CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2009 - Solutions
This is the archive of the 2009 Puzzle Competition. Please visit the current competition site for information about the latest Puzzle Competition.
D.2 Magical Mystery Tour
Each cell in the square graphically depicts the title or lyrics of a pop/rock song. For example, the graphic in the top-right corner depicts the song Blue Suede Shoes, most famously performed by Elvis.
After finding several of the songs, it should become clear that each of the songs is sung by a singer who is commonly known by a single name, or mononym. This fact may help to fill out the rest of the songs and artists.
This yields the following artists and songs, reading the clues across each row from the top:
| Beyoncé | Crazy In Love |
| Limahl | The NeverEnding Story |
| Elvis | Blue Suede Shoes |
| Nelly | Hot in Herre |
| Cher | The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss) |
| Enya | Book of Days |
| Rihanna | Disturbia |
| Sting | If You Love Somebody Set Them Free |
| Fergie | Big Girls Don't Cry |
| Ashanti | Rock wit U (Awww Baby) |
| Björk | Army of Me |
| Madonna | Like A Virgin |
| Prince | Kiss |
| Beck | Loser |
| Des'ree | Kissing You |
| Kylie | The Loco-Motion |
| Shakira | Hips Don't Lie |
| Dido | White Flag |
| Usher | Confessions Part II |
| Pink | Get The Party Started |
| Seal | Kiss From A Rose |
| Coolio | Gangsta's Paradise |
| Britney | Baby One More Time |
| Eminem | Lose Yourself |
| Moby | We Are All Made Of Stars |
In the grid, the artists look like this:
The key A=1 at the bottom of the puzzle is a hint telling you to convert letters into numbers. Converting the first letter of each singer's mononym produces this grid:
An interesting property of this number grid is that all of the complete rows sum to the same number: 65. The big leap of insight here is that the grid is actually an incomplete magic square. In a magic square, the sum of the numbers in each row, column, and both diagonals should be the same. The puzzle title might help you make this leap.
Using this insight it is possible to narrow down the possible values of the empty cells to specific numbers. Doing so produces the following grid:
Converting those newly deduced numbers back into letters, we see a secret question:
The question is "Who shot John?"
A famous singer named John who was famously shot, was John Lennon. (A member of The Beatles, who sang Magical Mystery Tour, the puzzle title.)
He was shot by MARK DAVID CHAPMAN, who is the answer.