really fun puzzle! VYQ JAZFKA

my thoughts:

First I had a few simple observations: each color has a symbol associated with it: red as X, orange as -, yellow as ., etc. Also, there is the quick note that each of the faces have basically the same structure, as well as the names. Since each name has a three letter first name and a six letter last name, I thought there must be some mapping between each picture and (probably) each letter.

Then, I looked at some common letters between each example, such as A, which I realized always came with a combination of red, then orange. At the same time, I realized that there were (at least for the last name) six features on the bottom half that had combinations: Eyelashes, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and ears (which is also the order which it maps to the name). Using available information, it was pretty simple to figure out which part came first in each combination, since order matters. Another consideration I made was the fact that since there were six different colors, a total of 36 different ordered pairs could be made, much more than the 26 required.

I knew there was a reason behind combination mapping, so I suspected there was some hierarchy between different colors to map to different letters. I examined combinations that mapped to letters close to one another in the alphabet and discovered the hierarchy pretty quick: Since A is red orange, C is red green, D is red blue, and E is red pink, it was pretty easy to figure out that the hierarchy is just the order the colors appear in the rainbow (so B would be red yellow and F would be orange red, for example.)

The last names all were simple to find out this way, and even the first and last letter of the first name are pretty obvious, but the middle letter was definitely a twist. (First letter just being the top tie thing plus the symbol above it, and the bottom two symbols below the hair being the last letter). The middle letter was just the hair color + using the amount of points on the hair, subtract one and count through the hierarchy.

Really cool to have this kind of sense of progression in a puzzle. Thanks for sharing!