Veritas

• Original Concept: Ian Tullis
• Celebrity addition/selection/editing: Wei-Hwa Huang
• Visual design: Wei-Hwa Huang
• Corporate Logo: Doug Zongker

Feeders

• TIFFS — Archivist
• ANANDA — Consultant
• FNORD — Illuminatus
• IXORA — Imperator
• GORF — Player
• SANDS — Scheduler

Answer

Solution

Each photograph is a composite of two people; the text on the Post-It gives a hint as to who they are. From the upper-left and going clockwise:

• Alan Greenspan (left, ex-Chairman of the Federal Reserve); Michael Douglas (right, Oscar™ winner for Wall Street)
• Joan Rivers (left, voiced herself in Shrek 2); Julie Andrews (right, voiced the Queen in Shrek 2);
• Erno Rubik (left, inventor of the panel-matching Rubik's Cube); Gene Rayburn (right, host of Match Game where contestants had to match answers with a celebrity panel)
• Alex Trebek (left, host of Jeopardy! where questions are answers); Bill O'Reilly (right, host of The O'Reilly Factor which has a segment called Unresolved Problem)
• Gurgi (left); Fflewddur Fflam (right — both characters from Disney's The Black Cauldron)
• Kato Kaelin (left, house guest of O. J. Simpson in 1994); Paul Reubens (right, host of Pee-Wee's Playhouse)

The asterisks suggest how to combine these names. There are two sorts of asterisks used; a five-pointed one and a six-pointed one. The five-pointed asterisks highlight certain letters in the names, which are all Logic gates:

• al(AN D)ouglas — AND — trustworthy
• joa(N AND)rews — NAND — can't be trusted
• er(NO R)ubik — NOR — trustworthy
• ale(X O'R)eilly — XOR — can't be trusted
• gurg(I FF)lam — IFF — trustworthy (IFF is another name for XNOR)
• kat(O R)eubens — OR — trustworthy

These then match with the feeder answers to create logic statements:

• S AND S = true
• A NAND A = false
• F NOR D = true
• I XOR A = false
• T IFF S = true
• G OR F = true

These can be solved to the following values

• S = true
• A = true
• F = false
• D = false
• I = true
• T = true
• G = true

Note the side effect that T is true and F is false.

Putting the five correct answers in alphabetical order gives AGIST. The flavor text says #21354, which suggests an order for the letters, leaving the answer GAITS.

Other Notes

This puzzle began life as a non-meta called Programmer, with the answer GATES. It then evolved into a meta with the answer SAGET, (on STAGE, wearing GETAS...) Eventually we changed it to GAITS because we didn't want people to guess the answer with only a couple of feeder words. The feeder words themselves turned out to be very easy to backsolve, however (how many five-letter words have XOR in the center?)

It's a coincidence that T is true and F is false.