Visual Puzzle: The ? Model

Question

What 12 letter word is depicted below? Please explain your reasoning.

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Hint:

Count and divide

Stronger hint:

DPPERM

Even stronger hint:

Key:DaPePeElRoMo

Decisive hint

The first column is 7 blocks high focus on what that could be referring too…

Answer 1

The answer is:

The HELIOCENTRIC Model

The grid ...

... represents six groups: Two plus three vertical single-cell strips to the left and right and a 2×15 block in the centre. These groups are hinted at in hints 2 and 3. The groups are:

7 Days of the week
4 elements in Group 12 of the Periodic table
15 lanthanides and 15 actinides in the Periodic table
4 classical Elements
7 Roman numerals
12 Months of the year

The highlighted cells ...

... go into the ten boxes below the grid. It looks as if the boxes were made for letters, but they represent major bodies in our solar system:

yellow (I): Sun — Sunday
grey: Mercury — Mercury (Hg)
gold: Venus — the Roman numeral V*
green: Earth — the classical element Earth
red: Mars — March
orange: Jupiter — June and July**
brown: Saturn — Saturday
medium blue: Uranus — Uranium
dark blue: Neptune — Neptunium
white (X): Pluto — Plutonium

The given Roman numbers (I) for sun and (X) for Pluto represent their positions in the solar system. (Perhaps the X for Pluto indicates that pluto isn't considered a proper planet anymore.) The colours of the cells are more or less the colours of the planets. I guess the Earth was rendered green, because there are already two planets in blue.***

*) I don't see any indication that the V numeral is related to Venus. The V for five seems to come from an earlier Etruscan number system.
**) The names of June and July aren't related to Jupiter, but it's hard to find a good reference for everything, so two months beginning with Ju are a good substitute, I guess.
***) Useless nerd trivia: TERRA in rot13 is GREEN.

The overall answer ...

... is a twelve-letter word that fills the blank in "The ________ Model" to describe the solar system. I suggest HELIOCENTRIC.

Credit where due:

Stiv solved nearly all of this puzzle: the subdivision of the grid; the identification of the groups and the relevance of the hints; the correlation of the ten boxes to the sun and the planets. I had not seen any of this. (At one point I pondered how an old Fortran routine for rearranging a list according to a list of indices called DPPERM coud figure into this.)

My only contribution is the observation that the boxes don't represent letters but items that are relevant to the sun and planets. I've now posted this as an answer, but I feel a bit like just sticking a brand logo on a device that was entirely manufactured elsewhere.

Answer 2

Okay, here's a partial answer that attempts to justify that the answer should be:

The POSTJUDGMENT model. While the word 'postjudgment' usually means 'after a decision', I think that this puzzle is actually an attempt to create an aid for puzzle-solving, i.e. to help one 'judge' a 'post' here on PSE (particularly an enigmatic-puzzle) regarding what its content may relate to.

I say this because...

...the grid can be split into six smaller rectangles of a size suggesting a connection to a common list. Especially when combined with the letters given in the hint ("DaPePeElRoMo"), which appear to corroborate the names of these categories.

See, I think we have:
- 7 Days of the week,
- 4 members of an as-yet unknown set whose name begins with 'Pe',
- 30 members of the lanthanides and actinides section of the Periodic Table,
- 4 classical Elements (potentially, but I'm not 100% sure)...
- 7 Roman numerals,
- 12 Months of the year.

Additionally, the group at the bottom represents the main elements of our Solar System - the Sun and its planets - with an 'X' in the tenth position to represent the no-longer-classified-as-a-planet Pluto, after whom the element marked with an 'X' in the diagram (Plutonium) is named, suggesting a corroboratory link inside the puzzle.

Like so:

Now, it's possible, mind, that the order of the letters in the given hint might not necessarily match the ordering in the image. Especially since there is an 'I' in the bottom left box which might suggest the Roman numerals should be inserted there in place of the list of days. For now, I have instead assumed it meant 'the first', and therefore listed all groups in order upwards from the bottom (except the Periodic Table group which I have kept in its usual arrangement).

I am at least confident that I do not yet have this all correct, by any stretch!

How have I obtained this suggested final answer?

Take the letters corresponding to the coloured boxes in my image - M, S, U, NP, D, O, and a single J - and try to find a 12-letter word that includes all of these (as well as 4 others yet unknown). This led me to POStJUDgMeNt, which seemed a potentially suitable answer.

However, I am sure this suggested solution needs more tinkering with in order to generate the completely correct solution path and answer. More thinking to do...