Puzzle: Some Very Wrong Movies

The Game Room
1

This puzzle is a list of movie titles. The titles have been broken into “doublets”, and the doublets alphabetized.

Example:

AMERICAN BEAUTY
AM ER IC AN BE AU TY
AM AN AU BE ER IC TY

Problems:

  1. Something was wrong with the movie titles. Therefore, prior to being broken into doublets, the titles were altered. In some cases the wrong was further identified, in other cases the wrong was made into a right.

  2. There is an extra letter in each of the altered titles. This letter is not part of the altered titles at all.

Mitigating Circumstance:

The extra letters from 1 to 14 will spell out some advice as to how to avoid such wrongs in the future.

Can you find the original titles, the altered titles, and the advice?

  1. CA EA ER LE NG OG OV RO TI YA
  2. AT CH CT EC EM IC NC NE ON OS PE RA RI TM UT
  3. AI AR AR AS EI GA HE NC NT RO UN
  4. HE HU IS KT LI MA MI NB RK TY
  5. AD AD AR AV EB ES IC IL OR TH
  6. AR CH GO HE IL IT LA MI SR ST YT
  7. DO EG ER IA IN IN IN IN LE NC TH
  8. AS DI EG GE IC IN IS JE KN LI NC SS TE
  9. AJ AM CH EA LO NY US YG
  10. AH AI DN ES IN IS OK OL SG
  11. AC AM AN AS CI DR EC ES OU RO SG SL SN SS TH VI
  12. AD AS CH ER IE LA ND OL TI TY VE
  13. AN CU ER GE RG RI RM RY
  14. AR AT EA EG IE IP IZ NC ON RA
2

Suggested alternate title: "Seven tangents."tan = sin / co-sin

I solved #13 first, and guessed the theme and thought of something apropos to post when I finished… which turned out to be the solution advice.

Did you pick alterations relevant to the movie’s plot, or were they randomly chosen? I’ve only seen #14, which is kind of related…

3

Congratulations Omphaloskeptic!

Glad to see you weren’t led astray.

I was worried —since this was probably one of the most challenging doublet puzzles --that it might end up unsolved like the last “Agent Jones” puzzle. But you sure walked the straight and narrow this time!

It seemed fun to try and match the puzzle theme directly to the movie, but I gave up on that at some point. I liked the idea…but to try and tie the movies to the “BIG 7” from their plots (and have them have the correct number of letters necessary to have the doublets work) seemed too daunting. Indeed, there were some movies such as Angels in the Outfield that I wanted to use because the title was so appropriate, but other than the title I didn’t know much about the flick.

Forgive me?