This puzzle contains 24 audio files, each 30 seconds long. 12 of them are snippets from popular songs, and the other 12 are edited vocals from Smash Mouth’s “All Star”. Each All Star vocal track corresponds to one of the songs, and will line up when the two audio files are played together. This can be done by ear, or by using the key and tempo of each track. Other features can also be helpful, like Mambo No. 5’s swing rhythm or Orinoco Flow’s key change. Additionally, each of these pairings is given a score:
| All Star Vocals | Song | Song Name | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I | Men in Black | 5/28 |
| 2 | A | Baby Got Back | 2/3 |
| 3 | E | Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger | 7/9 |
| 4 | H | Mambo No. 5 | 1/13 |
| 5 | L | You Oughta Know | 2/6 |
| 6 | F | Imagine | 7/20 |
| 7 | C | Bullet With Butterfly Wings | 6/24 |
| 8 | D | Chocolate Rain | 8/24 |
| 9 | G | Imma Be | 4/11 |
| 10 | K | The Power of Love | 3/12 |
| 11 | B | Billie Jean | 8/19 |
| 12 | J | Orinoco Flow | 1/10 |
The next step is to realize the connection between these twelve songs; namely, that they all appear in Neil Cicierega’s mashup album Mouth Sounds. This can be found by Googling the songs together, and is hinted at by the puzzle’s title and flavortext. Each of the songs corresponds to one track from the album, and each score’s possible total is equal to the length of that track’s title. We can use the scores to index into these titles:
| Song Name | Mouth Sounds Track | Score | Extracted Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men in Black | Vivid Memories Turn To Fantasies | 5/28 | D |
| Baby Got Back | D'oh | 2/3 | O |
| Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger | Daft Mouth | 7/9 | U |
| Mambo No. 5 | Bega Interlude | 1/13 | B |
| You Oughta Know | Alanis | 2/6 | L |
| Imagine | Imagine All Star People | 7/20 | E |
| Bullet With Butterfly Wings | Mullet With Butterfly Wings | 6/24 | T |
| Chocolate Rain | Like Tears in Chocolate Rain | 8/24 | R |
| Imma Be | Imma Let It Be | 4/11 | A |
| The Power of Love | No Credit Card | 3/12 | C |
| Billie Jean | Bills Like Jean Spirit | 8/19 | K |
| Orinoco Flow | Smooth Flow | 1/10 | S |
This gives us the solution DOUBLE TRACKS.
I’d had the idea of a puzzle which involved making mashups for a long time, and I’m very pleased with how this turned out. I was extremely careful to make sure that the audio files' metadata couldn’t be used to cheese the puzzle, removing tempo data and changing the date created of each file to May 4, 1999 (the release date of All Star, and the same creation date of every track in Mouth Sounds.)
Getting the tempos to line up exactly was surprisingly tricky for a few of these songs, since many of them have non-integer BPM values (Men In Black is 107.6, Harder Better Faster Stronger is 123.4, You Oughta Know is 105.3, etc). Imagine and Bullet With Butterfly Wings were particularly difficult, since their tempos change slightly over the course of the song, so I had to stretch different parts of the All Star vocals to get it to fit perfectly. Overall, I’m really happy with how the finished mashups sound; my personal favorites are Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and Billie Jean. I hope you had fun making them too!
Huge thanks to Patrick, Liam, and Ivan for their help in getting this puzzle written, and especially for Ivan’s fantastic audio implementation on the website.