TV Puzzle from the MIT Mystery Hunt

[MarkHB]

They're all Doctor Who references.  I looked at the answer after I got that far, so I'll withdraw from this one beyond that.

[SnideAsides]

Do the weird line breaks have anything to do with it? It seems weird that sometimes a line is two short word and other times it's an entire sentence.

[MuuMuuChainsmoker]

Do the weird line breaks have anything to do with it? It seems weird that sometimes a line is two short word and other times it's an entire sentence.

It's got to, right? 

 

In the spirit of Lisin and her lovely love of order, a chart:

 

Historical Person                  Historical Period          Doctor                    Companion            Episode

Lucius Caecilius                   79 AD                          10th (Tennant)       Donna Noble                 190: The Fires of Pompeii

Nero                                     64 AD                          1st (Hartnell)          Susan Foreman            12: The Romans

                                                                                                                       Ian Chesterton

                                                                                                                       Barbara Wright  

Marco Polo                          1289                            1st (Hartnell)            Susan Foreman            4: Marco Polo

                                                                                                                       Ian Chesterton

                                                                                                                       Barbara Wright  

William Shakespeare          1599                             10th (Tennant)         Martha Jones               180: The Shakespeare Code

Cyrano de Bergerac            [1655]                           2nd (Troughton)      Jaime McCrimmon       45: The Mind Robber

                                                                                                                          Zoe Heriot 

Charles II                            [1660]                           11th (Smith)             Amy Pond                     214: The Impossible Astronaut

                                                                                                                          Rory Williams

                                                                                                                          River Song 

Henry Avery                        1699                             11th (Smith)             Amy Pond                   215: The Curse of the Black Spot

                                                                                                                          Rory Williams 

Madame de Pompadour     1753-1794                    10th (Tennant)        Rose Tyler                    171: The Girl in the Fireplace

                                                                                                                           Mickey Smith 

Napoleon Bonaparte           1794                              1st (Hartnell)           Susan Foreman           8: The Reign of Terror

                                                                                                                           Ian Chesterton

                                                                                                                           Barbara Wright  

George Stephenson            1822                              6th (Baker)             Peri Brown                    139: The Mark of the Rani

Charles Dickens                   1869                            9th (Eccelston)        Rose Tyler                    159: The Unquiet Dead

Queen Victoria                     1879                            10th (Tennant)        Rose Tyler                    169: Tooth and Claw

Louis Pasteur                       [1850?]                        7th (McCoy)            Melanie Bush                144: Time and the Rani

Wyatt Earp                           1881                            1st (Hartnell)           Steven Taylor                 25: The Gunfighters

                                                                                                                             Dodo Chaplet 

Vincent Van Gogh                1890                            11th (Smith)            Amy Pond                       210: Vincent and the Doctor

HG Wells                              1885                            6th (Baker)              Peri Brown                      141: Timelash

Agatha Christie                    1926                            10th (Tennant)         Donna Noble                  407: The Unicorn and the Wasp

Richard Nixon                      1969                            11th (Smith)            River Song                       214: Day of the Moon

Barack Obama                     2009                            10th (Tennant)        Wifred Mott                      202: The End of Time

[SnideAsides]

If those are accurate, then the line spacing is just the lengths of the words in the title - a single eight-word line for Timelash, 3/7/3/3/4 for The Unicorn and the Wasp, and so on.

[MuuMuuChainsmoker]

If those are accurate, then the line spacing is just the lengths of the words in the title - a single eight-word line for Timelash, 3/7/3/3/4 for The Unicorn and the Wasp, and so on.

 

I've fixed Nixon to fit the pattern.  (He was in a two parter.)

 

Maybe you need to do something with the relevant Doctor's number?

 

If you pair the relevant doctor's number with the words in the description you get:

Living, The, People, With, Me, When, Had, Mechanic, Two, Almost, Her, On, When, That, Ridiculous, American, Knew, A, Who

[SVNBob]

I had the thought we needed to do something quite un-Doctor-y; go in actual chronological order.  Doing that changes the word list to:

 

The
Living
People
With
Me
When
Had
Mechanic
Two
Almost
When
Her
On
That
American
Ridiculous
Knew
A
Who

 

Starts off promising, but fails quickly.

[SVNBob]

For the record, sorting chronologically according to the Doctor (ie, by episode number) does no better.

[Fukui San]

This is the point where my team got stuck as well.

 

I can offer a hint, but only if people want me to.

[MuuMuuChainsmoker]

I gave up and looked at the answer, since I am apparently unable to delay gratification.   I won't spoil it, but I will say that my theory on matching Doctor number to word was not the right one. 

[SVNBob]

Looking at the word list, that makes sense.  Indexing the Doctor number into the name of the person might be the way to go.

[Fukui San]

Hi all.  If any puzzle geeks want to sign up for a casual MIT Mystery Hunt team, send me a PM and I'll forward you contact information.  It's on the weekend of January 13-15 this year.  You can solve remotely if you're not in the Boston area.

[SVNBob]

Anyone up for trying another one of these?

Here's one from the 2019 Hunt that fits into our wheelhouse.

http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/2019/puzzle/battle_of_the_network_stars.html

[The Crazed Spruce]

Not even sure where to start with this one. Do we go by actors, or characters? Or both?

[SVNBob]

Given the title, I think we need to go by character, then show, then network. 

Based on a quick once-over, there's regions of stars from shows on the same network: Fox near the upper left corner; BBC along the right edge near the bottom, etc.

[Fukui San]

So I'm completely unspoiled as to this puzzle's solution, so I'll join in.

Typically, the first step is identifying who's who and the extra info that SVNBob suggested. I set up a google spreadsheet that we can use. Every image is saved with its number as the title, so go by that to fill this out.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1liFVcCTZw3ZKe0pLhjg_nTkTtqnnIV24PkrAP-Q9cR4/edit?usp=sharing

[Fukui San]

Trying the link again. As far as I know, anyone with the link SHOULD be able to edit it. Let me know if that's not the case.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1liFVcCTZw3ZKe0pLhjg_nTkTtqnnIV24PkrAP-Q9cR4/edit?usp=sharing

[SVNBob]

I've already added a little more.

The hard part is going to be identifying most, if not all, of these stars.  The tedious part is going to be transforming the columns back into grids.