Solution to Sound Quality

by Naomi Cliffer & Roger Ford

The puzzle consists of an original electronic song. It contains some spoken words. If you listen carefully, it contains ten sentences:

15.8  The spot on the blotter was made by green ink.
13.7  It caught its hind paw in a rusty trap.
16.3  He broke a new shoelace that day.
 5.10 Mesh wire keeps chicks inside.
 5.2  The ship was torn apart on the sharp reef.
 8.4  The walled town was seized without a fight.
 4.9  The meal was cooked before the bell rang.
18.6  Sunday is the best part of the week.
25.5  The rush for funds reached its peak Tuesday.
26.1  Yell and clap as the curtain slides back.

All these sentences are Harvard Sentences, which are used to measure the quality of a signal. See, for example, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/harvard.html. There are 72 numbered lists of ten sentences.

Sort the sentences from 1 to 10 by where they appear in their list, and then take the letter corresponding to each list used. That spells out ZEPHYRMODE, the answer.


2006 MIT Mystery Hunt