Each of the twenty-three audio clips linked from the large grid comes from a poorly conceived original song parody. The titles of these songs do not appear in the excerpted portion, but they are implied by the lyrical content, and each is the original title with a consonant sound replaced by another consonant sound. The songs appear in the grid alphabetized by title of the original song.
(Note: The intention is that the new title appears later in the song in the same context as the old title. So for example, the lyrics to “Swede of Sound” do not simply clue the title, but rather the entire transformed chorus phrase “Birds go flying at the Swede of Sound.” Poor Sven.)
Each of the consonant sounds in these transformations is the first sound in one of the words in the small grid, so the sound change in the song title is equivalent to a sound change between words in that grid. For example, the first clip in the grid is for “Carry On My Wagered Son,” which used to be Kansas’s “Carry On My Wayward Son.” The equivalent transformation in the small grid is from “why” to “jai,” which is a shift one row upward and five columns to the left. Applying the same shift to the cell containing this link leads to the R in the leftmost cell of the second row.
The original artists of these songs each have one-word names, with different first letters from A to W. Extracting the "transformed" letters as described above and sorting these letters alphabetically by artist name gives the puzzle answer, ROBERT EDWARD CROZIER LONG.
Clip Number | Artist | Original Song | Parody Song | Old sound | New sound | Shift | Extracted Letter |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
10 | Adele | Rolling In The Deep | Polling in the Deep | R | P | left 1 | R |
12 | Beyonce | Single Ladies | Shingle Ladies | S | SH | right 1 | O |
15 | Coldplay | Speed of Sound | Swede of Sound | P | W | down 1, right 1 | B |
18 | Dido | Thank You | Rank You | TH | R | up 1, right 2 | E |
4 | Europe | The Final Countdown | The Vinyl Countdown | F | V | down 2, right 1 | R |
13 | Foghat | Slow Ride | Snow Ride | L | N | right 2 | T |
6 | Genesis | I Can’t Dance | I Can’t Lance | D | L | down 1, left 1 | E |
16 | Hozier | Take Me to Church | Take Me to Lurch | CH | L | down 1 | D |
9 | INXS | Need You Tonight | Weed You Tonight | N | W | down 1, right 2 | W |
3 | Journey | Don’t Stop Believin’ | Don’t Stop Relievin’ | B | R | down 1, right 5 | A |
1 | Kansas | Carry On My Wayward Son | Carry On My Wagered Son | W | J | up 1, left 5 | R |
17 | Lorde | Team | Beam | T | B | up 2, left 2 | D |
19 | Madonna | Vogue | Rogue | V | R | up 1, right 1 | C |
5 | Nickelback | How You Remind Me | How You Rewind Me | M | W | down 1, right 3 | R |
23 | Oasis | Wonderwall | Thunderwall | W | TH | left 2 | O |
7 | Pink | Just Like A Pill | Just Like A Mill | P | M | left 2 | Z |
21 | Queen | We Will Rock You | We Will Shock You | R | SH | down 1, left 4 | I |
8 | Roxette | The Look | The Hook | L | H | up 1, right 4 | E |
2 | Styx | Come Sail Away | Come Veil Away | S | V | right 4 | R |
14 | Tool | Sober | Solar | B | L | down 1, right 1 | L |
22 | U2 | Where The Streets Have No Name | Where The Streams Have No Name | T | M | up 1 | O |
20 | Vengaboys | We Like To Party | We Bike To Party | L | B | up 1, left 1 | N |
11 | Weezer | Say It Ain’t So | Say It Ain’t Go | S | G | up 2, right 4 | G |