Clicking around on the radio reveals that there are two sets of nine audio clips, as well as a dial which controls the playback speed. Henceforth, the nine clips in the top slider will be called A1, …, A9, and those in the bottom slider will be B1, …, B9. The A clips contain a few seconds of a song, followed by a few seconds of beatboxing. The B clips consist entirely of beatboxing.
Identifying the songs in the A clips gives nine songs. Each of these songs was performed by one of the nine currently (as of Summer 2022) active MIT a cappella groups. This is motivated by the flavor text, about “local music groups”, along with the beatboxing in all the clips.
| Song | MIT A Cappella Group | |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | Broccoli - DRAM ft. Lil Yachty | Resonance |
| A2 | You Know My Name - Chris Cornell | Muses |
| A3 | One Million Views - GoldFish ft. John Mani | Chorallaries |
| A4 | As The Romans Do - Theo Katzman | Toons |
| A5 | How Deep Is Your Love - Calvin Harris and Disciples | Logarhythms |
| A6 | Tu Hi Junoon - Pritam, Mohit Chauhan | Ohms |
| A7 | I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry | Centrifugues |
| A8 | Title of the Song - Da Vinci’s Notebook | Asymptones |
| A9 | I Need U - BTS | Syncopasian |
The number of sounds in each clip is the same as the number of letters in the song name. This suggests that there is a mapping of letters to sounds, and that by understanding this “alphabeat” you will be able to decode the “strange messages” in the B-clips.
The mapping of letters to sounds is not one-to-one. Roughly, sounds that differ only by vocalization (rather than by mouth shape) are mapped to the same sound, with a choice made arbitrarily for letters with multiple pronunciations. The groupings are:
The remaining letters, excluding Q, X, and Z (which never occur) have unique sounds - these are H, J, L, R, S, and W. Below are all the sounds in a table, with (somewhat standard) sound names.
| Alphabeat | |
|---|---|
| A | hat |
| B | kick |
| C | k-snare |
| D | electro snare |
| E | hat |
| F | fuh |
| G | k-snare |
| H | heartbeat |
| I | hat |
| J | powerdown |
| K | rimshot |
| L | click |
| M | kick |
| N | electro snare |
| O | hat |
| P | kick |
| Q | |
| R | tongue trill |
| S | shhh |
| T | electro snare |
| U | hat |
| V | fuh |
| W | lip bass |
| X | |
| Y | hat |
| Z | |
Here is a recording of the entire alphabeat.
Once the alphabeat is decoded, we can parse the beatboxing sequences in the B clips. While some of the possibilities are fairly ambiguous (e.g. CLIO seems much worse than CLUE at first glance), they are clarified by their use in the next step - associating them to an MIT a cappella group in a way that gives a number.
| B-Clip possible decodings | B-clip decoding | MIT A Cappella Group | Explanation | Number | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | [bmp][aeiouy][cgk]sj[aeiouy]rs[aeiouy][aeiouy] | BUGS JERSEY | Toons | Bugs’ jersey number in Space Jam. | 1 |
| B2 | [cgk]l[aeiouy][aeiouy] | CLIO | Muses | Muses in birth order. | 2 |
| B3 | [dnt][aeiouy][cgk]h[aeiouy][dnt][aeiouy][bmp][aeiouy] | DICHOTOMY | Chorallaries | George Kelly’s personal construct theory. | 4 |
| B4 | [aeiouy]r[aeiouy][dnt][cgk][aeiouy][bmp]l[aeiouy][cgk][cgk][cgk][aeiouy]l[dnt] | ORANGE BLACK GOLD | Ohms | The resistance of a resistor with code orange black gold. | 3 |
| B5 | [bmp]h[aeiouy]s[bmp]h[aeiouy][dnt][aeiouy] | PHOSPHATE | Resonance | Number of resonance structures. | 4 |
| B6 | r[aeiouy][dnt][aeiouy][cgk][fv][aeiouy]r[cgk][aeiouy] | RIDE G FORCE | Centrifugues | The G Force of the Gravitron, the famous centrifugal force ride. | 3 |
| B7 | r[aeiouy][fv]l[aeiouy][aeiouy][dnt][aeiouy][dnt]s[bmp]l[aeiouy][cgk][aeiouy] | RIFLE UNITS PLACE | Syncopasian | The units place of the number associated to the Syncopation Rifle from Destiny. | 3 |
| B8 | [dnt][aeiouy][dnt]h[bmp][aeiouy]s[aeiouy][dnt][aeiouy][fv][aeiouy] | TANH POSITIVE | Asymptones | The positive asymptote of the hyperbolic tangent. | 1 |
| B9 | [dnt]h[aeiouy][aeiouy]s[aeiouy][dnt][dnt] | THOUSAND | Logarhythms | The logarithm of 1000. | 3 |
The B-clips are in alphabetical order by decoded phrase, suggesting that the final ordering to use comes from the A-clips. Indexing the number into the corresponding group’s song and reading in the order of the A-clips gives the answer COMA WHITE, another musical artist.
I was in the MIT Ohms for most of my undergrad at MIT. I really enjoyed being part of the MIT A Cappella community and wanted to put it into a puzzle somehow. The alphabeat mechanic was loosely inspired by several friends of mine from MIT Syncopasian, who would come up with "beatbox versions" of peoples' names by replacing the syllables of their name with similar beatbox sounds.
I elected to use the currently active a cappella groups in this puzzle, but since I'm no longer a student my data is secondhand. I apologize if I missed your group!