God's Gift to Cartooning
David Dickerson
Identify the people clued by the cartoons. In order of the puzzle, these are Pavlov, Hawthorne, Escher, Lincoln, Duchamp, Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare, Mr. T, Mark Rothko, Seurat, Da Vinci, Schroedinger, Galileo, John Kennedy, and James Joyce.
The flavor text suggests sorting by discipline and chronologically within each. They fall into 5 different disciplines, with a different number 1 to 5 of people in each discipline. Order the disciplines from fewest to most people, and arrange each in a column, chronologically (using the specific works/events clued as needed where their lifespans overlap). This yields:
| Mr. T | Lincoln Kennedy |
Galileo Pavlov Schroedinger |
Shakespeare Hawthorne Joyce Seuss |
Da Vinci Seurat Duchamp Rothko Escher |
The bold lines on the borders (or, for Pavlov's, separating the two frames) can be combined in each column to form the shape of a letter, spelling JESSE.