Read every third plus two: Eric found out that reading every third letter from the lower grid yields:
AR_#_T_RT#W_TH_PRIMES_SQU__ES#AND#TRIANGLES#PLU_#ONE#FOR#AN#ICON
The hash marks#
are spaces and the underscores_
are unknown characters, so this could mean: Start with primes, squares, and triangles plus one for an icon. (Anaylsts have confirmed that the first word isn't important. The first two letters are skipped, which is indicated by plus two,)
The following snippets of instructions haven't been used yet:
FILLPLUS TWO FILL EMPTY EIGHT USING DOWN
For an icon.
Paints yellow.
Each line's blank.
Fill blank.
A is one, E is five.
Each as run length.
They could be rearranged into: For an icon, paints yellow each line's blank. Fill blank using two plus eight down, each as run length. A is one, E is five. Fill empty.
This seems to indicate that we should draw an icon by converting the letters in the eighth column to numbers via A1 ... Z16 and using these numbers as run lengths, i.e. adjoining units which should be painted yellow.
Now the letters in the second and eighth columncolumns where not both are nearlyblanks gives this symmetric layout:
HKMMUKHLHKMMKHEH DK CM CM BK BH BK BM CM CK DH
Converting these to numbers and treating them as run lengths of leading spaces and of pixels to paint yellow gives:
start → 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4
length → 8, 11, 13, 13, 21, 11, 8, 12, 8, 11, 13, 13, 11, 8
With a bit of tweaking, which I'll explain (or rather don't explain) belowthis information, we can print bars of yellow with the given length and starting in the given columns.
########
###########
#############
#############
###########
########
#####
########
###########
#############
#############
###########
########
Closing remarks
CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!
I've removed the overlong bar of length 21 and I've converted the "tongue" of length 12 between the two 8's to a length of 5 for no other reason that they don't seem to fit. I've also chosen The position of the pixel bars more or less arbitrarily, so that they give a nice Pac-Man pattern. I The staring positions are encoded, too, I've missed it.
I'm pretty sure this is the correct answer, though, because Pac-Man was first released (or should I say unleashed?) in 1980. And it is yellow. And user pacoverflow has known the answer all along: He commented his guess while the puzzle was in early stages of decoding.
Pac-Man was first released (or should I say unleashed?) in 1980. And it is yellow. And user pacoverflow has known the answer all along: He commented his guess while the puzzle was in early stages of decoding.