by Ben Monreal
featuring Greg Edelston and Emma Meersman as Willing Yoga Mannequins
Answer: STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Problem: Arbor Day Town/​Pi Day Town

In this yoga instructional video, each new lesson begins with a pose named in English (“boat pose” for example) and used as the starting point for reaching a strange new pose, identified in subtitles with a weird and vaguely-Dutch-looking name (“remt wuclek vrijgenrlei”, for example). (A Dutch speaker or translation engine will tell you they’re nonsense—in fact these names were generated by a char-rnn neural net trained, but not very well, on a Dutch translation of a Sherlock Holmes novel.)

The English pose names are real standard yoga asanas, each of which has a Sanskrit name with a standard Latin transliteration; for example boat pose is “paripurna navasana.”

For each pose, you should notice that the cod-Dutch and Sanskrit names share an enumeration—and furthermore that they further have a single-letter collision. There is a U in the sixth character in both “paripurna navasana” and “slabhueik tewersor”, for example.

Read those collision letters in the order of the video, and they spell UNEARTHLY HIERONYMUS ASANAS.

If you didn’t magically recognize them from the poses, that explains what the yoga studios are: they match up with the three panels of the Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights—beginners in Eden, Earth yoga in the “Earthly delights” center panel, hot yoga in the left-panel Hell.

Zoom into the Garden (have a bottle of eyebleach handy) and find the unique person/animal/person-animal hybrid/eggbirdbeast shown holding each new weird yoga pose you have just learned, and indeed each such character is in the position of one of the numbered yoga mats.

Asana
(Sanskrit)
New pose
(Dutch)
Letter crash# on yoga matIndex
D/S
Bosch
image
Yoga
image
1PARIPURNA NAVASANASLABHUEIK TEWERSORU4B/I
2UTTANA SHISHOSANAORKINT WADROUIDENN12U/O
3SETU BANDHA SAVANGASANAREMT WUCLEK VRIJGENRLEIE7C/N
4MARJARYASANA / BITILASANAHAARTERGENAT / AFDEEKTEZEA14F/I
5VRKSASANAORSIERSTER4I/S
6ARDHA UTTANASANAZONGE EGTEBENEERT7G/T
7URDHVA PRASARITA EKA PADASANAELOHER BEEOOTVAR DAS GEBRONERH16D/E
8SALABHASANAOJLOGENFDASL2J/A
9MARICHYASANAENSPARYENSTEY4P/I
10PADANGUSTHASANAHORGENGICHDAGENH6N/G
11PARIGHASANAENLIJNOORMEI10M/N
12EKA PADA NIRALAMBA NAVASANAEGY DERS ACHTROEPE FSCHERDEE3Y/A
13PARYANKASANANERERMALEEERR9E/S
14ADHO MUKHA VRKSASANANAAO VLOCH WELDERMAFO17A/N
15SALAMBA SIRSASANAZEKTEEN ERACHTENUN3K/L
16ANJANEYASANAOPRICHYENDENY6H/E
17ADHO MUKHA SVANASANAZOAW MERAN HAGZERKIKM4W/O
18URDHVA HASTASANAULGIOM VENSOREREU5O/V
19PARIVRTTA TRIKONASANAHOOMTWAND KAMZSIJSOENS14S/O
20MALASANAVATLPERDA3T/L
21TADASANABQOOSTEGS2Q/A
22DANDASANARARTWADENA1R/D
23GARUDASANAALVONSCHNGN3V/R
24SAVASANAXAHTIKENA1X/S
25ADHO MUKHA MANDUKASANAWOEL DEELD ENGENATSHEPS4L/O

Take the number on the yoga mat. It’s an index into something, but what? Index into the cod-Dutch, you’ll get 25 unique letters from letters A through Y—that’s the sorting mechanism. Index into the Sanskrit, you’ll get a new set of letters.

Sort the Sanskrit-extracted letters by the Dutch-extracted keys and you get the NINE SITES ALONG VIA DOLOROSA. The Via Dolorosa is, in New Testament tradition, the path Jesus walked carrying the cross; nine notable things along the Via Dolorosa are STATIONS OF THE CROSS, which is the answer.

Below the table is an image of the full Bosch/yoga studio setup overlaid with the relevant yoga poses.

SanskritFake DutchSort
(Dutch)
Readout
(Sanskrit)
ADHO MUKHA VRKSASANANAAO VLOCH WELDERMAFAN
PARIPURNA NAVASANASLABHUEIK TEWERSORBI
SETU BANDHA SAVANGASANAREMT WUCLEK VRIJGENRLEICN
URDHVA PRASARITA EKA PADASANAELOHER BEEOOTVAR DAS GEBRONERDE
PARYANKASANANERERMALEEERES
MARJARYASANA / BITILASANAHAARTERGENAT / AFDEEKTEZEFI
ARDHA UTTANASANAZONGE EGTEBENEERGT
ANJANEYASANAOPRICHYENDENHE
VRKSASANAORSIERSTEIS
SALABHASANAOJLOGENFDASJA
SALAMBA SIRSASANAZEKTEEN ERACHTENUKL
ADHO MUKHA MANDUKASANAWOEL DEELD ENGENATSHEPLO
PARIGHASANAENLIJNOORMEMN
PADANGUSTHASANAHORGENGICHDAGENNG
URDHVA HASTASANAULGIOM VENSOREREOV
MARICHYASANAENSPARYENSTEPI
TADASANABQOOSTEGQA
DANDASANARARTWADENRD
PARIVRTTA TRIKONASANAHOOMTWAND KAMZSIJSOENSO
MALASANAVATLPERDTL
UTTANA SHISHOSANAORKINT WADROUIDENUO
GARUDASANAALVONSCHNGVR
ADHO MUKHA SVANASANAZOAW MERAN HAGZERKIKWO
SAVASANAXAHTIKENXS
EKA PADA NIRALAMBA NAVASANAEGY DERS ACHTROEPE FSCHERDEYA
Click on the image below for a higher resolution version.