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What is the answer hidden in the puzzle below?

                                                                                                        1st               2nd                                                                                                          

    Sunil Ibrahim Drake Doremus                                                        Ti West:       (4 1 3 5 2 6)       (1)
                        
    Sunil Ibrahim Drake Doremus       Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin, Karyn Kusama:  (3 1 2)             (1)

    Sunil Ibrahim Drake Doremus                                                     Rob Cohen:        (1 5)               (6)

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The answer is:

MOVIE FUNCTIONS

First note that each name or set of names is that of...

...a movie director or a directorial team behind a movie whose title would not look out of place in an equation:

Sunil Ibrahim = Y
Drake Doremus = Equals
Ti West = X
Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin, Karyn Kusama = XX
Rob Cohen = XXX

This means that when assembled, our 3 rows form...

...three mathematical equations (or functions):

$y = x$
$y = x^2$
$y = x^3$

Next, we should...

...'plot' these functions over the grid of letters (using the red dot as the origin, with coordinates (0,0), and treating each grid-square as being 1x1 in size) and see which letters the curve would pass through - these are (in order) as follows:

y=x, y=x^2 and y=x^3 plotted over the grid of letters

Now if we consider passing along the lines of these 'graphs' from left to right, numbering each square we come to in turn as 1, 2, 3, etc. we can treat the numbers in the '1st' and '2nd' columns as indices for extracting particular letters from these routes:

On the first pass ('1st') we get MOVIEF, UNC and TI in this way, then on the second pass ('2nd') we extract O, N and S. Put them all together in order and we have our answer: MOVIE FUNCTIONS - appropriate considering that all of these film titles would not look out of place in a mathematical function or equation!

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  • $\begingroup$ Then how do you use the numbers that are given? $\endgroup$
    – Ronchen Luo
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 16:06
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    $\begingroup$ @Stiv Incredibly quick as always! I wonder how Prim3numbah must be feeling after toiling so much to prepare this question :) $\endgroup$
    – chandanr777
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 16:10
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    $\begingroup$ @RonchenLuo See the paragraph before last where I talk about 'indices' - i.e. for '4' take the fourth letter, for '1' take the first letter, etc. $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 16:13
  • $\begingroup$ That's the answer, very quick and nice job! Just a small error with two extra letters "O and N", at the end of 1st. @chandanr777 No problem :) Btw, your puzzle looks interesting. Had some ideas but nothing that worked yet. $\endgroup$
    – Prim3numbah
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 16:32
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    $\begingroup$ @Prim3numbah Oops, eagle eyes there (not mine) - thanks for picking that up! Now fixed :) $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Jul 5, 2023 at 17:02

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