Synchronicity

We are given 12 images with associated audio clips, with each audio clip consisting of a song medley containing 5 muted segments. Listening more closely, we hear that the audio clips frequently have cheering in the background – indicating some sort of performance – and scraping sounds. Putting this together with the title, the reference to “your team,” and the word “figure” from the flavor text, we guess that this puzzle is about synchronized skating.

The audio clips are taken from free skating performances at the 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships, with the muted portions corresponding to times when the teams performed various synchronized skating elements. The audio clips appear in the puzzle in chronological order (e.g. all of the 2017 performances go before the 2018s, and the audio clips for the 2017s appear in performance order), which helps identify them.

To connect these elements to the images given, we notice thatJ7, #, BV, etc. are notations appearing in the event scoresheets (2017, 2018, 2019, 2022). For example, the “J7” column has the scores that judge 7 gave to each element in a performance. Since the colors used in the images are red, orange, yellow, green, and blue (the first 5 colors of ROYGBIV), we guess that they are used to indicate which of the 5 muted segments in the audio clip is being referred to. This gives us three numbers for each image, which form a time.

For example, the orange J1 in the fourth image means “take the score that judge 1 gave to the element corresponding to the second muted segment”. During this muted segment, Team Hot Shivers (2018) is performing a GL1 element (this codes a level 1 group lift). Judge 1 gave a score of 1 to this element, so we interpret the orange J1 as representing a “1.” Doing the same for the blue BV (“Base Value”) and the red J5, we get the time 3:21.

The arrows don’t correspond to any notation in the scoresheet, but after identifying all of the elements indicated by the arrows (following the same method as above), we notice that each “in” arrow has exactly one paired “out” arrow with the same element. For example, the yellow out arrow of the 4th image codes a GL2 element, which corresponds to the yellow in arrow of the 7th image. Following the flavortext’s hint about getting “back in the loop,” we use these to rearrange the 12 (image, audio) pairs we were given into the cycle 5 → 10 → 8 → 1 → 6 → 4 → 7 → 11 → 3 → 2 → 9 → 12 → 5.

Now that we’ve “got our timing down and are back in the loop,” we “keep looking forward”: we index the time we got from one image into the next audio clip in the cycle, giving a moment in the skating performance. Checking the video of the performance, we see that the team is making a letter with their formation, and that the letter’s rotation is the same as the rotation of the image. For example, we saw above that 4 → 7 is part of the cycle; the time coded by the 4th (image, audio) pair is 3:21, the 7th audio clip is from Team Sweet Mozart 2019, and 3:21 into their performance, Team Sweet Mozart is making an S.

All together, this gives us 12 letters in a cycle. To “end up supreme” we make the last character in this string the E we got from Team Les Supremes 2022, giving us the clue phrase JOYKIDSMOVIE. This clues INSIDE OUT.

Appendix: letters on ice

Here are screenshots of the letters used in making the clue phrase JOYKIDSMOVIE.

Note that the rotation of the images from the puzzle matches the rotation of the letter on the ice, which disambiguates between e.g. E and M.

#	Team	Letter	Image
1	RCKT 2017	K
2	Marigold IceUnity 2017	V
3	Boomerang 2018	O
4	Hot Shivers 2018	D
5	Nexxice 2018	J
6	Haydenettes 2018	I
7	Sweet Mozart 2019	S
8	Haydenettes 2019	Y
9	Nexxice 2019	I
10	Icicles Senior 2022	O
11	Haydenettes 2022	M
12	Les Supremes 2022	E