Sunday Morning Puzzle #72-- More Movie Parts

Below is a list of movie titles with something in common. The movie titles were broken into five pieces, and then the following occurred:

One piece was left as is. Two other pieces exchanged first letters. One of the remaining two pieces had its letters shuffled. The final piece had its letters encoded using a simple non-random letter substitution code (ATNWGQKR). The five pieces were then alphabetized.

Can you discover the movie titles and find the common factor?


  1. AMO FLA SYT THES URS
  2. BGFOG LDO NEGE NEKTTA THE
  3. EEBR EXPL FGL ISTHI RASEWE
  4. GLT OAS THEY WLROLE XFTE
  5. ARD EIQ FEBO HT ROMANI
  6. ANCH CCHON DGAT DHEE GSUPINS
  7. DA MD ON RA UT
  8. FF LI IO OPO SL
  9. EIO MASY NE RDNO THE
  10. AC AR AR BT F
  11. AM NA STHI THEE TN
  12. GER LLL PLA PLI THE
  13. FITSAT INTH MESATR OGH ORUTD
  14. EET ERET OR TINY YKGDI

Yippee! Movies!

MonkeyMensch:

I knew you’d be pleased. Ask, and you shall receive. However, I think you’ll find this a rather difficult nut to crack.

Special kudos to the first solver…

Here are three more movie titles. This has got to help…

  1. DURESO FIGGR FROBI HEAT TVEN
  2. BIN HQKA OFEO TAR THE
  3. ESTOWA ION LIOFU RSMM TTHGO

Yeah, now I’m going places. Ten down, seven to go.

Peregrine:

Which ones do you still have left to solve? I thought perhaps that once you discovered the coding of the fifth part, this would quickly get easy…


Here’s an example for anyone just starting on this puzzle:

Say the movie was: Gone with the Wind.

Break into five parts: GO NEWI THTH EW IND

One part stays the same: THTH

Two parts exchange first letters: IW END

One part shuffled: OG

Finally one part encoded: VMEQ

(The code in the example, but not in the actual puzzle, is CXMQOPB— which decodes to “Up Eight”. Hence, each letter has moved up eight in the alphabet, with any letter going past Z circling back to A and up. Theoretically, if you can discover just a few movie titles, you should be able to determine the non-random coding for the entire puzzle.)

Alphabetizing: END IW OG THTH VMEQ

It’s tricky, but not impossible!

Peregrine’s progress:

No. 6 was the first to fall, and then no. 2. That’s as far as I got Sunday. No. 17 provided five more letters of the cipher and helped me knock out about three more titles. Then I finally figured out what ATNWGQKR meant. After that, the next five titles were relatively easy. It’s still quite a challenge to sort out the chunks, though, even with the whole cipher.

As of this moment, I’m still working on 1, 3, 7, 10, 11, and 16.

[I’ve already hit “Submit Reply” once, but that was maybe thirty minutes ago, and it still hasn’t gone through. I’m going to be really crazy and hit it again.]

I not sure exactly why, but somehow I suspected #7 would be the hardest to solve, even though it is a movie I am sure most everyone knows.

I got number 7 just now! Only 10 and 11 remain.

You know, Peregrine, if you hadn’t got #7 it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.

Still, congratulations are in order.

Must resist the temptation to give hints on the remaining movies…must resist…must resist…MUST RESIST…

Please don’t, I’ve only got 2 & 7 :frowning:

Hints:

For #10–> What a few Congressmen recently talked about wanting to bring…
For #11–> George W. Bush, perhaps?

I now have seventeen titles. As for the common factor, I’m not so sure. Most of them seem to have to do with going somewhere, but I can’t force 1 or 11 into that theme no matter how I stretch.

Wait a minute…

I knew it! I knew there had to a more consistent common factor. I just had to knuckle down long enough to find it. Yes, once I put my shoulder to the wheel, all the parts came together.

All done.

Peregrine:

Bravo! You finally found all the movie parts and sewed this Frankenstein of a puzzle together. I figured that once you located the encoding key (or should that be " keys"), it would only be a matter of time.

I’ll give any others who are still working on this monster a chance until tomorrow morning, and then post the solution.

Congrats again! I just knew you wouldn’t go down to…defeet.

Solution:

  1. The Sum of All Fears
  2. The Legend of Boggy Creek
  3. No Sex Please, We’re British
  4. The Yellow Rose of Texas
  5. Chairman of the Board
  6. Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke
  7. Armageddon
  8. Ship of Fools
  9. The China Syndrome
  10. Backdraft
  11. The Elephant Man
  12. The Glass Slipper
  13. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
  14. From Here to Eternity
  15. The Adventures of Robin Hood
  16. Barefoot in the Park
  17. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington