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[Rogi Ocnorb]

You may call it sparse, but there are actually a lot of variables(which don't appear to have any clear-cut incremental values).
I assume you're talking about the "Follow the Orbits" puzzle. But there was a lot of spec flying around and I don't remember much of it or who said what.

[la!uep]

Agree with Rogi, there's so many possibilities, distances, angles, cutting points, measured against a fixed reference, or between each other, many ways to order things, by position, direction, or their little tail tags. And I suppose that noisy background is an ideal candidate to have been impregnated with so many things, be that through contrast/gamma manipulation or perhaps steg.

But anyway, I think we'll need to start sharing ideas, and here's what I got so far (I'm so proud of my skillz)...

[sixsidedsquare]

[catherwood-offline]

ok, my instinct was to read it from left to right -- i think there are no circles at the same horizontal location, so that's a good start. Then I pondered the angles of the diameter lines, possibly being clock times, but maybe more accurately landing on "hours" that map the alphabet around each circle. The hash marks do seem to relate to the three rows, which could be like musical staff lines but initially reminded me of telephone wires where birds might perch. The fact that some hash marks are long versus short is where i'm stumped (for now).

[la!uep]

Alright so here's what I've been trying.

Based on the fact that all circles are aimed at two focus points, I thought I'd start by measuring the distances between each circle and it's corresponding focus point. After I got some rough measurements, I noticed the smallest difference between these distances was about the same as the radius of the circles. Therefore, I decided to use the radius as a unit for these distances, and rounded them to the nearest integer radius. This is what I got:

Top-left focus point (10 circles), clockwise from the top-left corner circle:
6, 10, 28, 12, 8, 28, 31, 12, 21, 11

Bottom-right focus point (6 circles), clockwise from the bottom-right circle:
9, 31, 24, 9, 28, 13

Then I went ahead and measured the angles formed by each of the circles' orientation lines against the horizon line. Here they are, in degrees, and listed in the same order as above:

Top-left focus: 51, 172, 184, 186, 192, 210, 213, 241, 243, 275
Bottom-right focus: 299, 347, 357, 0, 34, 97

And then I went and measured the length of the horizontal lines in the center. These are roughly 36 radii in length.

After contemplating all these values and variables I felt this was all too abstract, and so I tried to think of a physical metaphor for the whole thing, kind of like my balloons in my previous post. So, what came to mind this time was, these are needles being pushed through the tan/yellow surface. Or, like, skewers. Each of them, all 16 circles, would represent one skewer, 36 radii in length just like the horizontal ones shown in full there in the center.

So, I tried to imagine this and the idea that came to me was to think of how far the needles would go behind the tan surface. And of course this is just all the distances listed above subtracted from 36. And then I thought, perhaps there's some sort of shape or form that the end-points of these skewers make, even though most of them extend beyond the available surface in the original image (thinking out of the box hehe). So, I went ahead and scaled the image down and extended the canvas around it, and found those extremes for each skewer, and then simply joined these points into a polygon for each of the two focus points. I also made a little chart of all the "skewers" next to each other and ordered by how much they would stick out of their respective focus points, and included the lengths and the angles. The colors match the type of skewer based on the number of marks in the back of each circle, just like in my balloons image. Here's how it looks like:




(these have been scaled down to a manageable size)

Of course, this is all wrong! But it took me a damn lot of effort and I was not just going to let it go to waste. And, as Six said, it's alright to post wrong things, hopefully it'll trigger the right idea in someone else's brain.

Now someone else do their silly show and tell.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Well, I've tried all kinds of stuff to no avail, as well.
We all talked about the positions of the symbols and I really can't shake the feeling that the key lines represent a scale of some kind. I'd do the verticals as well, but somehow, that looks like it'll be even less likely.

Truth be told, if it really had anything to do with exact positions, Six wouldn't have saved it in .jpg format with so much compression.

[GreenWindmill]

Ok, random foolish idea - could this be a map of some sort? Can't make it work myself but who knows if this might spark something in someone else's head?! The two focus points reminded me of poles and at a push I could interpret the horizon lines as equator and cancer/capricorn.

Doesn't feel right but the focal points are making me think magnets for some reason.

[/foolishness]

[sixsidedsquare]

Awesome stuff that's been tried, I love seeing how people try attacking things Deserves a hint I think.

Look back at Rogi's first reply and check the name of the puzzle that I said inspired this one. Hopefully then things will fall into place.

--[ninja edit]--
Huh, slow weekend? Or has everyone gone blind from the in depth analysis of the puzzle? Sorry about making you all spin your wheels like this, how about another hint that should hopefully bring you all around: Unless you're handy with some image editing tools, the first step might actually be easier to do with some normal drawing equipment, one device in particular.

[la!uep]

Well from the original hint, I did try to look for some inspiration in things like this, this, and this, but ended up wasting hours and hours just staring at these things spinning around.

As for the new hint, I can't say I'm any good at image editing (the comment about my "skillz" in a previous post was intended as irony). Unfortunately, I'm even worse at drafting by hand, especially using that tool that I think you're referring to (I'm afraid I might end up hurting myself or turning the paper into a nice sieve or even ruining the desk).

So, I just decided to stick to the digital medium and use whatever I could find and go nuts. Well, after quite a few hours of throwing things at it and a few resets after ending up with a mess of lines and circles and tangents and more cutting lines and more circles, I finally decided to try to clean up my best effort at finding some sort of relationships pattern or method... or something.

I think it may say "pix" or "pick" or perhaps it's "Dick" or even "pisd." I know this one has completely made me lose all rational sense of order or logic process, so yea, I've finally lost it. But at least I think it's even prettier than the balloons, and much more soothing than those spiky kites and skewers I did last.

[sixsidedsquare]

Sorry to have made you go insane yet again daniel, I seem to have a knack for that. Those java applet 3 body motion things are hypnotic, I was starting to think about how you could use something like that in as puzzle as I was finishing this one up, but it was totally just bending my mind.

That last pic you made is the right idea though, just a matter of snapping things into place, using the other information on the picture. You'll know you're doing the right thing if you start to see some regularity appearing.

[la!uep]

Ahh Six, that was amazing!

Others should really try to experience this puzzle. Solving it was a lot of work for me but only because I was having so much fun being all artistic and stuff. But really, if you quit in the middle of the exploration phase, just give it another shot. It's worth it.

Six's hints are just what you need. The only thing I would like to say is, don't use the little marks on the circles as a measuring point. The mark could be on the center of the circle or on the circumference, it's just a tag. Do your work with the whole circle (or its center).

On to the spoilering:

[catherwood]

[la!uep]

[catherwood-offline]

[la!uep]