39

My grandmother loves matchstick puzzles. Every time I visit, she shows me a brand new set for me to solve. I visited her recently for her birthday, and I was excited to receive a puzzle in exchange for my gifts. I opened the envelope and three sheets of paper fell out.

1

Puzzle

2

Puzzle

3

LSSIEHHNOHOFLSHNNNOFNHIIELET

I did not understand, so I asked my grandmother for clarification.

"Grandma? What does this mean?"

"I learned how to use the computer! See, even the matchsticks look digital!"

"Come on, that's called pixel art. So what's the puzzle?"

"What's my favourite show?"

"Huh?"

"Look at where the tips of the matchsticks land!"

"Grandma, do you need a doctor?"

"No, why?"

I left her alone after that, but these pixel matchsticks look intimidating...

Hint 1:

Notice how is not a tag.

Hint 2:

Only what is in the blockquotes is important.

Hint 3:

The colour and direction of the matchsticks do not matter.

Zimonze
  • 2,561
  • 8
  • 32
  • 2
    two of the blue colors are really close to each other, is there any way to make them more distingushable? I have a hard time see which is which xD – Liora Haydont Jul 17 '18 at 17:32
  • @LioraHaydont They look pretty different to me, maybe adjust your monitor settings? – Zimonze Jul 19 '18 at 16:53
  • I mean like blue and indigo, I tried on 3 different screens. The issue is not when they are next to each others, but in the 2nd "paper" they are far from each other sometimes so I never know which of the 2 is here – Liora Haydont Jul 19 '18 at 17:25
  • @LioraHaydont I can see that now. Sorry about that, jafe's answer has all the coordinates, so you can use that as a reference. – Zimonze Jul 19 '18 at 17:37
  • 3
    @Zimonze I don't think the yellow-orange match should be there. It should end in rot13:-rf not in -rgf – PL457 Jul 20 '18 at 09:21
  • Yes, that match should not be there, something got messed up in the process. The answer ends in rot13(rf). – Zimonze Jul 29 '18 at 19:49

1 Answers1

22

Line up clues 2 and 3, and we have 28 colour pairs corresponding to 28 letters.

  • (orange, magenta) = L
  • (red, indigo) = S
  • (cyan, magenta) = S
  • (dark green, indigo) = I
  • (indigo, indigo) = E
  • (magenta, blue) = H
  • (orange, indigo) = H
  • (blue, magenta) = N
  • (blue, indigo) = O
  • (indigo, light green) = H
  • (orange, red) = O
  • (yellow, light green) = F
  • (light green, orange) = L
  • (light green, yellow) = S
  • (red, red) = H
  • (magenta, red) = N
  • (orange, dark green) = N
  • (dark green, orange) = N
  • (dark green, blue) = O
  • (magenta, dark green) = F
  • (cyan, blue) = N
  • (dark green, cyan) = H
  • (yellow, blue) = I
  • (cyan, dark green) = I
  • (yellow, cyan) = E
  • (blue, blue) = L
  • (red, blue) = E
  • (yellow, orange) = T

Since the first image has colours in its X and Y axis, we can use the colour pairs as coordinates and insert the letters into the image in their correct place.

enter image description here
@PL457 figured out that this is a sudoku puzzle. Solving for all letters: enter image description here

So the final answer:

Picking all the letters which are in the same square as a matchstick tip produces THE FLINTSTONETS (extra T there?)

Jafe
  • 78,615
  • 8
  • 162
  • 614
  • Have you tried its inverse, like (magenta, orange) instead of (orange, magenta)? – athin Jul 19 '18 at 08:14
  • Yeah, with the inverse I get just the letters NT... – Jafe Jul 19 '18 at 09:11
  • The coordinates are in (x,y) format. You have the basic idea, but the matchstick tips come in later. – Zimonze Jul 19 '18 at 16:50
  • 4
    @jafe (red, blue) is E. And I suspect there is another typo in the dark blue row. My guess with 9 unique letters (E, F, H, I, L, N, O, S, T) in a 9x9 grid, is that is might be a sudoku puzzle. (which is why I suspect that there is an error with the double I's in the dark blue row.) Edit: Yellow-Darkblue is Yellow-Blue. That I should be 1 row lower – PL457 Jul 20 '18 at 08:31
  • 1
    Added an explanation for the final step. – Jafe Jul 21 '18 at 17:16
  • 1
    The bounty notice will disappear once I award the bounty, so I'll copy it here: "Awarding jafe a bounty not for this answer (though it's good) but for his stupendous https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/q/105330/93 (because it's impossible to bounty a question)." – msh210 Dec 05 '20 at 17:59
  • @msh210 lol, I was wondering why I randomly got 5 upvotes on this question 2 years later. Why this answer specifically? – Zimonze Dec 06 '20 at 00:07