The 28 images correspond to phrases from R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)".
The images are, in song order:
![]() [great] |
![]() [earthquake] |
![]() [birds and snakes] |
![]() [aeroplane] |
![]() [Lenny Bruce] |
![]() [Not Afraid] |
![]() [eye of a hurricane] |
![]() [listen to yourself] |
![]() [churn] |
![]() [world] |
![]() [serves] |
![]() [needs] |
![]() [Feed] |
![]() [up] |
![]() [knock] |
![]() [speed] |
![]() [grunt (no)] |
![]() [strength (no)] |
![]() [ladder structure] |
![]() [clatter] |
![]() [fear of heights] |
![]() [down height] |
||
![]() [wire in a fire] |
![]() [represent] |
![]() [seven games] |
![]() [government] |
![]() [for hire] |
![]() [combat site] |
Each file name ends suspiciously in a two character bigram. Reading the first character of the bigram in song order spells READSECONDCHARACTERSHEXASCII. The second characters, interpreted as bigrams, are:
41 4E 53 57 45 52 20 22 41 52 52 41 59 22Which is ASCII for ANSWER "ARRAY", and thus the answer to the puzzle is ARRAY.
Note: This puzzle pulls heavily from an old warm-up puzzle Erin Rhode wrote for the team in 2009 which used Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire instead of REM.