Solution to Goldberg Variation
ALGORHYTHM
The spark for this puzzle came from Sandy's kids, who were at the time trying to keep busy during quarantine by building chain reactions out of whatever they could find in the house. We also had been creeping evermore into the absurd with these popups, and this was another step along that path.
In this puzzle, you're presented with a Rube Goldberg machine, and some descriptions to go with it. For each step along the way, one word is shown in ALL CAPS. Counting them reveals there are 26, so clearly they need to get mapped to the alphabet. But how?
Turns out each one can be phonetically attached to the sound of an English letter to make a new word. Like “b” + “four” = BEFORE. The flavor pushes you a little in this direction by saying "we heard" and mentioning the corn should go first. And a few words stand out like GNOME and NBA. A few words that can be attached to multiple possible letters, but among the full set, there's only unique correct solution. The full list:
| Letter | Word | Combined | Final letter piece |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | corn | acorn | A left |
| B | four | before | A crossbar |
| C | saw | see-saw | A right |
| D | notes | denotes | L spine |
| E | vent | event | L base |
| F | fuse | effuse | G curve |
| G | gnome | genome | G crossbar |
| H | eave | achieve | O left side |
| I | lid | eyelid | O right side |
| J | bird | jaybird | r vertical |
| K | nine | canine | r curve |
| L | bow | elbow | H left |
| M | bark | embark | H crossbar |
| N | gin | engine | H right |
| O | pin | opine | Y top-left |
| P | cock | peacock | Y spine |
| Q | tickle | cuticle | Y top-right |
| R | cane | arcane | T top-left |
| S | crow | escrow | T spine |
| T | bone | T-bone | T top-right |
| U | knight | unite | H left |
| V | toes | vetoes | H crossbar |
| W | NBA | WNBA | H right |
| X | ray | x-ray | M left vertical |
| Y | knot | why not? | M middle-left & -right |
| Z | row | zero | M right vertical |
So now we have an order. The last step involves reconstructing each step of the reaction, in our new alpha order. Visually, the steps are very clearly delineated, so it just takes sketching out each of the 26 steps on paper in order to reveal the 10 new letter shapes, which (liberally) spell ALGORHYTHM.
Notes
This puzzle got 2,575 correct entries in the 5 days the submission window was open.
One of our goals with this one was to make a puzzle that couldn’t be done (as easily) on a spreadsheet. Nothing against spreadsheet puzzles, we just wanted to challenge ourselves to see if we could make something more artistic. Certainly it was possible to bring the drawings into Photoshop, cut it up, and move things around, but redrawing things by hand was going to be faster for most folks.
The title was probably too punny by half, as the Bach “pun” falsely clued a musical theme that was not in fact there. We heard from lots of solvers who tried to map a musical staff on top of the drawing. (See notes below.) To all those people, we sincerely apologize! We are such rubes.
Here is Sandy’s sketch of the original version of this puzzle, which he did by raiding his daughter’s set of multi-colored markers:
Notes from solvers
Bill writes: My goodness, so many. In Goldberg Variations, I was convinced it was going to somehow play off Bach's structuring of that piece and require 30 different variations, where every third would be a canon and start overlapping somehow in a "row, row, row your boat" sense. I spent way too much time down a rabbit hole there.
Stephen writes: I swore that Goldberg Variations had a musical element and the photo was a musical staff. Tried to play the tune (not good, BTW). Thought maybe it represented chords that made a word. GABBADABBA?!?!
Lauren writes: I was CONVINCED for the longest time that in Goldberg Variations, turning on the light would cause the rooster to crow. They had to be next to each other. It just made sense.