And the answer is...

Yes indeedy - the answer is... "The Tempest!"

Which is to say, you pretty much got it from the last few PF3 related posts. But here's the full lowdown on how the images were initially chosen.

Clue #1:
(strange orbital looking thing). This is actually an image I found from a physicist/artist website - which I must confess, I can't seem to find again - that depicts the modeled path of the planets as viewed from Uranus looking towards the Sun. This is what the asterisk + eyeball doodle was suppose to suggest anyway.

From here, Uranus was suppose to be a single degree of separation from The Tempest, in that 10 out of the 27 moons in its orbit happen to have been named from the play.

Clue #2:
(Image of a boat). If you click on the image in the first time the clue was revealed, you'll get taken to a high res version of the image. Here, you'll note that this is a painting of the ship, Bellerophon.

The doodle here (a box within a box) was to denote a screen, which in turn would hopefully lead the puzzle solver into thinking about the Bellerophon from a television or movie point of view. Here, the most obvious hat tip is the name of the starship from the Forbidden Planet movie. This movie is widely known as being heavily inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Clue #3:
(Hawaii Five O album cover). As in the TV show - O.K. the clue is not about the big tidal wave on the front, but actually to do with its first episode in season one (hence, the number "1" doodle). This particular episode was called "Full Fathom Five" where the first moments of the show are described as follows (from here):

Victor Reese, a.k.a. Rawlings (Kevin McCarthy) and his wife Nora (Louise Troy) bilk rich widows out of their funds, then poison them and dump them in the ocean. A serial killer as well as a con artist, Reese recites Ariel's song from Shakespeare's Tempest as the barrel containing the woman victim at the beginning of the show goes underwater (the song has the sex changed to "her" from "him").

Clue #4:
(A pair of shorts). Shorts with a corresponding "globe" doodle was meant to signify Bermuda. (as in Bermuda shorts). Bermuda is often thought by Shakespearian scholars to be a place of significance for the writing of the Tempest.

(From wiki) In addition, many scholars see parallel imagery in a work by William Strachey, an eyewitness report of the real-life shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda while sailing toward Virginia; a character in the play makes reference to the "still-vexed Bermoothes."

And so... There you have it! Hoping you having a great Christmas break so far.

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Wow, that's hard.

Thanks for the puzzle! It does once again shed some light on the scientific process.

As with scientific discoveries, collaboration helped in the solution (Bacon and Bermuda were great confirming clues). There are many paths to discovery (mine was through the Bellerophon film reference, but it easily could have been through one of the other paths). And, sometimes, there are false paths (like the Venture and Enchanted Island theories).

We all did end up with the correct solution. And, it was fun. Thanks again for offering this puzzle and have a great new year!

By Joe in LA (not verified) on 01 Jan 2009 #permalink

I find that many people who are successful are those that can adapt to new paradigms the quickest, or they are the ones who realize there is a new on coming.

I suggest that you accept the adjective. It is considerably more benign than others earned by the past President, his mentors, collaborators, and now latter-day reputation masseuse.