20

Bonus points for explaining the question title.

Clue #1

Reading direction is top-to-bottom and outside-to-inside!

Clue #2

It's a high-quality, all-organic t-shirt!

Clue #3

For the interpretation of the innermost parts, it may be beneficial to know a little about recent german tech-industry news.

Clue #4

If you left out any major visual element of the picture, you may have to re-think your answer. ;-)

Clue #5

Forget about the pattern-and-cheese part of the riddle for a moment - it only holds 20-25% of the solution and is independent from the rest. And it's admittedly the most difficult part.

Clue #6

We are not looking for the owner of this t-shirt - but if we were, it wouldn't be Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or Edvard Hagerup Grieg.

Clue #7

What's the most used collar style of a simple t-shirt? And what's this?

Clue #8

Tack u+266b!

Rubio
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NightLightFighter
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  • Wow this sure has a lot of hints.... – Prince North Læraðr Mar 08 '18 at 00:49
  • @North yeah, this collection grew over time. Most were added to address some issues and dead ends encountered here or with my real life test subjects. Only two or three of these hints contain new information. The others just point you towards a certain direction to think. – NightLightFighter Mar 08 '18 at 11:48

3 Answers3

10

The optical illusion

The optical illusion is called Mire de Siemens in French, so Siemens. The clue about the retired techs is this image was also used to test optical resolutions.

The CEO announcing recent job losses of the firm (clue #3)

Joe Kaeser (Kaeser= German for cheese)

The T shirt

Has an eye

Answer and musical link ( u+266b! code for a musical note):

Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe (Joe Kaeser, Red neck collar, Eye, Cotton from second clue. Clue#6 , agreed this stuff ain't Mozart, etc.)

Yellow-cross-blue

Rednex is a Swedish band. The Swedish flag is a yellow cross on a blue background.

Sentinel
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    You can get "the first word in your answer after the hyphen"(manual spoiler protection) from second clue, I think, possibly :). I like this answer – Adam Mar 06 '18 at 12:33
  • @Adam Yep! Added your note to answer. – Sentinel Mar 06 '18 at 12:36
  • By Jove, I think he's got it. On the downside, I'm gonna have this stuck in my head for the rest of the day now... – F1Krazy Mar 06 '18 at 14:38
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    @F1Krazy I know, it's awful! – Sentinel Mar 06 '18 at 16:11
  • Nice, this answer makes a lot of sense. A couple things I wasn't sure how they fit in were, why the collar is a v-neck, and why the shirt is gray. They seemed to be deliberate choices versus, say, a crewneck and a white t. – dooog Mar 06 '18 at 19:51
  • @dooog yeah I think the neck itself is supposed to be in that drawing, I guess – Sentinel Mar 06 '18 at 20:12
  • @Sentinel You did it! About the neck if the shirt: Oftentimes, you have a round neck or a v-neck. This is a combination of both necks, and they have their respective color... There you go. :-) – NightLightFighter Mar 06 '18 at 22:03
  • @Adam Really good thinking! The gray color was just my idea of least distraction. And plain white Ts don't look all that great on white background ;-) – NightLightFighter Mar 06 '18 at 22:05
  • @NightLightFighter I also enjoyed the fact that the big cheese at Siemens is a man named after his role. – Sentinel Mar 07 '18 at 05:06
  • If you have a V neck, the back part is round and can be seen as shown in your image, where the inside of the t-shirt would be white, so I don't see how your t-shirt really has more than one neck. (And Kaeser means cheesemaker, not cheese, but that's probably not very important.) – M Oehm Mar 07 '18 at 07:52
  • @MOehm You're right - you could see the round part as the back of the neck, but note that it also extends slightly sideways above the V, which needs some hand-waving for this interpretation to work. In fact, I just drew one on top of the other, and hoped for someone to get the idea... As for the name: My inspiration came from reading some tech industry news, and I smiled about the same fact as Sentinel did :-) – NightLightFighter Mar 07 '18 at 16:55
3

is it

H&M ?

because

cheese in german = käse, let's add the i (eye) we got kaise, close to "kaiser" = emperor, as Rupert said, yellow cross on blue = Sweden, H&M is quite the "emperor" of shirts from Sweden...a bit far-fetched, I know

Edit: some stuff I found after OP's comment, not sure if i'm going in the right direction

Ok so, th black and white logo is called a "sunburst" if I look for "käse sunburst" on google, I find a german guitar brand called "haar" (=hair). Sooo maybe the solution is more or less connected to hair

Last edit and final answer

Eye, käse, sunburst. "I cause sunburst" . According to google, a small aperture causes sunburst on photos. APERTURE is a clothing brand, specialised in snowboarding, a well known sport in Sweden ;)

Flying_whale
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  • Well, this answer qualifies to be the first clue. While I like your approach on the center part of the picture, I wouldn't recomment adding vowels. Rather have a good google (or bing/yahoo/..) to where the underlying pattern comes from. – NightLightFighter Feb 19 '18 at 22:39
  • @NightLightFighter I found some stuff, edited my post, am I still going in the right direction? :) – Flying_whale Feb 19 '18 at 23:21
  • You're doing a great job in accumulating clues! You found some stuff, but not exactly what we aimed for - retired tech guys to the rescue! – NightLightFighter Feb 19 '18 at 23:53
  • @NightLightFighter just edited my answer :) – Flying_whale Feb 20 '18 at 01:24
  • The solution of a rebus is a literal interpretation of what's described. For example a K in the counter of a D could mean "K in D" or kind. What you do is to throw any amount of lateral thinking at the rebus. I don't know the solution, but I'm quite sure finding it doesn't involve googling "kaese sunburst". – M Oehm Feb 20 '18 at 06:58
  • @M Oehm that's not what my last edit says ;) – Flying_whale Feb 20 '18 at 07:10
  • @M Oehm: Some lateral thinking is (and should be) involved - you're right about that. And you're also right about not to google "sunburst" as there is another name for this kind of shape. (Any retired tech guys here?) And I really like the fact that you correctly replaced the german "umlaut ä" with an "ae". – NightLightFighter Feb 20 '18 at 22:15
  • @NightLightFighter noooooo my last answer fitted so well :'( – Flying_whale Feb 20 '18 at 22:58
  • @Flying_whale your answer was terrific, your thinking cut some corners, I never expected (and therefore ended up quite some distance from the intended solution). But you left out the upper third of the picture - take this as a clue ;-) ...And I did add some clues tho the question. – NightLightFighter Feb 21 '18 at 12:37
  • @NightLightFighter is clue n°3 about dieselgate? – Flying_whale Feb 21 '18 at 12:41
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    @Flying_whale Dieselgate is "soo 2015". No, it's very recent, involves a lot of jobs, but was probarbly not widely reported outside the german speaking regions. But this does not matter. Knowledge about these news may just help to fit the cheese to the pattern. I added clue #5 expecially for you ;-) – NightLightFighter Feb 22 '18 at 10:44
2

Is it

Ikea

Because

Their logo is the Swedish flag: a yellow cross on a blue background (Yellow-X-Blue) and the primary element of the rebus is an eye = I

Still struggling with:

why German cheese (the thing in the pupil of the eye looks like a wedge of cheese in the colours of the German flag) = KEA.

Rupert Morrish
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