Crossed Wires

by Ian Tullis and Stephen Peters
Answer: NETWORKING

The ten MP3 files mixes together ten dialogues, each of which references a color:

• Black -- A description of "Black Monday", the 1987 stock market crash
• Blue -- A series of quotes from the film The Blues Brothers
• Brown -- A dispatcher's get-together for UPS
• Green -- A brief description of Green's theorem
• Orange -- A kickoff meeting for an MIT Orange Tour
• Red -- An excerpt from a 1979 Kremlin Politburo meeting
• Slate -- Part of the masthead from the Slate website
• Violet -- An excerpt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, introducing Violet Beauregarde
• White -- A list of buildings designed by Sanford White
• Yellow -- A dramatic reading of the lyrics of two songs by the band Yello

Each MP3 is 88 seconds long, and every 8 seconds two dialogues are swapped. In order, the swaps are: Black/Brown, White/Slate, Yellow/Slate, Violet/Green, Black/Slate, Yellow/Green, Black/Blue, Red/Brown, Black/Brown, Red/Orange. These swaps are shown on this diagram.

Each MP3 also contains the words "twisted" and "pair". Using the telecommunications 25-pair color code, this maps to the numbers 14, 5, 20, 23, 15, 18, 11, 9, 14, 7. Converting to letters gives the answer NETWORKING.