Solvers are initially presented with a page of verse, and a series of seven staves in tablature notation.

The verses comprise fourteen rhyming couplets, with the final word of each couplet removed. Solvers can identify these missing words from the poem’s context. As an additional source of confirmation, the missing words are presented in alphabetical order.

Here is the completed verse:

Well, I’m of the faction
That’s rarin’ for ACTION
And roam’s what I do
When I’m feeling BLUE
I can’t help but yearn
Where the home fires BURN
So I’m dousing those lamps;
I’ll be staying in CAMPS
And I’m packing, I’ll note,
A warm tent and COAT
And a sleeping mat rolled
’Cause the nights do get COLD
I’m prepared, with my bag,
For the Fates: that old HAG
And her sisters who’re weaving
The trail I’ll be LEAVING
Behind. I won’t quit;
My road may be LIT
By the sun, or unseen
In the dark; what I MEAN
Is, I’m hardship-immune:
If a lone shriveled PRUNE
Is my meal, I won’t blanch,
I’ll just picture the RANCH
And its herds; if it’s drink
That I lack, I will THINK
Of when I’ll quench my thirst
Over onions and WURST

Solvers may notice that these words collectively include 63 letters. This number is also the sum of the number of strings presented across all seven tablature staves. Solvers will also notice that the number of words (14) is exactly twice the number of staves (7). Finally, solvers may also notice that none of the words have repeated letters.

Solvers can “string” together two words from the couplet word bank to assign letters to each set of tablature strings. The tablature strings are color coded. For each tablature staff, one word can be placed on the red-dotted strings, and the second word can be placed on the purple-dotted strings.

When they find the correct set of words, solvers can read the name of a musical instrument, left to right, across the tablature. In this way, the couplet words provide an ordered letter bank for decoding the tablature strings. The word “bank” is included in the flavor to clue this. Note further that the musical instrument will always have the same number of strings as the given staff. (The set of musical instruments in this puzzle are thus the set of stringed instruments with letter banks equal in length to their string number.)

For instance, the first tablature staff (ten strings) can be decoded using the words ACTION (red dots) and BLUE (purple dots). Assigning these ten letters to the staff, top to bottom, allows solvers to read LIUTO CANTABILE, a ten-stringed instrument in the mandolin family. This decoding also reveals the presence of an extra letter: LIU-(A)-TO CANTABILE. This is the fourth note on the first string, and an A (indicated below by a green circle).

The seven tabs solve as follows:

The extra note letters, in order, spell out A GOSPEL. In addition, the extra notes occur on the first through seventh positions of the tablature, once each, giving an order in which these notes (all on the top four strings) can be placed.

Solvers will also see a blank tablature staff at the bottom of the puzzle with green string dots indicating an unspecified number of strings. This extra staff indicates that solvers must create a new tablature from the extra notes, using each note’s position and string placement in the original staff. All the extra notes are on the first four strings of the pre-existing tablature staves and so solvers can produce the following:

Solvers can now label these strings top to bottom with LUKE (“a gospel”) to decode the final staff. This reveals a final stringed instrument, UKULELE, which is the puzzle answer. Consistent with all of the other instruments that form a part of this puzzle, a ukulele is a four-stringed instrument with a four-letter word bank.