Sunday Morning Puzzle # 68 --- Mirror Doublets

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This puzzle is a series of unrelated movie titles. The titles have been broken into “mirror doublets”, and those doublets have been alphabetized. In a mirror doublet puzzle, the first letter of each title is paired up with the last letter, the second letter is paired up with the second-to-last letter, and so on. If there is a central leftover letter, it remains a single.

+++
Example:
Title: GONE WITH THE WIND
Mirror Doublets: GD ON NI EW WE IH TT H
Alphabetizing: EW GD H IH NI ON TT WE
+++

Problems:

  1. Prior to their being broken into doublets, the movie titles were altered to celebrate the season.
  2. There are 2 extra doublets in each group. These extra doublets are not part of the altered movie titles at all.

Mitigating Circumstance:
The extra doublets pairs are mirror doublets from an appropriate Groucho Marx quotation. These doublet pairs are in correct order from entries 1 through 13 (outermost doublet to innermost), however the two quotation doublets may be out of order within an entry due to the alphabetizing.

Can you discover the altered movie titles and the quote?

  1. DI DN EC ER ET HN IM M NO RA SY UO WA

  2. EI EO EU HB HL HO IA MT NG OM OR RG SA SR TD TO

  3. EW HA HN LE LG II OO SR TE TS WA WW

  4. CK EK ER HS IH KN LU NI OD S SH UT WT YE YH

  5. AU ER GE IC M NG OA OY RI UM

  6. AG AS AT BA DN DW DY HH I RI

  7. AI D II IO LN ND PE RW TA UL

  8. AE DR EE EH FU H ON RV SI SS TE TR

  9. EE EH FO IE KD NA OV PN R SM ST

  10. AN AY DL EA EN GO NE PA RS SR

  11. AD EU HH HN LE N OH PO PS TD TT XT

  12. AE DE EE EU HE LI LR MA NE OR SH SM SY TV UN YO

  13. B BH BQ GR GY IA IB NE NS OU PA RT UB

2

Well, I’m halfway through these. I thought this thread belonged back on the front page for a while.

Back in a few minutes…

3

Jeez, Louise! The first seven took an hour. The last one(#12) took two hours by itself. I just about blew a brain gasket on that one.

Biotop you’ve blossomed from a merely terrific puzzler into the full flower of mind-bending genius. Bravo.

I’ve been down lately but I can now say there is no better therapy than forcing oneself to put ones cerebral nose to a enigmatic grindstone. Wow.

Of course the yard still looks like hell, so I guess I get to take the lawnmower out for a walk, even if it is three hours late.

P.S. Biotop, I saw this posted just before I went to bed last night. I am so happy I didn’t give it a go at that point…

MM

4

MonkeyMensch gets the garland of success this week.

I figured this would be a little harder than the usual doublet puzzle, but I’m glad to know its not too hard for the best minds of the SDMB.

Glad you rose to the occasion once again! Wonder if anyone else can get to the root of the problem?

5

I managed three this morning, then took a break and got one more after lunch. I’ll have another look at it tomorrow.

6

Five! I’ve got five of them now!

7

Come on Peregrine, think! And when that bulb suddenly appears, and you know you’ve hit upon an answer, you’ll be that much closer to the quote.

I sometimes find if I think about a problem all night…in the morning, GLORY BE!..there’s the solution! If that doesn’t work, try Buddist meditation. Don’t you have a little…Zen in ya?

8

All right! Now I’ve got eleven titles and the quote. Two or three more days and I should be done.

9

Amaryllis sorry to lag so far behind, but I’ve finished it at last. Tickled pink, I am. Now I’ll begonia outside to do some weeding!

10

Peregrine, you demi-god, you! (Or is it demi-goddess?)
I was astounded to get one of these puzzles before you. Some of those spy-encoding puzzles I’m still working on. And yet you blithely post the solution to those in a day or so. My hat’s off to you.

I’ll tell you what I did to make this one go so fast for me. I typed all of the doublets in adjacent cells in Excel and then shifted them around like two-celled dominoes. I read forward across the top row and backwards along the bottom row as I tried out various guesses for words. It was either that or start gluing a bunch of Scrabble letter tiles together!:wink:

11

::blush::

MonkeyMensch, as I recall, you have given me a run for my money on more than one occasion. I am glad to have such a worthy opponent. Thanks for the spreadsheet tip; my method was just to write the first letters together in one group and the last letters in another group, and mentally shift them around looking for words.

For the spy messages, mostly what I do is count stuff. Letter frequency, letters per word, words per sentence, things like that. If it can’t be solved by counting, I’m as stuck as the next person.

(To answer your question, I am merely a mortal woman.)

See you at the next puzzle!

Oh, and thanks to Biotop for another fine brain-bender!

12

Hmmm…

My post went through, but the thread never went to the top of the page, nor does my screen name show up under “last post”. Disconcerting. Let’s try this one…

13

Here’s the complete solution. Now, no one can ever say:

BS DM EF GO IE ML NN NW OR OY RR TA UO YE

  1. Dude, Where’s My Carnation?
  2. There’s Something About Marigold
  3. How the Wisteria Was Won
  4. Honeysuckle, I Shrunk the Kids
  5. Geranium McGuire
  6. A Hard Daisy Night
  7. Tulip and Die in LA
  8. Asters of the Universe
  9. Peonies from Heaven
  10. Snapdragon-slayer
  11. The Phlox and the Hound
  12. Alyssum Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
  13. Bringing Up Baby’s Breath

Quote:

In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.