Out of the 70 people who viewed our Musical Mystery Map in December, eight sent in answers, and nearly all of them got at least a part of the question right. So, in order of submission, here’s who correctly guessed that the size of the bubbles represented number of bells:
- Leslie Vicente Soto
- Anonymous (we don’t think this refers to the hacker collective, but you never know)
- Sam Masinter
- Nick Howe
- Stacey Schmeidel
- Beth Powell
- Meg Thacher
Now, in order of submission, here’s who correctly guessed that you will find a carillon, which is not quite the same thing as a bell tower, at each location marked on the map.
- Anonymous
- Sam Masinter
- Nick Howe
- Stacey Schmeidel
- Meg Thacher
While this technically makes Anonymous our official winner, Anonymous insisted in the comments section that we had forgotten a carillon at Amherst College. Au contraire, anonymous! The bell tower at Amherst has but nine bells – to be considered a carillon, it would need at least 23 bells.
We’re going to name Nick Howe our ultra-winner for this competition. He combined his previous knowledge about bell tower locations with the information presented on this map to learn something new about carillons, which is exactly why we post these mystery maps! Here’s what he had to say:
“I was confused at first to see no data point at Ithaca, since I know that Cornell has a bell tower. But a little more research taught me that a carillon must have at least 23 bells to qualify (the Cornell chimes have only 21) and is played sitting down (whereas the Cornell chimes are played standing up).”
Here’s a complete list of the songs in this map:
Holiday
- Oratoire Saint-Joseph (Montreal, QC): “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy” performed by Danielle Decelles
- Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT): “Oh, Channukah” performed by Scott Gilman
- Smith College: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” performed by Scott Gilman
- University of Texas (Austin, TX): “Coventry Carol,” unknown student carillonneur
- UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA): “This Is Halloween” from Nightmare Before Christmas, performed by Danny Elfman
- UC Riverside (Riverside, CA): “The Holly & the Ivy” performed by David Christensen
- Bok Singing Tower (Lake Wales, FL): “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” performed by Milford Myhre
- Rockefeller Chapel (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL): Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” performed by Wylie Crawford
- Yale University (New Haven, CT): “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, performed by Boudewijn Zwart
Other
- University of Rochester (Rochester, NY): Theme from Harry Potter performed by Jeff Le
- Iowa State University (Ames, IA): Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” performed by Tin-Shi Tam
- Riverside Church (New York, NY): “Caprichio arabe”, performed by Jon Lehrer
- Peace Tower (Ottawa, ON): K’NAAN’s “Wavin’ Flag” performed by Andrea McCrady and Rick Mercer
- Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA): “Giga,” unknown student performer
- University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI): Theme from Game of Thrones performed by Lyle Anderson
Song unknown
- Municipal Building (Norwood, MA): performed by Lee B Leach
- Kirk in the Hills (Bloomfield Hills, MI): performed by Dennis Curry
- Brigham Young University (Provo, UT): performed by Ian McKinley
- Church of Our Lady of Good Voyage (Gloucester, MA): performed by Marilyn Clark
- Trinity College (Hartford, CT)
- Duke University (Durham, NC)
- Simsbury United Methodist Church (Simsbury, CT): performed by Ellen Dickinson
Big shoutout to Meg Thacher for getting all of the songs that are in bold and for astutely guessing that I performed some of the songs!
Thanks to everyone who participated, and stay tuned for our next Mystery Map in a few weeks!