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What is the next song in the list?

  • Pedal To The Medal
  • Not Inside -- Outside
  • The Final Countdown
  • Every Rose Has Its Thorn
  • .........

The Puzzle

Within these dots, you shall find a magical, mystical, hidden message. A (wo)man more focused on the music than these dots would have a jump start. To determine what they mean, you must pay attention to whats already been played, for those songs hold the key.

???decimal???

Some of these things are not like the others,
watch what you do, or you might have your druthers.

A Final Clue

too lag cof fee

Hints?

- The first four songs reveal what type of puzzle this is.
- Once you know what type of puzzle it is, the hyphenated endings will begin to make sense as there is a unique attribute to this puzzle that may not be immediately obvious.
- A small hint may be steganographically hidden for after you have halfway decoded the puzzle.
- Pay attention to the features of what comes before the hyphens ;)
- Yahtzee!!!

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    $\begingroup$ I put my fingers over these dots... but I cant feel anything. >:-| $\endgroup$
    – Varon
    Commented Mar 8, 2016 at 22:38
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    $\begingroup$ Ooh f" is in on this. Should be cracked by tonight. ;) $\endgroup$
    – Z. Dailey
    Commented Mar 8, 2016 at 22:51
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    $\begingroup$ Wrong rabbit hole. That one has a honey badger in it. ;) @Khale_Kitha $\endgroup$
    – Z. Dailey
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 17:21
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    $\begingroup$ Ah - well at least he don't care. $\endgroup$
    – Khale_Kitha
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 17:22
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Chat: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/37023/musical-in-nature $\endgroup$
    – Z. Dailey
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 20:22

3 Answers 3

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OK so. Collaborative effort has paid off once again.

The answer is

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

This was arrived at with the following logic:

Original Puzzle: To determine what they mean, you must pay attention to whats already been played, for those songs hold the key.

Hint: The first four songs reveal what type of puzzle this is and Once you know what type of puzzle it is, the hyphenated endings will begin to make sense as there is a unique attribute to this puzzle that may not be immediately obvious.

Using a single word from each song title, we can make the phrase Pe[t]al[s] Outside the Rose, which is a type of "hidden rule" puzzle, the actual rules of which are described in Matt's answer. Using this information, as well as the translation of the Braille provided in the Community Wiki answer, we can come to the list of values shown in Matt's answer.

As the aforementioned answer states, we can then translate the pairs of numbers into ASCII, giving us PL4Y B34T 4BBY S1T3. With a little creative assumption, we can expand this as "Play Beat[les'] Abb[e]y[ Road] S[ide]1T[rack] 3", which just happens to be "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", the "Tool-Ag-Coffee" hinted at above.

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Not a solution, but here's a conversion of the image to text, to make this puzzle accessible to the blind. :)

Braille:

⠼⠁⠋⠉⠃⠉⠑⠋⠁⠤⠚ ⠼⠃⠃⠋⠙⠋⠁⠃⠃⠤⠚
⠼⠉⠉⠃⠙⠁⠋⠉⠉⠤⠁⠀⠼⠁⠃⠉⠋⠉⠉⠃⠁⠤⠚
⠼⠋⠙⠁⠉⠑⠃⠙⠋⠤⠁⠀⠼⠁⠙⠙⠃⠉⠋⠙⠁⠤⠚
⠼⠋⠑⠃⠃⠁⠙⠑⠋⠤⠚⠀⠼⠙⠁⠑⠉⠑⠋⠁⠙⠤⠁

⠼⠁⠋⠉⠑⠃⠙⠋⠁⠤⠚⠀⠼⠋⠃⠙⠉⠉⠉⠃⠋⠤⠚
⠼⠋⠁⠉⠑⠙⠃⠁⠋⠤⠁⠀⠼⠁⠙⠋⠙⠋⠉⠙⠁⠤⠁
⠼⠃⠙⠉⠉⠙⠉⠙⠃⠤⠁⠀⠼⠙⠙⠙⠃⠉⠙⠙⠙⠤⠚
⠼⠁⠁⠉⠉⠉⠉⠁⠁⠤⠚⠀⠼⠙⠃⠋⠑⠁⠃⠃⠙⠤⠚

⠼⠉⠙⠁⠃⠙⠉⠙⠉⠤⠁⠀⠼⠁⠁⠋⠙⠃⠉⠁⠁⠤⠚
⠼⠋⠋⠉⠃⠙⠑⠋⠋⠤⠚⠀⠼⠁⠉⠋⠙⠃⠉⠉⠁⠤⠚
⠼⠙⠃⠉⠉⠙⠉⠃⠙⠤⠚⠀⠼⠋⠁⠙⠉⠑⠃⠁⠋⠤⠚
⠼⠋⠑⠁⠃⠙⠃⠑⠋⠤⠚⠀⠼⠁⠉⠑⠃⠙⠉⠉⠁⠤⠁

⠼⠑⠁⠃⠋⠙⠋⠁⠑⠤⠚⠀⠼⠃⠃⠃⠉⠙⠉⠃⠃⠤⠁
⠼⠁⠋⠉⠙⠉⠃⠋⠁⠤⠚⠀⠼⠋⠃⠑⠉⠁⠑⠃⠋⠤⠁
⠼⠁⠉⠃⠑⠃⠋⠉⠁⠤⠚⠀⠼⠁⠃⠉⠙⠙⠉⠃⠁⠤⠚
⠼⠙⠋⠑⠃⠙⠉⠋⠙⠤⠁⠀⠼⠁⠃⠙⠋⠉⠙⠃⠁⠤⠁

Possible translation:

16323561-0 22646122-0
33241633-1 12363321-0
64135246-1 14423641-0
65221456-0 41535614-1

16352461-0 62433326-0
61354216-1 14646341-1
24334342-1 44423444-0
11333311-0 42651224-0

34124343-1 11642311-0
66324566-0 13642331-0
42334324-0 61435216-0
65124256-0 13524331-1

51264615-0 22234322-1
16343261-0 62531526-1
13252631-0 12344321-0
46524364-1 12463421-1
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    $\begingroup$ Nice work. I did the first chunk, but was too lazy to do it all. :) (also, shouldn't they all start with #?) $\endgroup$
    – Alconja
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 3:33
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    $\begingroup$ Well I've tried playing the numbers, but it wasn't anything recognizable. I also tried actually converting the braille into the sheet music version of braille, but after getting through the first line I realized that it's either clearly not that, or it's 100% gibberish. (More accidentals than notes, for example.)O $\endgroup$
    – Khale_Kitha
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 14:34
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    $\begingroup$ @question_asker I considered whether or not those lines may have designated importance, validity, or even octaves, but it didn't go anywhere, so far. It's worth noting, however, if you remove the ⠼ from the beginning of each line, then they turn into purely a-g, with the dash being an a or a j. $\endgroup$
    – Khale_Kitha
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 20:18
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    $\begingroup$ @Khale_Kitha I'm actually curious how that sounds. Might have to play it myself. :) $\endgroup$
    – Z. Dailey
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 19:31
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    $\begingroup$ Everyone's noticed that the last two digits of every group are the reverse of the first two, right? Any idea what that means? $\endgroup$
    – Hugh Meyers
    Commented Mar 21, 2016 at 13:33
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NOT THERE YET...

In the chat room, I've been working with @Khale_Kitha and @question_asker to get a little further.

Turns out the translated braille is this type of puzzle:

Petals Around the Rose - Numbers 1 - 6 represent faces of a 6-sized die. Petals are counted as non-center pips when there exists a centered pip. The only numbers that have these are 3 (2 "petals") and 5 (4 "petals")

With this information we computed the translation like so:

Counting 1, 2, 4 and 6 as 0, 3 as 2 and 5 as 4, we sum each sequence.
16323561 becomes 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 4 + 0 + 0 = 8, and so on for each sequence.

What of the hyphens?

Well, adding 2s and 4s can result in any even number. We took it to mean subtraction, so where there is -1, we subtract 1 from the sum. Likewise, for -0, we subtract 0. This resulted in all the calculations representing numbers from 0 - 9, as such:

8 0
7 6
5 2
8 9

6 6
5 1
5 2
8 4

5 2
6 6
6 6
8 9

8 3
4 9
8 4
5 1

Neat. We proceeded to translate that:

Using each line as a decimal representation of an ASCII character, we got:

PL4Y B34T 4BBY S1T3

From there we started making some guesses, but this is where we started getting stuck:

Is that referencing The Beatles' Abbey Road? Abbey Someone? Why are only the vowels represented by numbers? What of the hint "too lag cof fee"?

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  • $\begingroup$ You give me way too much credit by even mentioning my name here $\endgroup$
    – question_asker
    Commented Mar 23, 2016 at 15:18
  • $\begingroup$ Play the Beatles on the Abbey Road site? (Abbey road.com) $\endgroup$
    – Hugh Meyers
    Commented Mar 23, 2016 at 20:46
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah, we considered that, as well as a number of B-Side tracks to related Beetles songs (which all, incidentally, ended up being on the Abbey Road album) $\endgroup$
    – Khale_Kitha
    Commented Mar 23, 2016 at 20:48
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps the hint is hexadecimal, like 700 1a9 c0f fee. That doesn't mean anything to me, though. $\endgroup$
    – dan04
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 5:33
  • $\begingroup$ @dan04 You're right, but it was a new thought, at least. I don't think we'd considered that. -- Though I think it'd be 700 1a6 c0f fee $\endgroup$
    – Khale_Kitha
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 12:30

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