Solution to Time & Place

This puzzle strongly alludes to the processing that occurs in the cochlea, the organ in the inner ear responsible for turning the mechanical vibrations of sound into an electrical signal for the brain. This organ spatially separates the frequency components of the sound: the apex responds best to low frequencies, and the base responds best to high frequencies. Additionally, the membrane within the organ also vibrates synchronously to the oscillations of the incoming sound. Together, this provides a “time” and “place” code of auditory information for the brain. This knowledge is unnecessary for solving the puzzle, but identifying this reference could aid in solving the puzzle.

This puzzle is solved in two stages. The first stage of the puzzle makes use of the modulating noise contained within each sound clip. One may notice that each sound clip contains a band of noise in a different frequency region than the others, organized from low frequency at the “Apex” to high frequency at the “Base”. When the sound clips are added together, noise-vocoded speech of the following sentence can be heard: “Can you make these song clips go faster? The answer has got a tight schedule.”

In the next stage of the puzzle, each song clip needs to be sped up by about 7x. In doing so, one can hear a number spoken, overlaid on the clip. These numbers are used to index into the names of the cities referred to in each song.

Nantes — “Nantes” by Beirut

Chicago — “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens

Amsterdam — “Amsterdam” by Imagine Dragons

Philadelphia — “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bruce Springstein

Barcelona — “Barcelona” by Freddie Mercury & Monserrat Caballé

Allentown — “Allentown” by Billy Joel

Perth — “Perth” by Bon Iver

Ordered from “Base” to “Apex” this spells thepooh.

The character in the show Winnie-the-Pooh who has “got a tight schedule” is GOPHER, which is the answer.