Solution: Fast Time

Answer: KIRA

Written by Jonathan

Note that there are a lot of names in the grid. Some names may stand out, for instance, Chris Tucker or Jackie Chan. Googling some of the names together will give the fact that these are all people who played in the Rush Hour franchise.

The red car in the middle of the grid, as well as the association with the Rush Hour franchise, clues the next step of the puzzle: solving this grid as a Rush Hour logic puzzle, where the goal is to release the Red Car (out the right side of the grid). We can achieve this in 9 steps, as follows:

Elizabeth Peña (1)
Noémie Lenoir (1)
Tom Wilkinson (1)
Wendie Malick (2)
Roselyn Sánchez (1)
Ken Leung (1)
Aimee Garcia (2)
Rex Linn (1)
Zhang Zi Yi (3)

The flavortext suggests that the distances the "cars" travel are important. Indexing into the names provided by the number of steps the “cars” take gives the cluephrase ENTER KIRA, so the answer is KIRA.

Author's Notes

This puzzle was inspired by this QOPH puzzle, which although had nothing to do with Rush Hour, somehow coloring the countries and capitals made me think of Rush Hour. Amazingly, 2 days after this puzzle was written, Rush Hour appeared in this CMU puzzle.

Appendix