Help me find a good solution for this game?

Edited: November 28, 2022, 3:57 AM · Hi,

I have this board game, a party challenges game, and there's one mini-game/challenge where you have to read one hint to enter a 9 position password using only digits from 0-9.

I just want to make it musical (classical), and I wanted to create a 9 position password related to music, but it is quite hard to find a simple straight forward clue or hint.

Here are some examples so you understand why I don't like them and find them "not perfect":

Introduce Mendelssohn's birth date and his number of violin concertos:
1809 02 03 2

I don't feel the hint is clean and simple enough: you have 2 different unrelated answers (date + number of random type of pieces), you have 2 answers so now you have to remember the order, as 2 1809 02 03 won't work, etc...

If it was 8 positions, the birth date would be clean and neat, but since we have 9, I am having trouble finding a clean hint.

Also, I don't want any weird rules such as "omitting birth date's the zeros" or something like that. I've thought of opus, which give you from 1 to 3 positions, music catalogs such as BWV 1007, but again, I can't find any good clean solution.

Replies (7)

Paul Deck

November 26, 2022, 9:02 AM · Will you please explain the first sentence of your post? I don't understand it.

Andrew Victor

November 26, 2022, 11:33 AM · How about this:
Take 9 notes of a musical phrase you like and relate the letters that represent the notes to the corresponding numerals on an old-fashioned telephone receiver.

Ron Black

Edited: November 26, 2022, 1:56 PM · You give them a clue and they then come up with a 9 digit number but the clue has to relate to music, is that correct?, or am I getting this completely wrong, if so I would be useless at your game. If thats the idea of your game you are going to struggle coming up with enough clues relating to music which will give a 9 digit answer. It would be better if it could be any numbers from 0 to 9, for instance, clue, starting speed Allegro, answer 109. or if you insist on 0 to 9 digits the clue could be start, end, start Allegro which would be 109132109

Raymond Concannon

November 27, 2022, 10:26 AM · You can assign rankings based in how often their music is played on classical music stations or downloaded via Spotify. Perhaps Vivaldi, Mozart, and Haydn would hold the top positions so they would be assigned 111111111 or 9 for short, 111111112 or 10 for short, etc. I started with "1" because it might be difficult to memorize a numerical sequence starting with zero.

Paul N.

Edited: November 28, 2022, 3:59 PM · Paul, I edited the OP so you understand it better.

Andrew, I don't understand your method. There's only 7 notes, ABCDEFG, we would lose numbers 0, 8 and 9. I mean I like how neat your solution is, all 9 positions are related, there's no order you have to remember (assuming you are familiar with the melody, you can think about it and type it on-demand), it's a straight forward answer, but the fact that we would lose 3 digits out of 10 is not ideal. Nevertheless, for now this is the one I like the most.

Ron, yeah, you give a clue, which I want to be as clean and simple as possible (check my example to understand my issues with some solutions) and then they have to enter a 9 position password:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Using only digits from 0-9. Those are the rules.

Andrew Victor

Edited: November 28, 2022, 8:13 AM · Paul N. Actually, the digits you lose are 0, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Telephone receivers link letters as:
2 = ABC
3 = DEF
4 = GHI
etc.

It all depends and what you are doing with the transformation of letters to numbers. I did not realize you actually meant a "game." I was thinking in terms of having a music-based password. For example 2 could equal either A, B or C; only the "coder" would know.

elise stanley

Edited: November 28, 2022, 7:39 AM · The problem is that music notation is base 8 (scale) or 12 (semitones), not base 10, as demanded by your condition. Thus, Andrew's solution using the letters on a phone is brilliant because it is basically a base 8-to-10 converter.

I can't think of a better solution, other than changing the premise!

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