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Stanford Engineering Puzzle

November 2008

As winter approaches, it’s time to gather around the old electronic music synthesizer and lift our voices in songs of the season. This puzzle is a code for words that have an association with the development of electronic music at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and so the code is presented in sheet music form.

All letters are lower-case in the code. The notes are assigned according to the placement of the letters on lined paper. Consonants which rise above the line are designated by notes which also have a rising stem. Consonants which drop below the line have a falling stem. If they neither rise nor fall, the note has no stem. Vowels are filled in. Consonants are not.

Anyway, to show that you have successfully completed the puzzle, e-mail Marge Kastner the name of the person you find pictured on the Web when you solve for the URL below. Have fun!

Music Code

"Winning" entries

Thank you to all who let us know where the bugs were in our music. Those of you who are entering this page Nov. 5 and later have them to thank for an easier puzzle. Did anyone notice that there were six lines on each staff instead of the usual five? How about naming that tune? All the notes would play a recognizable tune, just not at the right rhythm. Here are the folks who get Web credits for their solutions -- the first 20 in the gate and every 10th one after that.

  • 1) Ed Wilson
  • 2) Florian Gicquel
  • 3) Michael Connors
  • 4) Javier Lozano
  • 5) Archanna Srinivasan
  • 6) Gary Herman
  • 7) Jason Wolfe
  • 8) Nick Baxter
  • 9) Wade Powell
  • 10) Carl Farrell
  • 11) Barton Evans
  • 12) Paul Fisher
  • 13) Kevin Shin
  • 14) Heather White
  • 15) Kenneth Newcomer
  • 16) Coral Cavanagh
  • 17) William Streeter
  • 18) Brad Davids
  • 19) Larry Willard
  • 20) Mark Perkins
  • 30) Martin Frost
  • 40) Elise Campbell
  • 50) Eric Juline
  • 60) Lila Gentry
  • 70) Roger Bourke
  • 80) Craig Kuglen
  • 90) Gus Hoehn
  • 100) John Wiese
  • 110) Andrew Nelson
  • 120) Lynda Leidiger
  • 130) Steve Farrington
  • 140) Jack Macek
  • 150)
  • 160)
  • 170)

Do you want to try your hand at past puzzles? Go to our Archive page.