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What television programme does this rebus stand for? Why is the rebus gold* and loud?

 1                    |  1                   
1                     | 11                   
   1                  |    1                 
  1                   |     1                
      1               |111                   
       1              |        1             
    1                 |         1            
     1                |          1           
           1          |            1         
             1        |              1       
1 1 111 11  111       |               1      
        1             |                1     
                 1    |   1 1  1   1         
         1            |  1  111   1     1    
 1 11 11 111 1   1    |                  1   
11111111       1      |1  1  11 11   1111    
         1   1  1     |                   1  
            1         |                    1 
1  11 11  11  1  11   |      1  1    1   1   
 11  1   111 11  1 1  |                     1
 1 1111   11  1  1  1 |  1 11111 1   1   1111
1 1    1  111 1      1|11  1111111111 1      

You might need to use GAP for this.

This may help, alongside the use of GF(2).

*I'm red-green colourblind; this colour looks green to me. Thanks to @Jerry Dean for helping me identify this. Nevertheless, the English description of the colour is irrelevant to the puzzle.

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  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Our man here is churning out quality puzzles at breakneck speed. _/ \_ $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 11:52
  • $\begingroup$ @KabirKanhaArora what is that symbol at the end? A pair of hands? $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 12:00
  • $\begingroup$ Yes. Good job, you solved the mini puzzle :'D $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 12:44
  • $\begingroup$ This reminds me of something... $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 23:41
  • $\begingroup$ Well, I think I've probably identified the programme. Still puzzling about "gold and loud", but I know rather little about the programme in question... $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan
    Commented Jun 26, 2021 at 16:45

1 Answer 1

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First of all, the rebus depicts

the sporadic finite simple group known as the McLaughlin group, or McL for short; if we read blanks as 0 and greenish squares as 1, we have $<A,B>$ -- this is standard mathematical notation for a group generated by two elements -- where A,B are two matrices over the finite field of order 2, and these generate a faithful representation of that group; there are in fact lots of pairs of 22x22 binary matrices for which that would be true, but these are the specific ones found in the Atlas of Finite Simple Groups -- on that page, find the section on representations, and look at the "dimension 22 over GF(2)" entry. (The not-binary Meataxe one is the one that most closely resembles what's in the question, by eye.)

I'd thought this might be indicating

the old TV show called (Rowan and Martin's) Laugh-In; "Laugh-In" sounds very slightly like "McLaughlin", and indeed if we take the full form of the name minus its abbreviation we get (Mc)Laugh(l)in

but as OP points out in comments (duh)

there is in fact a TV show called precisely "The McLaughlin Group" :-).

But why "gold and loud"? Well, the colour

used in the image (which I'm not sure I would personally call "gold", which may be why I didn't realise that the question was "why is the image the colour it is?" rather than "what about this indicates gold", but never mind) is #898128. The McLaughlin group has 898128000 elements, so I guess that's why it's "gold".

And

apparently discussions on that show tended to get very loud.

I regret the fact that

my name isn't quite McLaughlin, but it's kinda close and I'm pretty sure I've had someone get it wrong that way at least once :-).

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  • $\begingroup$ rot13(Vs lbh frnepu "gur [tebhc anzr]" ba Jvxvcrqvn lbh jvyy frr vg vf gur rknpg anzr bs nabgure gryrivfvba cebtenzzr, urapr gur jbeqcynl gnt. Guvf vf yvxr "gur Qviretrag Frevrf".) $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2021 at 1:59
  • $\begingroup$ rot13(Nyfb ybbx ng gur ETO pbqr bs gur pbybhe rzcyblrq.) $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2021 at 3:00
  • $\begingroup$ The McLaughlin Group was known for its shouting (see Wikipedia again), hence the loud part. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2021 at 23:23
  • $\begingroup$ Oh. Fair enough, I guess. :-) $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 13:19

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