Solution to Charisma

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Answer: SUPPOSITORY

by CJ Quines

The puzzle has 49 images arranged in a grid. By identifying some of these images, we realize that these are all screenshots from music videos of queens related to RuPaul's Drag Race. (This is also clued by the title, "Charisma", referencing the four qualities it's said the judges look for: charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.)

Through a combination of asking people familiar with the show, reverse image searching, scrolling through a list of drag music videos, and in one case, searching the lyrics visible in the screenshot, we can identify these are from the following eight music videos:

And here are the screenshots, labeled with the drag queen singing the music video, and its (approximate) timestamp:

Adore, 3:24

Gia, 2:01

Courtney, 2:52

Courtney, 0:10

Alaska, 3:33

Plastique, 1:22

Gia, 0:42

Trixie, 0:50

Trixie, 3:00

Courtney, 1:14

Plastique, 1:36

Tammie, 2:00

Courtney, 1:38

Courtney, 0:22

Adore, 2:45

Alaska, 2:33

Plastique, 0:54

Gia, 2:35

Trixie, 3:05

Plastique, 2:37

Alaska, 4:27

Plastique, 0:14

Tammie, 1:35

Alaska, 4:42

Adore, 2:18

RuPaul, 1:24

Trixie, 3:41

RuPaul, 1:45

Tammie, 0:35

Trixie, 2:52

Tammie, 0:43

Courtney, 0:50

Plastique, 0:38

Courtney, 0:45

Plastique, 2:21

Alaska, 1:57

Adore, 3:31

Alaska, 1:30

Tammie, 1:18

RuPaul, 1:09

Plastique, 2:17

RuPaul, 0:30

Trixie, 2:09

Tammie, 1:49

Courtney, 3:01

Plastique, 0:18

Adore, 1:35

RuPaul, 2:48

RuPaul, 0:14

The fact that RuPaul is one of the queens disconfirms several possible next steps, like identifying their seasons or what they did on the show. Instead, the next step is to realize that the number of screenshots each video has is the same as the number of letters in the drag queen's first name. This inspires us to put the letters of their names in the grid, in the order that the screenshots appear in the video. This gives us the following grid:

R I E C S T G
T X T I E N O
O A S A I E K
P M A D A E U
T I A R A U U
L E A M P Q U
R I Y L A L R

Seeing that this is a grid of letters, we are now inspired to do a word search. The numbers underneath the grid clue the lengths of the hidden words, which are all related to RuPaul's Drag Race:

Length Word Location
3 SIS Row 3, Col 3, up right
3 TEA Row 1, Col 6, down left
3 TOP Row 2, Col 1, down
4 MAMA Row 4, Col 2, down right
4 MAXI Row 4, Col 2, up
5 TIARA Row 5, Col 1, right
5 QUEEN Row 6, Col 6, up
5 YAAAS Row 7, Col 3, up
6 OKUUUR Row 2, Col 7, down
7 READING Row 7, Col 1, up right

Removing these letters from the grid reveals the clue phrase RECTAL PILL. This clues the answer SUPPOSITORY.

R I E C S T G
T X T I E N O
O A S A I E K
P M A D A E U
T I A R A U U
L E A M P Q U
R I Y L A L R

Author’s Notes

We hope you had fun watching the music videos! YAAAS and OKUUUR aren't in their most common spelling, which was one of the sacrifices we had to make, given that the construction was pretty constrained. I'm still surprised we managed to pull it off. The restrictions of the puzzle also meant that some of my favorite videos couldn't make the cut. So here's some more videos to watch if you liked this puzzle: