The Obligatory Dance Video Puzzle
by Mike Sylvia
ANSWER: BAD MOON RISING / GENUINE ARTICLE
Each video contains snippets from two songs, is filmed in a particular direction, and has a word repeatedly being spelled out in semaphore.
| Video | Songs | Direction | Word |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Life in a Northern Town" and "Go West" | S | IF |
| 2 | "South Park Theme" and "Wild Wild West" | S | VIDEO |
| 3 | "You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party" and "North American Scum" | SW | ONE |
| 4 | "Call All the Ships to Port" and "Southside" | NE | POINTS |
| 5 | "What's Left of Me" and "Low" | NW | DOWN |
| 6 | "Dexter's Laboratory Theme" and "I'm Down" | SW | READ |
| 7 | "Wild Wild West" and "Bad Moon Rising" | S | EACH |
| 8 | "The North" and "Left of the Middle" | S | BEARING |
| 9 | "Right Now" and "Bloody Well Right" | W | AND |
| 10 | "March of the Sinister Ducks" and "Up on the Roof" | N | TITLE |
| 11 | "The Fallen" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" | NW | PAIR |
| 12 | "Welcome to the North" and "Northern Exposure Theme" | NW | AS |
| 13 | "Word Up" and "The Price is Right Theme" | SW | ONE |
| 14 | "High" and "The Right Stuff" | S | LETTER |
The message is IF VIDEO ONE POINTS DOWN, READ EACH BEARING AND TITLE PAIR AS ONE LETTER. All of the songs clue a direction, either in a compass sense (north, south, east, west) an ordinary directional sense (up, down, right, left) or one of a few other manners. Each pair of titles can therefore be combined to one direction (northwest in Video 1, for example), which represents one flag of a semaphore letter. The other flag is indicated by the direction the camera faces. Reading off the semaphore letters thus formed spells CALL IN CCR TITLE; the Creedence Clearwater Revival song used in this puzzle is BAD MOON RISING.
The supplementary information from 1752 reveals that in the alternate history, the magnetic poles have shifted and all directions clued in a compass sense are reversed - "north" and "south" exchange meanings, as do "east" and "west". However, as Video 1 still points down, the camera directions are unchanged. This changes the semaphore reading to spell the answer GENUINE ARTICLE.
