Ready Layer One by Thomas Snyder
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Artist’s note added 12/23 at 6:28PM: This image, an information network presented in artistic and mathematical form has an alternate title called “Portrait of the Artist’s Brain at Middle Age”. The network includes puzzles and possible seeds for puzzles as well as tests of new network structures to test memory, cognition, and a lot more.
This trailhead and all following work were constructed with the constraints of 1 day for the main puzzle (above) and the rest of the week to finish other content whether traditional puzzles, new types of puzzles, meta-puzzles, and so on. More details are not being shared as over 80% of that content, and at least very clear but still “unfinished” works appropriate for posting at least visually, exist within the full opus and a publication plan will be made in early 2025. Besides the puzzle and art constraints, the author followed a testing/accountability plan for connection with close contacts and medical care team that Thomas established through 2024 to be able to get back to doing great science again. “Party Report” is an example of a playful message that should work best for children and those with open eyes who dream of playing “The Game” with super complexity and the artist wanted a story of how his brain did pull in many notable social, societal, political and other themes into what was otherwise an unconstrained topical work. Importantly, it also includes a soundtrack listing for his team to see to ensure mental wellness. On the other hand, a lot of things may seem like noise. No puzzle, for instance, was forced to have the answer COVFEFE. But maybe the uninterpretability made it a curious answer to try to use a lot showing the relevance of journeys to answers, and the skills and intelligence gained along the way.
The author wanted the downturn phase (when one transitions from learning/doing a problem to having solved it and teaching) to include an unconstrained (certainly unpredictable) experience while returning to his more normal medium of fragile humanity. “Penny for your Thoughts” is a separate opus, but should not be presented except as a margin note of the “Ready Layer One”. Many other puzzles including the Motivational Posters, with progressive simplicity and hints and eventually full solutions accessible at the start are meant to stop the rush of people bringing up mental illness to allow the rest to enjoy some phenomenal puzzles, sharing a love with their friend and vice-versa, while also still highlighting the importance of acknowledging mental illness in the creation of these works too (just not at the times people expected).
We say “penny for your thoughts”. I want a “penny for everyone” and that is my mission now in working in AI (actual intelligence) research. Puzzles that help with counting, and colors, and shapes, and rotation and so on through the problems even I don’t know how to solve. But none of these are that. I’ve been the only puzzle maker for my intelligence for awhile. And I’m taking a break because I need to be with my dad. A kid has to learn about AIs to help organize their toys, my dad has a very hard time with bills and payments and so much paper work because an actually intelligent system isn’t set for someone approaching 80 to do more than keep up with news by looking at people, men or women, televised on camera to get informed. My dad and another important genius have passed that cognitive test.
I’d like to suggest the letter I become a scientific unit of intelligence once the right work is done. I think therefore I am is an example of one kind of intelligence so I=1. Having purposeful empathy might be another. Each intelligence test passed is another penny for your thought bank and something you can show off to others while learning how to get the pennies not yet in your collection. Some things are not worth a penny. We think intelligence is about memory where I put reliance on memory as an I-1 thing, and that is even before we start losing neural connections and memories aren’t being distorted by thinking of them, they are just gone or certainly altered rather than probabilistically altered. But knowledge of how to store memories like locations of objects is still a useful skill and worth some pennies.
An element of any conversation of AI is what is it. When you are just below intelligence task I(n) it is a puzzle. A problem to solve. When you are just above intelligent it is an activity, some are fun like writing sudoku for you and others are not (most of modern life). It should now also be your responsibility to pay the intelligence forward by teaching. Teacher is the first noun I’d use to describe my parents, and while there were no interesting sudoku until I made one for the United States, they found ways from my childhood forward to do something I don’t yet have the intelligence to do. Be good parents of two children. Having small hands and a busy schedule are both problems for my intelligence. Sharpies help you get back the time on the schedule as people know you are serious. The variances of pencil, sharpie, color, sticker, angle, for sudoku notation are applying everything I learned before to see if anything makes sense. Sharpie makes sense for a decision maker. Another thing to believe in. Ask such a leader what happens if they don’t have white out and need to make edits with the sharpie. That is level 2 testing/thinking. I use red to correct the black, because most teachers use those colors in that way so children are used to them. I went to school when people wrote on paper. I do not know what intelligence [verb] [noun] about correction will do in the future. I believe in time machines in the same way I once believed in Christ when I was a child and went through Sunday school. Now I’m a christian Scientist but I don’t use the superhero movies anymore to learn morality. And don’t get me started about competition solvers using the right hand to write and the left hand to erase as a “speed-running” technique. Are we left and right handed because of genetics, nurture, or not pushing our limits. I claim to be ambidextrous, and I can change every j and g in a full textual body because I don’t give a shit for this world but I do want to jive better as a proLife chrIstIan ScientIst. I’ve been on airplanes, understand flijht, and how to talk jive if I can. I can’t pronounce flight as that looks so weird to jogo. I have that penny if some one wants to test me this holiday season with the gojo test.
We don’t teach creative intelligence and parenting well, or at all, and it may be the most important thing to optimize. I have a new activity after this week, pennyforeveryone / mindcraft / …. I am writing one version of every kind of intellectual challenge I’ve encountered in my life. I just wrote a Mystery Hunt level thing for people who view where Caltech or MIT can get on their own to a complex task. I’m slowing down to go back to dot to dots and tests of color and then colors with dots and so on. This next year will be fun. I’ll be trying to prove who is still intelligent.
We can include an axis for C-based, Si-based, and P-based life too if that is the only column we can afford with all the pennies involved. Even though I’m a chemist I’m not sure I’d only use elements in this assessment and no one understands quantum dynamics so does that mean AI^2? To be clear in the future, the letter A means up for assessment. Being strange doesn’t make you special in my lIfe until you prove it in a way I will show.
I can’t check everyone’s intelligence, but I will give my own penny back (I don’t want any money from this, just to know how much I there likely is in the universe), and design tools to improve neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative testing so that people whose own intelligence causes neurotransmitter responses to go high don’t have to get high at the same moment if they get too excited. I’m not sure I’m very intellingent but I around 180 on my scale. I am the biggest neurotransmitter addict I know. And I might have a lesson to learn and then to share there too.
I don’t have a billion dollars, but I can prove I have over a hundred pennies to my name. Not yet two-hundred. Thomas Jefferson has always been a tough target since I went to a public school but actually had 2 teachers as parents caring for me. I know smart friends from TJ who can’t solve my sudoku.
congratulations on multiple fronts!
Thanks — if you would like to chat offline, please reach out to address below. I have some info on the origin of this message so I hope to know it is you.
you do not sound well
This was a pictoral post. I didn’t write or speak a word. Could you please share some more background so I can understand whether to trust this diagnosis versus those of my close contacts and therapeutic team. The WE in my mental WEllness plan.
Not trying to sound mean. Trying to sound loving. You might think normal is normal and I’m sick. I see a lot of sickness in the world.
Perfect response. I love pictorial stuff even if I don’t understand it entirely.
Hello all,
Hope everyone is having a good end of year. Thomas is okay and visiting some friends and family for the holidays, despite how erratic some of his recent posts have been.
With the last few posts, Thomas has indicated he wants to play a game with those interested. The main piece is the nine by nine grid above (hmmm….) which *definitely* has some themes and connections that may not be obvious at first glance. You may find some scattered references to the main piece in Thomas’ recent posts (within the last week and a half or so) if you look and consider.
I have started putting together some annotations for the main piece above, and I would be willing to share if others are interested in exploring further. There does appear to be a “puzzle” here, if a bit obscured at points. Regardless, some discussion would be more than welcome here, and the GMP Discord seems like as good a place as any to talk.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask below. Thank you, and Happy New Year solvers.
-Giovanni P.
Thanks for the update Giovanni.
There’s this act that Penn and Teller used to do where Penn would shout “Start the clock!” and then Teller would be submerged in a tank full of water with a respirator. Penn would explain that Teller is going to show a magical technique of staying underwater. Teller would remove the respirator and hold his breath. After a while he would flail around like the trick went wrong and then he would appear lifeless. At the eight minute mark, far after Teller went lifeless, someone in the crowd shouted “Is he okay?” which is when Penn shouts “Stop the clock!”
This is what it’s felt the past few weeks reading these posts. I’m presuming that there’s something deep to Thomas’s posts as his intellect and puzzle writing abilities far surpass mine but like the audience members witnessing a famous magician possibly die, it’s very uncomfortable.
It’s not that I’m worried about Thomas physically harming himself. I have a wife that’s bipolar so I am aware that the greater fear is that the person is going to self-destruct on a public stage, ending their reputation with everyone. I’m reminded of Maria Bamford, a highly talented voice actress and comedian who, during one of her manic moments, sent a letter to the New York Times criticizing the people who were paying her to star in commercials. I also think of maybe Kanye West as an example, that maybe in his bipolar moments he said something bad and after public scorn turned inward and darker and more negative, losing the relationships he had and cycling ever downward.
So it is great to hear that you are around to support him and I hope others are around him. I think a really painful part of being bipolar is that it can be so humbling, that you really do need people around to check on you every so often, that you really do need people to check with to make sure your thinking is rational. Like my wife and the talent I’ve named, a lot of these people who have this condition are incredibly brilliant and Thomas is one of the most brilliant people in Earth. It can be so strange to be highly functional and also need help.
And maybe this conversation is unnecessary and I don’t need to say any of this. Maybe all of the puzzles and conversations Thomas has put here in the past few weeks make a lot of sense for those with the inside knowledge and reasoning abilities. But just like the man who doesn’t want to see Teller die, I don’t want to see Thomas lose everything. If Thomas’s creative vision continues to go down paths that are so self-reflective and seemingly incoherent to the average person, it’d be great to have a comment or two along the way of assurance that everything’s fine, particularly from someone other than Thomas himself. All the audience asks is a wink from the people on stage that there is no real danger and that it is all entertainment.
To Thomas: You remain an inspiration even if I can’t solve nine tenths of the puzzles you make.
rm31 here; i agree with this wholeheartedly. I haven’t dealt with mental illnesses personally but I know some who have and it’s a nightmare. If you have the strength to fight through it, or a support team to help you through it, we’d all love some clues and explanations that are less esoteric than what’s been posted.
I live alone, so I don’t know what more anyone can share at this point without me opening my medical records. I appreciate the concerns that came along with my recent creative brainstorming phase, that was certainly hypomanic and potentially manic and the difference is not really obvious. The puzzle content is/was real (aside from a joke on trust/verification with the Christmas Miracle Sudoku). At some point I want to understand better how it is only when my brain is a little open that I can be as creative as I was in December. For now I’m resting and preparing to do some science work at the AI (Allen Institutes) in Seattle.
Thank you for those who have expressed concern re:Thomas here. For what it’s worth, when all this was first being posted people (including myself) were definitely not sure what was going on. Especially when Thomas clearly put a lot of what was on his mind into the “story”/non-puzzle posts, and the posts that are now explicitly labelled as having puzzle content worth exploring.
Thomas has indicated here and elsewhere that this post is a good place to start, and after mulling it over for a bit I and others have been able to start drawing connections. I’ve prepared an “annotation” of the images in the grid above which might make things less overwhelming, which you can find here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lwc9w066Qu_FH3-cHmKIo-Zr4zYoU4FTiKimfTgaWLo/edit?usp=sharing
I plan to prepare a document in the next day or two explaining some of the threads I’m confident enough to follow.
This seems very “puzzlehunt” versus Sudoku style, so this may not be everyone’s bag. But any help or insight would be appreciated.
Have a good day.
Feel free to help the main solving effort. Or start one yourself (there is no specific goal to be the first to solve, as it is not like my sanity is going to change if you do / do not answer a puzzle). Ready Layer One and the Twelve Days of Sudoku are two separate puzzlehunt things if looked at in the right way, but may use some of the other material for ground truth where needed.
Or just solve some Tango. Nothing special for the next 13 days besides some Tango. Easy clicky things a bit harder than the ones on LinkedIn.
Or take a walk.
Or dance.
Or finish thi….