Sunday Morning Puzzle # 44

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This puzzle is dedicated to my very good friends Paul Haines & Mary Bornt. Thanks for helping me come up with this idea. You guys is good eggs.

Time to put on your thinking bonnet! The 11 sets of doublets below are actually well known titles that have been encrypted. Once a solver discovers the titles, he/she can use the few remaining “leftover” doublets to spell out a special holiday message.

±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±

  1. DE RA PA ER ST EA

  2. QU RN TE EE TR IR OU EF LF

  3. SI EO SR RB SE SM CN ID

  4. RR VR AP GA IS RA LT HA

  5. UE OM MA ER MS RH RP CM AP OO

  6. EG GA AS DO SH EA AR SE LS

  7. IR MD HH EN SO HR EI SR

  8. SA YA GA CE EN IA EN EI

  9. NC NM AE NT NO BJ KC HG RI

  10. OE ON EM EH HR BA UE CH

  11. ME PA MI NI GR AH DD UT

2

I think I have it, and I think I’ve been had. The “leftover” doublets spell an appropriate message, and I think I’ll leave off trying to decipher the alleged titles (apart from no. 1, of course).

3

Peregrine:

My feelings are hurt. While I have no doubt you may be onto something, rest assured that there are many more titles to be found other than #1. I promise.

That said, I perhaps could have made reference to “Hi-Lo” encryption…but I figured that the SDMB solvers are no dumb bunnies, and just might not need the clue. Another hint…you WILL find a (sic) hare in this puzzle. If you’ve completely solved it you’ll know eggsactly what I mean.

My good friends Mary Haines and Paul Bornt will be so happy to know that their puzzle was so challenging.

4

Then it’s back to the drawing board for me. It would have been cute the other way, though. No hard feelings?

5

Then it’s back to the drawing board for me. It would have been cute the other way, though. No hard feelings?

6

Wow, an auto double-post! I hit that button exactly once, 'cause I know better than to get impatient with this thing, even when it takes FIVE MINUTES to go through.

7

Wow, an auto double-post! I hit that button exactly once, 'cause I know better than to get impatient with this thing, even when it takes FIVE MINUTES to go through.

8

Lest this puzzle make anyone else a basket-case, let me assure you that there is indeed an absurdly simple (and eggsquisite?)solution. I’ll be eggstremely interested to see which SDMB egghead discovers the complete answer.

Where’s Vincent Price when you need him?

9

I hate it when you say that. It usually means I’ll spend hours staring at the damn thing and the rest of my time will be spent pouting because I haven’t got a clue.

Just answer me one question: Is this puzzle along the lines of last year’s Easter puzzle? Does #1 have a solution other than the obvious one? (Okay, two - two questions.)

Did I mention there would be pouting? (Three - there are three questions. They are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the…I’ll come in again.)

10

aseymayo:

I thought of last year’s puzzle a couple of times when constructing this one. That puzzle (last year’s) was probably my favorite puzzle of the entire Sunday Morning series. Paul and Mary would have liked that puzzle too. (I can’t really say say Peter, Paul, and Mary because, after all, Peter is a rabbit!)

As to your question about #1…let’s just say that the “obvious” answer is a good one.

I’m probably going to be too busy to write a puzzle this week (hint…hint…other writers), but if there’s no solution to #44 by Sunday I might just chalk this one up as the first win in the Biotop column. Current Score: SDMB 43 Biotop 0. And then, just perhaps, I’ll break my rule and post the answer. So that gives everyone 4 and 1/2 days. Someone should solve it well before then.

I must admit to liking this puzzle very much. Heh heh!

11

Ahem. Dame Fortune has smiled upon me. The Count is now: SDMB 44 Biotop 0. Sorry, squire.

My search has turned up 21 titles - but I’m not sure I have them all. Did I miss any?

12

Curses!!! Foiled again. My total, including the “obvious” number 1, is a bit higher because all letters have a purpose. Sigh. I already had my gloating victory speech half written.
GRRRR…

Mary and Paul are going to be VERY upset. Still, as long as they at least remain in the shadows…perhaps those two can be of assistance in the future.

Back to the drawing board…yet again.

13

Well now, I’m not sure I can chalk up a victory if I don’t have the whole thing!

I had another look at my worksheet and realized I had transposed a few letters in an earlier attempt at a solution. Now that I have that straightened out, I come up with a grand total of 29 titles. I still don’t know what to make of those old lag[sub]omorph[/sub]s, Paul and Mary - I’ve pulled one or two rabbits out of that particular hat, but I have some leftover letters I can’t make head or cottontail of!

I wish you would post the answer at the end of the week for every puzzle. You create such elegant (and often fiendish!) puzzles and I’m afraid they’re sometimes shortchanged by not having a completely elaborated solution.

And for the record, I really think the score is: SDMB 43 Biotop 1. You beat us on the infamous Puzzle #24 - we went way beyond the one week deadline on that one!

14

Help. I’ve given it my all and am lost. Count this as MonkeyMensch 0, Biotop 1. And donn’t give me any rabbit clues as help…

Thanks

15

**Warning!

Solution to follow:**

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This puzzle takes advantage of the close occurences last week of both Easter Sunday and April Fools’ Day. While pretending to be an Easter puzzle, SMP44 is actually an April Fools’ day puzzle in disguise. Peregrine discovered as much early on. What impresses me most about her excellent solving skills is that she was able to find the “holiday message” without first discovering the titles. This, I think, led her to believe that the whole puzzle was an unsolvable hoax. Not so! I though I had hidden the message well enough so that even the savviest of solvers would not see it too early, but that was obviously not the case.

The April Fools’ trick is in the encoding. By designing a puzzle to resemble many of the other SMP “doublet” puzzles, I hoped to mislead the solver into trying to find 11 titles by somehow rearranging or otherwise manipulating the doublets to create a movie title. Indeed, the simple solution to #1 is the final trick. That title is easy to find…suspiciously too easy. Toss in a few other bogus Easter references and the trap is set.

Now, the other titles are really there, but they are a bit more difficult to locate.

Note I never said that there were exactly 11 titles to be found. “The 11 sets of doublets below are actually titles that have been encrypted.” True enough. To find the other “titles”, simply start with the bottom left single letter (the “M” in #11), and begin reading up. Once you reach the Q at #2, move into the second column of letters (starting with the “U”) and read back down. Proceed in this manner going up and down the single letter columns and you will find all of the remaining 28 titles. This is the “Hi-Lo encoding”. The titles are as follows: Monsieur, Squire, Grace, eponym, Governor, Madam, name, Agha, Master, Pasha, Eminence, degree, Baronet, Highness, Mistress, Honor, Rabbi, Herr (I said there was a “hare”), Sir, Maharajah, Duke, Earl, Count, Prince, Duchess, Chief, Dame, ** and right.** Once all the titles are found, the solver has these doublets left over: LF, AP, OO, LS, and RI. They can be arranged to spell April Fools. Congratulations to aseymayo who saw through the tomfoolery.

One final note: The puzzle was dedicated to Mary Bornt and Paul Haines. Who are they? To find out, see Sunday Morning Puzzle #45.

16

Thanks for the solution, Biotop – I think I would have gone on trying to make “QUEEN” out of that QU for weeks and weeks.

[sub][sup]I’m feeling much better now, by the way.[/sup][/sub]

17

aseymayo’s responses have convinced me to post the answers to the Sunday Morning Puzzles-- at least for now. If no one else posts a complete answer during the week, I’ll try to answer each week’s puzzle on the following Sunday.

Peregrine: I’m glad the solution saved you from a futile search for a non-existant Queen. Answer me this though: did you discover the “leftover” doublets by noticing they were the rightmost ones, or did you guess the secret to the puzzle first and then discover the message doublets by actually looking for them? Just curious.

18

I was a little suspicious about the lines being nearly all the same length, but didn’t think to examine the ends particularly. When the news came on with a story of a prank, the OO caught my eye, quickly followed by the rest of the holiday message. This made all the lines exactly the same length (except of course no. 1, which I never trusted to begin with). That’s when I started thinking I might be done.

Even then I might have kept at it a while just on the strength of your statement that the doublets “are actually well known titles”. Your misleading directions have always been dependably consistent, and I had strong misgivings about quitting the chase. Still, a blatent falsehood would at least be in keeping with accepted practice for April 1. And since I had just spent all day analyzing the dang thing, I was pretty sure those doublets weren’t going to spell anything no matter how much I rearranged them. (I even tried weaving them, over and under, like a basket. It didn’t work.) They weren’t likely to be a substitution cipher, either, according to my character count.

So that’s when I went ahead and accused you of not actually encoding any titles. Sorry, Biotop, I’ll never do it again. If you tell me you’ve put titles in there, I’ll believe it, no matter what day it is.