The Tower of Eye
by Austin Lei, Ethan A. Chi, Justin Yokota, and Mona Wang; Audio clips by VocaMix
Answer: VOCAL CORD
This is the meta for the Ascent round, written by Eye. During the Ascent round, each puzzle was associated with some foreign language, with answers being submitted in that language. The following is a table of answers, along with their respective languages (Note: throughout this solution, English translations are provided for clarity/convenience; however, the puzzle is fully solvable without translating to English):
| Puzzle Title | Puzzle Answer | Puzzle Answer (English) | Associated Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book of Fixed Stars | مصرف | BANK | Arabic |
| Fountain | 뇌우 | THUNDERSTORM | Korean |
| How Come This Crossword Got No Grid One? | BUMI | EARTH | Malay |
| Moral of the Story | ΦΛΕΓΜΟΝΗ | INFLAMMATION | Greek |
| Mosaics | TAIFUN | TYPHOON | German |
| My Fun Bow | UTUKUFU | GLORY | Swahili |
| North Carolina Shopping List | ᎣᏪᎵᎯᏍᏗᏍᎬ | ANXIETY | Cherokee |
| To Numbers and Back Again | जन्तुः | ANIMAL | Sanskrit |
| Walking Tour | GOLFLENGTE | WAVELENGTH | Dutch |
The meta presents some flavortext, and a set of nine chibi characters. Each chibi, when clicked, provides a voice clip of an artificial voice saying a crossword clue. Further, each chibi is surrounded by a number of boxes, of which one (or part of one) is colored.
Identifying the chibis and voices reveals that they are Vocaloids, a set of voice synthesizers originating from Japan, which are designed for music and singing. Identification of the Vocaloids is aided by the fact that each seal is colored according to the primary color of the Vocaloid, and that the chibis are presented in alphabetical order by Vocaloid:
| Color | Clue | Surrounding Boxes | Index of Colored Box | Vocaloid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purple | A better one is lower | 5 | 3 | Gackpo |
| Green | Fourth of twelve, twice | 2 | 2 (left half) | GUMI |
| Light Pink | Language | 10 | 1 | IA |
| Blue | Bug | 7 | 1 | KAITO |
| Yellow | Historical figure | 2 | 2 (top half) | Len |
| Magenta | When fried, it's sweet | 6 | 2 | Luka |
| Tan | The front line | 7 | 1 | MAYU |
| Red | School | 5 | 5 | MEIKO |
| Orange | Tea type | 4 | 1 | Rin |
Translating the flavortext to Japanese reveals that "love" (愛) and "sorrow" (哀) in Japanese are homophones; both are pronounced "ai", which is itself homophonous with Eye's name. This suggests that Japanese homophones are relevant.
Googling "The Tower of Ai" leads to the Vocaloid song "Blessed Messiah and the Tower of Ai" (English translation, lyrics). The relevance of this song is confirmed in several ways:
- The titular tower is an allusion to the Tower of Babel, which fits both the theming and gimmick of the round.
- The homophonous nature of 愛 and 哀 is used for dramatic effect in the song lyrics.
- The song uses 10 Vocaloids; the nine Vocaloids identified above, and Hatsune Miku. Over the course of the song, each Vocaloid (except Miku) receives one of the nine blessings of the Tower (one at a time as they climb the tower).
The last point suggests that the blessings and their pairing to the Vocaloids are relevant. Within the song, each blessing is given a name.
Translating each feeder answer to Japanese (per the Google Translate symbol at the bottom of the puzzle) reveals that each answer is a two-Kanji compound; further, each compound shares one Kanji with the name of exactly one blessing. It is thus possible to match feeder answers to blessings (and by extension Vocaloids and their clues).
| Song Order | Blessing Name | Blessing Name (English) | Vocaloid | Feeder Answer | Japanese Translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 華やぐ波 | Flowering Wave | KAITO | GOLFLENGTE | 波長 |
| 2 | 炎の宴 | Inferno Banquet | MEIKO | ΦΛΕΓΜΟΝΗ | 炎症 |
| 3 | 恵みの陽光 | Blessed Sunlight | IA | UTUKUFU | 栄光 |
| 4 | 安息の闇 | Resting Darkness | MAYU | ᎣᏪᎵᎯᏍᏗᏍᎬ | 不安 |
| 5 | 揺蕩う大地 | Trembling Earth | Gackpo | BUMI | 地球 |
| 6 | 雷鳴の囃子 | Accompaniment of Thunder | GUMI | 뇌우 | 雷雨 |
| 7 | 旋風のロンド | Whirlwind's Rondo | Luka | TAIFUN | 台風 |
| 8 | 白銀の園 | Garden of Silver Snow | Rin | مصرف | 銀行 |
| 9 | マグマの胎動 | Magma's Fetal Movement | Len | जन्तुः | 動物 |
By reading the unused Kanji of each feeder answer, we find that it is homophonous to another Kanji which answers the crossword clue said by the associated Vocaloid (if the unused Kanji has multiple readings, the clued Kanji is always homophonous with the reading used in the given compound). Several clues require a Japanese cultural background in order to be understood; the relevant context for each clue is noted below.
| Feeder (Japanese) | Unused Kanji (Romaji) | Clue | Clued Kanji | Clued Kanji (English) | Reason | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 波長 | chou | Bug | 蝶 | Butterfly | |
| 2 | 炎症 | shou | School | 小 | Small | Literal translation of "Elementary School" (小学校) |
| 3 | 栄光 | ei | Language | 英 | English | |
| 4 | 不安 | fu | The front line | 歩 | Pawn | In Shogi, the third row of pieces consist of pawns (歩兵, which is often shortened to 歩). Note that "fu" is an uncommon reading of this character outside this context. |
| 5 | 地球 | kyuu | A better one is lower | 級 | Class | The Kyuu system is used to measure (generally) amateur-level skill in various sports and games, with better players having a lower Kyuu. |
| 6 | 雷雨 | u | Fourth of twelve, twice | 卯 | Rabbit | This character is used in two main contexts over the more common 兔: in reference to the Zodiac (in which it is the fourth animal), and in the compound 卯月, the traditional name for April. Notably, this appears to be entirely coincidental. |
| 7 | 台風 | tai | When fried, it's sweet | 鯛 | Sea Bream | Taiyaki is a common Japanese confection. A literal translation of the name would be "Fried Sea Bream". |
| 8 | 銀行 | kou | Tea type | 紅 | Red | Black tea in Japanese is 紅茶, in reference to the red color of the tea. |
| 9 | 動物 | butsu | Historical figure | 仏 | Buddha |
We can then translate the clued Kanji back to the original language of the feeder answer; this is hinted by the Google Translate icon at the bottom of the puzzle. As further confirmation, these translations fit the boxes that surround the chibi characters. The colored section of each enumeration highlights one phoneme; taking these phonemes and ordering by the order in which the blessings appear in the song yields the answer VOCAL CORD.
| Clued Kanji | Clued Kanji (English) | Feeder Language | Clued Kanji (Translated) | Index / Length | Letter | Letter (Eng.) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 蝶 | Butterfly | Dutch | Vlinder | 1/7 | V | V |
| 2 | 小 | Small | Greek | μικρό | 5/5 | Ó | O |
| 3 | 英 | English | Swahili | kiingereza | 1/10 | K | C |
| 4 | 歩 | Pawn | Cherokee | ᎠᎦᏘᏓᏍᏙᏗ | 1/7 | Ꭰ | A |
| 5 | 級 | Class | Malay | kelas | 3/5 | L | L |
| 6 | 卯 | Rabbit | Korean | 토끼 | 2/2 (left) | ㄲ | C |
| 7 | 鯛 | Sea Bream | German | Dorade | 2/6 | O | O |
| 8 | 紅 | Red | Arabic | أحمر | 4/4 (right-to-left) | ر | R |
| 9 | 仏 | Buddha | Sanskrit | बुद्ध | 2/2 (top) | द | D |
Authors' Notes
For such a short meta, there’s a surprising amount of data to collect…
The original form of this round was one of my first experiences writing puzzles. When we first started writing for Teammate Hunt, one of our first steps was to run an internal potluck. As part of that potluck, I ended up writing a full Japanese round, with five puzzles and a meta. While most of the puzzles of the set were solved during the potluck, it was ultimately deemed too niche, so of the round, only one puzzle ever got published. Still, this proved a valuable lesson; for one, it showed just how difficult it is to Wheel-of-Fortune a foreign language, which directly led to our decision not to have the meta extract to Japanese here.
When writing this round, a big concern was to ensure an even distribution of languages; one thing I didn’t want was for this round to end up with a bunch of Romance languages. Previous versions of this meta had a wider breadth of languages in order to fit this; at one point, we had an ASL answer (which got cut due to extraction ambiguity) and a Puflantu answer (this would have replaced what is now the Dutch answer, with the target clue Kanji being 兆 or 1 trillion. Since Puflantu uses base 6, this resulted in extracting from a word around 250 characters long. Unfortunately, we couldn’t quite get an answer working, given how few words exist in Puflantu). Our final set ended up with quite a variety of language families (though there did end up being a small cluster of European languages), so I’m quite happy with the results.