The Mystery Mix
Several years ago, 12 or 13 years now, I created a mix CD with a dozen or so of my favorite tunes and placed unnamed copies of the disc in each of my family’s Christmas stockings—in each adult’s stocking, that is, as my grandsons were then still quite small. Each track on the playlist shared a commonality that I didn’t reveal; however, I included a crossword puzzle I created that they could use to discover the playlist's mystery theme. This game proved to be a lot of fun. And I’ll add, it also stirred up some good-natured sibling rivalry. As Christmas approached the following year, they asked if I could do another. And so, an annual family tradition was born.
Each year, I’ve watched with delight as they’ve eagerly awaited my new mystery mix. At first, the players were Gena, our two daughters, Leigh Ann and Laura Beth, and my son-in-law Scot. My second son-in-law, Cole, has become an avid participant since he’s joined the family; he’s brought a new level of energy and competitiveness to the game. As my grandsons got older, I created a second, easier mix for them. That only lasted a couple of years as their interest waned a bit. However, Peyton, my second oldest grandchild, has been playing with the adults for a few years now. He surprised us all with a runner-up finish in his initial go at the big puzzle.
For a few years following that very first mix, I felt that an additional puzzle was needed to give the game a little more juice. Winning required correctly guessing the mix’s common theme and solving the secondary puzzle. I’ve used crosswords and acrostics. Once, I simply asked them to come up with a creative title for the year’s mix of songs; the one I felt was most ingenious took the prize. With each successive year, the mystery theme got a little harder, and naturally, so did the secondary puzzles. For 2015’s edition, nine of the ten songs each mentioned one of the numbers from one to nine somewhere in the lyrics. The lead song on the playlist mentioned no number and stood in the place of zero. For that initial track, I used the Beatles’ odd little 50-second recording called ‘Dig It’ as an embedded clue to the mystery theme (Dig It = digit). Clever, huh? Well, I thought so. So did everybody else until they got to the puzzle sheet I’d devised (my girls would say ‘deviously devised’). It contained 16 math questions constructed with vague references to various musical artists and their songs. Some of the clues were fairly easy, others were—well, unfairly, okay, deviously—hard. One example was ‘What is the sum of Paul’s Pepper age and Brubeck’s break time?’ That was one of the simpler ones. The answer is 69; Paul McCartney’s ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album added to Dave Brubeck’s popular jazz tune ‘Take Five’ (64+5=69). Yeah, right, what was I thinking? Everyone guessed the ‘digit’ theme early on, but Leigh Ann was the only one to even attempt my CPA Exam-like ‘songmath’ puzzle. To her credit, I’ll say, she came very close to solving it, with the help of a friend and a lot of googling. However, I had to admit that the fragdazzling thing was grossly hard and several questions were somewhat ambiguous. With that I learned an important lesson: A good puzzle should be hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard that no one wants to tackle it. Doh! So, faced with their grumbling, I agreed that future editions would have only one aspect, guess the mystery theme. Whoever is the first to submit that specific commonality wins. Everybody seems to be happy with that now.
There are typically no prizes awarded, but there is a traveling trophy and a wall plaque displaying each year’s theme and winner. And, of course, to the winner goes the bragging rights for a whole year.
Laura Beth, not too happily, handing off the traveling mystery mix trophy to hubby Cole, the 2017 winner. (25 December 2017)
The Wall of Honor.
In recent years, as word of my annual mystery mix spread, I started sharing the playlists with a few of my closest music-minded friends. And now that I’ve started this blog, I’ve been encouraged to open the door a bit wider. So what follows is a mystery mix for you, my dear readers. I know this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re so inclined, I’d love for you to give it a go. I’m pretty sure there are some fellow puzzle and music fans out there who will want to participate. Even if you don’t solve it, I hope you’ll enjoy the eclectic mix of songs and artists. Have fun with it.
(A note to my family: Not to worry, I’ll still have a mix for you at Christmas, as usual; a different one, of course.)
First a few instructions & rules: All the songs in the playlist are related by a specific common thread. Your task is to identify this mystery connection. (Hint: this commonality is not topical or in any way related to the holidays or the 2020 pandemic, nor is it related to anything external to the songs themselves.) Your answer must be submitted via the submission form below, with the first person submitting the correct answer being declared the winner. However, that declaration will not be made until Tuesday, December 15. If you have second thoughts, no problem, there is no limit to how many times you may submit. The accuracy of any submission will not be divulged before a winner is announced. If no correct entries are received by December 15, a hint will be emailed to all participants and the game will continue until a correct answer is received or until it dies a natural death due to lack of participation.
And an important note: I would ask that you not spoil things for the other participants by revealing your submission or by discussing possible solutions and giving hints in the comments section or on Facebook and other public forums.
The Mystery Playlist
Bonus Track:
Official Submission Form:
WORDS TO PONDER
com·mon·al·i·ty (noun):
the state of sharing features or attributes.
www.dictionary.cambridge.org
com·mon (adj.):
c. 1300, "belonging to all, owned or used jointly, general, of a public nature or character," from Old French comun "common, general, free, open, public" (9c., Modern French commun), from Latin communis "in common, public, shared by all or many; general, not specific; familiar, not pretentious." A compound adjective formed from ko- "together" + mun, “shared," hence literally "shared by all.”
www.etymonline.com
[I find it interesting that the second element of this compound is from the Latin munia ("duties, public duties, functions") is the same root in the word “municipal" and connotes public, for all, for the common good.]