CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2010 - Solutions

3C. Don't Fret

Each of the seven diagrams is a guitar fretboard indicating the fingering positions of a number of musical notes, using the standard 6-string guitar tuning. The line of digits next to each fretboard represents a sequence of notes to be played; the dots represent pauses or holding times for the previous note. Playing the sequences reveals the melodies or distinctive bass lines of various songs. The seven songs in order are:

Song title	Artist	Numbers in parentheses
Over The Rainbow	Judy Garland	(15, 12, 5)
The Entertainer	Scott Joplin	(14, 8)
Oh, Pretty Woman	Roy Orbison	(3, 16, 4)
Hero	Mariah Carey	(2)
Wipe Out	The Surfaris	(1, 6)
Ain't No Sunshine	Bill Withers	(10, 11, 13)
Come Together	The Beatles	(9, 7)

The numbers in parentheses below each note sequence can help narrow down the song titles; in each case, there are as many numbers as there are words in the title. Each number from 1 to 16 appears once here, hinting that the next step is to sort the individual words in the song titles by their corresponding numbers:

1	Wipe
2	Hero
3	Oh
4	Woman
5	Rainbow
6	Out
7	Together
8	Entertainer
9	Come
10	Ain't
11	No
12	The
13	Sunshine
14	The
15	Over
16	Pretty

The initials of the words reveal a message: "Who wrote Can't Stop?" This refers to the chart-topping 2002 alternative rock song by the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS; the band name is the credited songwriter and thus the answer to the puzzle. (There are a few other songs by this title, but this is the most popular and successful.)