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CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2013 - Solutions

1D. Lists

The entries in each list match the titles of various popular songs. The birthday and shopping list entries are straightforwardly song titles, listed here with the artists:

DanielElton John
KateJohnny Cash
LucilleKenny Rogers
MichelleThe Beatles
Roxanne   The Police
SaraFleetwood Mac

RopeFoo Fighters
HoneyMariah Carey
Flypaperk-os
Real SugarRoxette
Chocolate CakeCrowded House
SledgehammerPeter Gabriel
Apples and Oranges   Pink Floyd

In a few cases, there are multiple songs of the same title by different artists (there are several songs titled Kate, for example), but the correct artist will be disambiguated by other identifications. The bucket list entries are slight modifications that allude strongly to song titles:

Cemeteries of LondonColdplay
Learn to FlyFoo Fighters
Devil's PartyINXS
Walking in My Blue Jeans   Sophie B. Hawkins
The Snows of New YorkChris de Burgh

The wish list consists of songs where the title includes the word "wish":

Wish I Could FlyRoxette
I Wish I was Crazy AgainJohnny Cash
Wish You Were HerePink Floyd
I Wish it Would Rain DownPhil Collins
I Wish That I Could Hurt That Way Again   Kenny Rogers
I Wish I Knew Natalie Portmank-os
Damn I Wish I was Your LoverSophie B. Hawkins

Many of the artists are showing up twice. The pattern is that there are exactly two songs per artist, which disambiguates any song titles used by multiple artists. The last list, "To do", is the trickiest. It is composed of actions which express the same sentiment as song titles with the word "don't" in them:

Go!Don't StopFleetwood Mac
PersevereDon't Give UpPeter Gabriel (and Kate Bush)
Keep calmDon't PanicColdplay
Meet my expectationsDon't Let Me DownThe Beatles
Remember usDon't Forget About UsMariah Carey
Stay the sameDon't ChangeINXS
Find my numberDon't Lose My NumberPhil Collins
Rip off the ferrymanDon't Pay the FerrymanChris de Burgh
Dream that it is ongoingDon't Dream it's OverCrowded House
Keep the sun shining on meDon't Let the Sun Go Down on Me   Elton John
Stand further away from other people   Don't Stand so Close to MeThe Police

With the artists identified, the next step is to draw lines joining the check boxes next to the list items corresponding to the pair of songs by each artist:

solution image

Each line passes through exactly one of the coloured numbers. The number can be used to index into the artist name, revealing letters. Separating the letters by the four differently coloured numbers:

Red numbers:

1Johnny Cash   J
2Foo FightersO
2Phil CollinsH
2INXSN

Green numbers:

1Sophie B. Hawkins   S
2k-osO
3Elton JohnT
7ColdplayA
9The PoliceE

Blue numbers:

1RoxetteR
2Mariah CareyA
5Crowded House   D
5Kenny RogersY
6Pink FloydL

Yellow numbers:

2Chris de BurghH
2Fleetwood Mac   L
7Peter GabrielA
8The BeatlesL

(Both "The Police" and "The Beatles" must be the full band name, with "The" at the front, otherwise the name will be too short to provide the required letter.) These four sets of letters can be anagrammed to produce the names of a musical duo:

DARYL HALL and JOHN OATES

Checking a list of the songs by Hall & Oates provides a very thematically suggestive number 1 hit song title: Kiss on My List, the chorus lyrics of which include the line "Your kiss is on my list". This provides the missing entry on the bucket list, and the solution to the puzzle:

The puzzle creator prefers YOUR KISS (as it makes the most sense being an item on someone's bucket list), but we also accepted KISS or KISS ON MY LIST.


Puzzle design notes:

It was a deliberate construction to index into "The Beatles" and "The Police" with numbers that required the word "The" to be included in the band name, to avoid any ambiguity in which letter needed to be extracted. Although we generally dislike anagramming as a puzzle step, the anagrams here were short enough and obviously enough leading to famous names that I felt okay using them.

A straight inversion of Don't Stand so Close to Me would have been "Stand further away from me" - however this makes no sense as an item in someone's to-do list: how could you possibly stand further away from yourself? It's actually a command to someone else, not a reminder to yourself. So the spirit of the phrase was taken. Rather than asking other people not to stand so close, the list writer takes the proactive approach, and decides not to stand so close to other people. In other words, stand further away from other people.

The idea for this puzzle came from a humorous "to-do list" which a friend of mine posted on Facebook. It looked a bit like:

To do:
Pay the Ferryman
Stop thinking about tomorrow
Let the sun go down on me

I got a laugh, then a minute later thought, "Hey, that would make a fun puzzle!" I imagined various different types of lists, the entries of which were more or less cryptcally related to songs. The trick to tie it together was to find a song about lists... at which point the Hall & Oates song leapt to mind and a puzzle was born.