By The Landlord
“I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword.” – Olivia De Havilland
”Never leave a crossword unfinished.” – Charles Krauthammer
“The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.” – Stephen Sondheim
“I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the Guardian crossword ... and that's my idea of a perfect morning.” – Laura Marling
“Life is a puzzle unsolved.” – Santosh Kalwar
“Why should things be easy to understand?” – Thomas Pynchon
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.” – Lewis Carroll
“Each one of us fulfills a piece of a larger puzzle.” – Eric McCormack
“I think that we're pattern-seeking animals, and what we like best is where everything fits together, where there's no puzzle pieces left over.” – Noah Hawley
”Each song is a little bit of a puzzle. I see most of them as just failed attempts.” – Beck
There's something mentally cleansing and warmly mind-stretching about puzzles. Perhaps it's the way your brain has to go into a neutral gear to retrieve words, some not having flashed, pleasurably, in the forefront of the brain for years, such as for a crossword. They offer a burst of dopamine, like finding a fat juicy berry hidden behind leaves, with the joy of retrieval, of surprising yourself. You have metaphorically found a key to open a door, leading to further keys and to new doors, dusting through memories and neural pathways, to a rediscovered, even new sense of mind palace.
Puzzles are a way to step off the world's often not-so-merry-go-round, and take a breath, stop, relax and meditatively take control and at least temporarily feel clever, or at least mentally agile. Puzzles are also a safe place where you can find achievable goals, far simpler than life's madly variable moving jigsaw, where there are always pieces missing or broken. Nevertheless, like crosswords, or jigsaws, the more sections you solve, the easier, and smoother it becomes as you progress through life. Hopefully.
Unfortunately I still don't have much time, but should make more time, for puzzles. There was a bit of a daily Wordle habit during the 2020 lockdown, but that inevitably faded. Occasionally I might attempt a cryptic crossword puzzle on a long train journey, but my ability, less with vocabulary, more with being able to spot clue type, needs much sharpening.
Nevertheless my completed turning cake stand Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album artwork jigsaw, done with hangovers over a past Christmas and Boxing Day achievement, still sits framed on the kitchen wall. Winter is a perfect time of year for that sort of thing. Mostly I associate puzzles with being stuck a caravan on a rainy summer holiday in the 1980s. And also from that period, somewhere in a drawer there's an old Rubik's Cube that I once managed to get my head around and solve, but have now forgotten entirely how I did it. Fortunately my cube isn't this mind-boggling musical version...
Or this …
Rubik Cube? Music Cube …
But I do enjoy a bit of lateral thinking at any time.
So anyway, this week it's all about puzzles. Previously subjects of board games have been explored (but not all board games are puzzles) and also puzzling songs (but not songs about puzzles) and even, tangentially, songs about empty but fillable spaces. But now it is time to see how such specific activities colour titles or lyrics, literally or metaphorically.
Life is often a mysterious conundrum, and especially that most potent of song themes love and how it is communicated, is a constantly shifting puzzle box often with hidden entry points We are evolved to solve many kinds of puzzles to find food and make shelter, and to constantly attempt that other tricky puzzle of love itself, the solution not always as first it may seem.
Music itself is a puzzle, working out melodies and keys and scales and ranges of sound that must fit together like an audio jigsaw, except that the picture is not fixed. The writing, recording and finishing of a song is itself another tricky and complicated puzzle, capturing sounds, emotions and stories in a short, yet complex form. Sometimes even listening to music, to work out a lyrical meaning, or learning how to play something, can also be a puzzling challenge.
And as an exercise, there are even music-related digital puzzle games, such as Cadence where you drag, connect, and arrange tiles to solve structural mysteries—which in turn creates harmonious music, and Harmony where you mirror musical note sequences on a grid to complete the melody. And perhaps this Snakes and Ladders game could, theoretically be turned less into a game of chance, more a way to create melody…
But realistically, what kind of puzzles might come up in songs themselves? Quite a few. In terms of theme and lyrics, crosswords and jigsaws are the most obvious metaphors, but there are dozens more involving words and numbers and other forms and methods. From those that require working out, filling in and finding, such as Word Search and Sudoku, to pattern finding with Spot The Difference, to physical logic puzzles, such as undoing locks and boxes and toys, or those making folds and moving tiles, or the now very popular group activity of escape rooms, finding hidden objects, solving mazes, geometric or mathematical puzzles, or on screen, requiring fitting shapes such as Tetris, and video games wherein samples of theme music might also complement the theme. But meanwhile …
More distraction when you should be searching for songs …
Not all games are puzzles, and not all puzzles are games, but sometimes they combine. And all of this and the weekly challenge to finding fitting songs, and especially this week, is a metapuzzle in itself.
Songs often work by feeling and instinct more than logic and mathematics, but often these two opposing forces make it a fascinating combination. Sometimes music you like initially can later become shallow and tiresome. Yet at other times music you initially don't like at all can suddenly filter into your subconscious and when it clicks, it can unfurl huge amounts of enjoyment and meaning. Anyway, here's a logic puzzle that brings music and maths together and one many people intially get wrong. It is famously known as the bat-and-ball puzzle, but for the purposes of our Song Bar, let's call it the guitar-and-strings puzzle.
Not necessarily this price in real life, but just for the mathematical puzzle below…
The total cost of this cigar box guitar and a set of strings is £110. The guitar costs £100 more than the strings, so how much is each? A high percentage of responders, even those with higher education qualifications, will immediately answer that the guitar costs £100 and the strings are £10. Simple, right?
Somehow, the reason why this is wrong is because there's a trigger reaction. Perhaps it is because it seems so straightforward, that you don't have to think, and because our minds often work visually, we instantly see that 100 + 10. Perhaps that also explains how social media works, designed for a trigger response, dancing to a tune of instant reactive upvotes and retweets, nodding heads to the empty beat of falsehoods, opinions and fake news. It is all made to be emotional, not logical. But any person, if they stop and think just for a moment and play it out in their mind, will of course, realise that the guitar is £105 and the strings are £5.
There are many more puzzles out there in this confusing world, but now it's time to solve the musical riddle into playlists, by suggesting songs on this theme, putting the jigsaw pieces comments below. At The Great Turntable Drinks Desk this week is Puzzle Meister Marco den Ouden! Deadline for nominations is 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week. What's the solution? We can work it out ...
More distraction …
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