem like good choices to me, with the possible exception of Huck. (An image of a dog in a diagram puzzle about dogs seems a bit... well, self-defeating, although I agree that "hound" is a durned hard word to clue visually. Elvis, maybe? Oh, and nice trick with "terrier". That one took me a second. )


^{*"Westminster Connection", of course, being my favorite West Is Lip song.}
_________________
"Who slipped th'surly bonds an' kinged you the linguary?"

[impossibleroot]

Yeah, for 'hound' I originally had Sherlock Holmes, and I thought of Elvis, but that could have gone too many directions.

In its first form, the puzzle broke out the dogs into all their breeds, grouped by, well, group. But it would have been too messy, too obscure, and in the end, much too much work for me!

Meh, nice job. Next one on the way, hopefully.

[Courk]

*doesn't get the terrier reference* Maybe I'm dense.

[The Cruciverbalist]

Earth=Terra.
_________________
"Who slipped th'surly bonds an' kinged you the linguary?"

[Fuldu]

What about a roadside-type sign with a group of people walking in front and a single person lagging behind instead of the Earth?

[groza528]

IR3: looks like a chronological timeline of the "Back to the Future" Trilogy

[impossibleroot]

Right you are, Groza! In retrospect, I could have diagrammed that without the numbers, simply by using blocks to represent the years...

[Zag]

[impossibleroot]

New one, completed this morning.

IR17:

[The Cruciverbalist]

Oh my. This is all one diagram?

Okay, let's see. All of the individual graphs have a dotted line; am I correct in assuming the dotted lines all mean more or less the same thing?
_________________
"Who slipped th'surly bonds an' kinged you the linguary?"

[impossibleroot]

Same thing, scaled context. There is a clue in the message.

[Courk]

The dot graph reminds me of periodic characteristics of elements.

There are 21 black rectangles in the first part. The rest have 21 sections to them...

[impossibleroot]

Periodicity is definitely involved.

[Courk]

150 spaces, 21 highlighted...

This is going to drive me crazy. I hope you're happy.

[impossibleroot]

[Courk]

8, 15, 25, 28, 38, 41, 54, 58, 61, 71*, 74*, 87, 94, 100, 104, - - -, 107, 117, 120, 133, 140, 150

* The 70's aren't grouped together like the rest...

The USA Today lists the week's top 150 best sellers, but I haven't been able to figure out a connection.