Solution to Recombination

by Cindy Keeler, Oliver Kosut, and Alex Vandiver
Juggling by Darin Marriott

The video is made up of five clips, each with three sometimes-odd objects being juggled in a siteswap pattern. For a part of each clip, a number is shown in the upper left hand corner of the frame. First identify the siteswap patterns, and then, for all tosses that are thrown (but not necessarily caught) while the number is present, index into the name of the object by the siteswap number of the toss. This will spell a word.

For example, in the video labeled "7", the three objects are a mango, a cauliflower, and an apricot, and the siteswap pattern is 451235313333 (the number of 3s at the end is not relevant). The siteswap numbers and tossed objects in the order that they come are as follows:

4 APRICOT (number appears)
5 MANGO
1 CAULIFLOWER
2 CAULIFLOWER
3 APRICOT
5 CAULIFLOWER
3 MANGO
1 APRICOT (number disappears)
3 APRICOT
3 MANGO
3 CAULIFLOWER

The blue letters are the ones that should be extracted; they spell OCARINA. Note also that in the video labeled "5", a ball with an ocarina drawn on it is one of the objects. In fact, for four of the five videos, the clued word refers an object that appears in another video. The clued objects are all white juggling balls, drawn on so as to indicate (sometimes obliquely) what they are. Thus extracting a word from one clip confirms what the clued object should be called in its own clip.

The siteswap patterns, objects, and extracted words are (parentheses indicate when the number is present):

3: 5(6114144)1333 with grail, zucchini, lemon → ILLOGIC
4: (441461)31333 with conceit, potato, tennisball → CATNIP
5: 44(13334)41333 with garlic, ocarina, onion → GRAIL
6: (3423364)20333 with nectarine, illogic, one → CONCEIT
7: 4(5123531)333 with mango, cauliflower, apricot → OCARINA

Note that CATNIP does not appear in another clip, and clip "7" does not contain an object clued by another clip. Thus the clips form a chain, in which a clip cluing an object is followed by the clip containing that object. In this order, the numbers are 75364, which is itself a 5-object siteswap pattern. Performing the same extraction on this pattern using the five clued objects in the same chain-based order (ocarina, grail, illogic, conceit, catnip) gives ALLINCLAPC, or CALLINCLAP. Call in CLAP (something one sometimes does while juggling), and you'll find you are correct.