THIS IS HOW I WASTE TIME · 5:37pm Nov 18th, 2015
1. The fewest episode titles I can pick out which, together, utilize all twenty-six letters of the alphabet, is five. If one ignores "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" for making things too easy, I have found just three such quintets. What are they?
ETA: There are actually more than three sets. I missed a title.
Bonus 1A: How many such sets use the ignored title?
Bonus 1B: If the number 6000 is spelled out, I can get it down to four titles. How many such sets are there now?
2. Among showings of MLP:FiM, I count two hands of story indicators lacking our most common non-consonant (its ubiquity surpassing our most common consonant, T), plus that of a singular story in two parts. Can you supply a full boxcars count?
Bonus 2: This inquiry and that prior to it follow similar but opposing construction. What is this contrasting commonality?
3. I was delighted when the Crusaders got their cutie marks this season. (Season 5, episode 18, "Crusaders of the Lost Mark," overall episode 109, to be pedantic.) That said, I noticed that the episode title has no "i" in it, so it does not contain all the letters of CUTIE MARK.
Two titles prior to this episode do actually contain those nine letters. One is more obvious than the other for using those nine letters in those two words in that order; the other is trickier. What are they?
Bonus 3: OR IS IT? Dun dun DUN! (Real question: what did I mean by that? It refers to the other episode, but not to the obvious colored letters.)
Ooh, brainteasers! At a first quick pass, because at work:
The list of MLP episodes will, obviously, help out a great deal for folks who want to play along at home.
For #2, Twilight's Kingdom is the two-parter in question, and I can't be bothered to copy and paste all of the episodes with no E in the title, but that's what the question is asking.
Bonus 2: Question 2 itself avoids use of E. I think the second half of the question refers to Question 1 using all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I'm not sure.
Incidentally, your colored letters don't seem to anagram to anything sensible (unless TIE AMUCK means something to someone).
3551022 First spoiler is a correct partial. Second is my intended meaning. Third is correct.
And the other letter is colored now, and was already. I was attempting to make a red-to-violet rainbow.
Because this isn't my first rodeo with brainteasers, I'm going to pedantically point out that you didn't say "episode titles" here, and while you say one title used the letters in order, you did not specifically state that the other did not use the letters in order, and thus an acceptable answer to your question would be "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" (an episode title) and "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me" (a song title).
3559977 Ha. Well, you got the episode title right. I was actually looking for two episode titles, and it didn't occur to me (not this time, at least) to rearrange the words to avoid tricky interpretations. So once again, I'm looking for two episode titles, each of which contains all nine letters in CUTIE MARK at least once each.
3560313
No worries. It's just that there are logic puzzles and then there are preconceived notion snares (such as the infamous Fifty-Three Bicycles) and I wasn't sure which one this was.
3560378
I Googled that. Answer was included in the results.
Four men are in a room, and they count out 53 bicycles with them. So one of them gets shot. Why?
3561173
Heard it before. The "Bicycles" are playing cards and someone was cheating at a poker game by adding an extra card to the deck. Once upon a time it was a great brainteaser, but it requires the outside knowledge that "Bicycle" is a manufacturer of playing cards, which is pretty obscure these days.
3559977 3560313
The other is "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", although according to the episode list, you'll have a third legitimate answer in five days.
And here's a question in return to give you a further opportunity for title-based puzzling:
Question #1 asked you to minimize the number of titles used in order to uses all 26 letters of the alphabet (this is called a "pangram", btw). What is the shortest pangram by letter count that you can make by stringing complete S1-S5 MLP episode titles together?
(I don't think it makes a difference, but count only letters, not spaces or punctuation.)
3563831 No more than fourscore, I think? The only J is "Just for Sidekicks" with 16 letters. SSCS6K has 26, including "the." I originally thought "Somepony to Watch Over Me" was the only episode from those containing one of JQVXZ that also had W, but "Hearth's Warming Eve" (17) is another and shorter, even with a G. That just leaves BLX, and since no title with X contains B or L, "The Cutie Pox" (11) and "Bloom & Gloom" (10) bring the total to 80.
3565037 (cc: 3560378)
I believe the optimal solution is _74_.
A good start, but I've got several beating yours.
Hint: My optimal solution contains six episode titles. (The first sub-_80_ solution I found had seven titles, so aiming for that might be a good first step.)
3563831 ...Did I accidentally delete your comment? (ETA: Apparently not. Weird.)
You said your best was 74 in six titles. Before I saw that, I was going to say I'd gotten to 78 in six. Those are J4S (16), HWE (17), and "The Cutie Pox" (11) as before, plus "Canterlot Boutique" (17), "Lesson Zero" (10), and "Trade Ya!" (7) to include Y.
3565312
No deleting I'm aware of, though I did ninja-edit the wording of my comment after posting it.
Your solution and mine share ___________________ exactly four out of the six titles you listed ______ ____ ____ _____ _____ in common.
3565182
The record to beat is now seventy-three letters, in six titles again. Besides the absolutely necessary "Just for Sidekicks" (16), the titles are: Bats! (4), The Cutie Pox (11), Dragon Quest (11), Lesson Zero (10), Somepony to Watch Over Me (21)
Didn't find yours.
3565182
Whoop, now it's sixty-nine, dudes! J4S (16), The Cutie Pox (11), Dragon Quest (11), Lesson Zero (10), Over a Barrel (11), Simple Ways (10)
Ai! My 74 solution was: Just for Sidekicks (16), Hearth's Warming Eve (17), Dragon Quest (11), Lesson Zero (10), Baby Cakes (9), The Cutie Pox (11). I thought HWE was about as solid as it got at its collection of mid-rare letters (HMWVG) but the last episode you listed was a nice find.
Well done. In exchange for you finding the true solution I think I can at least mathematically prove that it's optimal.
Somewhat formally: J4S is clearly necessary as the only J (16). The minimum cost of adding the triplet QZX is 32 (Dragon Quest, Lesson Zero, The Cutie Pox)), giving you 48 with BMVWY left over. At that point take note of two facts: 1) there are no titles containing J, Q, X, or Z which also contain V, so an additional title is mandatory to include it. 2) There is no single title which contains all five of those leftover letters, so if you keep QZX locked at the ones listed above (see the last section if you don't), you need to add at least TWO more titles. Now consider where you're going to get your V.
3) the minimum solo V is Over a Barrel at 11 (giving us B for free), making Simple Ways clearly optimal for MVW at 10, making 21 the number to beat. 4) There are only 11 other episode titles with V, and of those, only two (Hearth's Warming Eve and Somepony To Watch Over Me) contain more than one other letter of BMWY, and all 11 of them blow way past 21 letters when combined with another title to fill the gaps.
So J4S, Dragon Quest, Lesson Zero, The Cutie Pox, Over a Barrel is optimal for JQZXV at 48+11=59. (Actually, for JQZXVB, but let's stay focused.) The only remaining question is whether our titles providing QXV can be varied to also cover the remainder of MWY, WITHOUT creating new dependencies, with a net gain of less than 10 letters. Now proof by exhaustion! The only other Z titles are a net gain of more than +10. Changing X to "MMMMystery…" is a net gain of more than +10, and the only other X title is "The Secret of my Excess" for +5 covering MY but losing H. Changing Q to "Equestria Games" is +3 and covers M. Changing Q to "Canterlot Boutique" is +6, covers none of our remainder, and loses G. Changing Q to SSCS6k is a net gain of more than +10. That's the full set of choices for titles with those letters. Therefore we would need HW in four letters or WY in six letters to beat your solution, and that's trivially not possible. The only title with VWY is Somepony To Watch Over Me (losing B) at +10 and there's no WY standalone title in six letters. The shortest title with VHW is Hearth's Warming Eve at +5 (losing B) and there's no HW standalone title in five letters.