Don't go to the listed coordinates unless you want to see a road intersection. Solve the puzzle below and put your answer into Certitude to receive the cache coordinates and a hint.
Below are some statements about songs that most people are familiar with. Your job is to decide which of the entries are FALSE and use that information to obtain your coordinates. Since dates can vary in historic records, none of the statements are false because of an incorrect date. Consider all dates to be “true” even if you find conflicting evidence. Look for a BLATANT error in a statement that makes it false.
1. Angels We Have Heard on High – A Christmas carol to the hymn tune, “Gloria.” It is a traditional French song of unknown origin called “Les Anges dans nos campagnes” with lyrics paraphrased by James Chadwick. The song is about the birth of Christ as narrated in the Gospel of Luke, specifically the scene in which shepherds outside Bethlehem meet a group of angels singing and praising the newborn child.
2. Silent Night – A Christmas carol about a calm and bright silent night and the wonder of a newborn child. The words were written in 1816 by Joseph Mohr, a young priest in Austria. On Christmas Eve 1818, Mohr brought the words to Franz Xaver Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and accompaniment for the guitar for that night's mass because flooding had possibly damaged the church organ. In German it is called, “Schrecklich Nacht, Schule Nacht.”
3. White Christmas - A Christmas carol that reminisces about an old time Christmas scene. Irving Berlin wrote the song around 1940 and it was released for the musical film, “Holiday Inn.” The composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 15th Academy Awards. The carol has been sung by many artists, but the version sung by Bing Crosby has estimated sales of 50 million copies worldwide.
4. Jingle Bells – A plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, commemorates the birth of the song. The memorial plate states that James Lord Pierpont wrote the song there in the Simpson Tavern in 1850. It was originally known as “The One Horse Open Sleigh.” The jingle bells mentioned in the song refer to the bells associated with the New England sleigh races of the 1800’s. The carol was written for Pierpont’s Sunday school class, not as a Christmas carol.
5. America the Beautiful – Katharine Lee Bates wrote the lyrics to this patriotic song. She originally wrote the words as a poem entitled, "Pikes Peak" that was first published in the July 4th, 1895, edition of the church periodical, The Congregationalist. It was at that time that the poem was first entitled "America". The music was composed by Samuel A. Ward, choirmaster and organist at the Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. Bates and Ward never met each other.
6. Yankee Doodle – The melody of the song may have originated from an Irish tune "All the way to Galway" in which the second strain is identical to Yankee Doodle. The earliest words for "Yankee Doodle" came from a harvest song which is thought to have followed the same tune, possibly dating back as far as 15th-century Holland. In British conversation, the term "Yankee doodle dandy" implied unsophisticated misappropriation of upper-class fashion, as though simply sticking a feather in one's cap would transform the wearer into a noble. Peter McNeil, a professor of fashion studies, claims that the British were insinuating that the colonists were lower-class men who lacked masculinity, emphasizing that the American men were womanly. The song is the state anthem of Virginia.
7. Battle Hymn of the Republic – This song is also known as “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory” outside of the United States. It was written by an abolitionist, Julia Ward Howe, to the music of the song, "John Brown’s Body,” in November 1861 and first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February, 1862. She first heard a version sung during a public review of the troops in Virginia. Howe's companion at the review, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song, which she did.
8. Battle of New Orleans - The melody is based on a well-known American fiddle tune, "The 8th of January," which was the date of the Battle of New Orleans. Jimmy Driftwood, a school principal in Arkansas, had a passion for history and tried to get his students interested in it too. He set an account of the battle to music in an attempt to do that. The song told of the battle from the perspective of an American soldier and tells the tale of the battle with a light tone and provides a rather comical version of what actually happened at the battle.
9. Rubber Duckie – The song, written by Jeff Moss and arranged by Joe Raposo, was first heard by children watching an episode of Sesame Street on February 25, 1970. The song was so popular that it was issued as a single with the Sesame Street song on the flip side. The song enjoyed popular fame, reaching number 16 on Billboard’s "Hot 100 Singles" chart in 1970. It was even nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children. “Rubber Duckie” became Grover’s theme song on Sesame Street.
10. Bingo – The earliest reference to any form of the song is from the title of a piece of sheet music published in 1780, which attributed the song to William Swords, an actor at the Haymarket Theater of London. It is believed that the original song was published in London in 1785 in "The Humming Bird," a collection of songs for children. The earliest versions of the song were once variously titled "The Farmer's Dog Leapt o'er the stile", "A Franklyns Dogge", and "Little Bingo".
11. I Am The Walrus – John Lennon wrote this song to confound listeners who had been affording serious scholarly interpretations of the Beatles' lyrics. He was partly inspired by two LSD trips and Lewis Carroll’s 1871 poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter”. Compositionally, every musical letter of the alphabet is invoked and every chord is a major or a seventh.
12. Memory – This one is the most famous songs from the musical “Cats.” It is a bittersweet ballad sung by the ostracized character, Grizabella, “The Glamour Cat.” She once led a more glamorous life, and now that she is older, she struggles to be accepted back into the tribe of Jellicle cats. “Cats” is a sung-through musical composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the 1939 poetry collection, “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats,” by T. S. Eliot.
Now, take the number of the first statement that is false and multiply it by 5. ___
Now, take the number of the second statement that is false and multiply it by 9. ___
Now, take the number of the third statement that is false and multiply it by 7. ___
Now, take the number of the fourth statement that is false and multiply it by 6. ___
Now, take the number of the fifth statement that is false and multiply it by 8. ___
Now, take the number of the sixth statement that is false and multiply it by 3. ___
Now, take the number of the seventh statement that is false and multiply it by 1. ___
WAIT! There aren’t that many false statements. You won’t need all of those multipliers. Oh well, just use what you need.
ADD YOUR ANSWERS TOGETHER AND PUT THAT SUM IN CERTITUDE TO GET THE COORDINATES AND A HINT.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.