The puzzle is presented as nine audio clips, each with from one to four numbers following it.
The nine “melodies” are strings of pitches, ranging from C up to B, in quarter notes with occasional rests between them. More about them later.
The lyrics to these melodies are well-known movie quotes, though the quotes don’t align with the beginnings and ends of the clips (in most cases). So the first thing solvers should do is reorder the clips so that the string of movie quotes makes sense. That reordered set looks like this:
Order | Quote | Movie |
---|---|---|
1 | I drink your milkshake! | There Will Be Blood |
2 | Yo, Adrian! | Rocky |
3 | Pardon me, boy. Is this the Transylvania station? | Young Frankenstein |
4 | Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope. | Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope |
5 | I could’ve had class. I could’ve been a contender. | On the Waterfront |
6 | Goblin King! Wherever you may be, take this child of mine far away from me! | Labyrinth |
7 | He has his father’s eyes. | Rosemary’s Baby |
8 | Phone home. | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial |
9 | All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up. | Sunset Boulevard |
10 | Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler. | Office Space |
11 | No, I’ll just be hanging around the mistletoe hoping to be kissed. | Love Actually |
The first letters of the eleven movies spell the message TRY SOLRESOL.
There are several sources of information about Solresol, including the website Sidosi (a compilation of information about Solresol, the universal musical language), which gives this brief history:
Solresol is a constructed (consciously built, rather than naturally evolved) a priori (not based on a previous language) language. It is based on the solfège scale (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si), with each note being a syllable upon which words of 1–5 syllables are built. It was created by François Sudre in 1827, and Sudre published a major book about it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866. Solresol reached a peak in popularity with the 1902 publication of the Grammaire du Solresol by Boleslas Gajewski. Since then, it has declined in popularity due to the creation of dozens of other constructed languages.1 For more information, please check out the Resources page.
Other useful resources include:
Once solvers learn about Solresol, they can translate the nine melodic clips. Each Solresol word is a string of notes, with a single rest indicating a space between words.
The sheet music showing the nine clips with both their movie-quote lyrics and their solfège syllables (above the staff) can be viewed here.
The nine melodies, in solfège, read like this:
mirefado | simi | fa | redo | sifa | midosi | |
domifare | la | remirere | ||||
laresolla | la | doremi | ||||
lasolfado | dore | la | lafasoldo | |||
dore | domifare | la | domidoresol | siremisol | ||
simi | redo | relamire | ||||
mila | do | resilasi | mimiremi | remifala | ||
dofa | rere | solmisire | domi | sido | do | silasila |
midofala | la | famisila | dosolsisol | la | dolasolla |
Solvers can use the Solresol dictionary to figure out what these “words” mean in Solresol. The key insight is recognizing that they form another nine famous movie quotations.
Here are the nine translations. Note that Solresol words represent concepts more than specific parts of speech, so solvers will need to use their knowledge of film quotes to help extract the particular meanings referenced here.
1. mirefado simi fa redo sifa midosi
2. domifare la remirere
3. laresolla la doremi
4. lasolfado dore la lafasoldo
5. dore domifare la domidoresol siremisol
6. simi redo relamire
7. mila do resilasi mimiremi remifala
8. dofa rere solmisire domi sido do silasila
9. midofala la famisila dosolsisol la dolasolla
Once the titles of the nine films have been determined, the index numbers given with each clip can be used to extract letters from the reordered film titles. These letters are all from A–G, and again form Solresol words, one per film title.
This chart shows the quotes and their films, with the extracted letters in red. It also shows the resulting notes and their Solresol equivalents.
Quote | Film Titles | Notes | Solresol |
---|---|---|---|
Say hello to my little friend | Scarface | C | do |
Be the ball | Caddyshack | C D C | doredo |
Seize the day | Dead Poets Society | E C | mido |
Show me the money | Jerry Maguire | A | la |
I am the pumpkin king | The Nightmare Before Christmas | G F E C | solfamido |
Good morning, my neighbors | Coming To America | C G C A | dosoldola |
There's no place like home | The Wizard Of Oz | D | re |
He taught you how not to lose | Searching For Bobby Fischer | A C G C | ladosoldo |
Leave the gun, take the cannoli | The Godfather | E D E | miremi |
The final Solresol quote can be translated thus:
do doredo mido la solfamido dosoldola re ladosoldo miremi
This is a quote from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, which is the answer to this puzzle.
1. It is the humble opinion of your authors that, in fact, the presence of “dozens of other constructed languages” wasn’t the primary reason for the decline of a language that requires everyone to memorize the vague meanings of 1000s of random sets of pitches.
If you want to learn more about Solresol and other invented languages, the authors highly recommend In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent.