W(P)L Vol. 13 Solution

This week's challenge almost went unsolved until our most successful puzzle solver had an epiphany upon wakening! Hop inside for the solution and the musical connection.

Welcome to the solution post for week 13 of Word(Play)List! After last week’s tough challenge (the one that went unsolved? you remember that one right?!?), I dialed the difficulty level down a little. At least I thought I had, until the middle of the week arrived and nobody had come up with the correct connection—not for lack of trying as there were many creative responses:

• All the songs are awesome?

• All these albums were performed by bands that started as duos.

• All were released between September through November?

• Album titles by artists who’ve had the songs within sampled?

But we did end up having a winner before the week was out! Read on for the solution to this week’s word search and the musical connection.

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Solution

Twelve people gave this week’s puzzle a try, with half finding all ten words and half stuck at nine. It was clear that people spent a lot more time on the puzzle this week than usual—52 minutes on average for the people that found all ten words and over an hour and a half for those that found only nine. I’m almost positive that it was the same word that everyone struggled to find. If you weren’t familiar with the artist (and the album of the same name), you really would’ve had a hard time coming up with the word. Here’s the fully completed word search grid:

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Musical Connection: Albums with Blue Covers

As I mentioned above, I thought this week’s puzzle would be fairly easy, but I never seem to be able to correctly guess which puzzles are gonna challenge people and which will be easy (except for last week’s puzzle, which I didn’t expect anyone to get). On Thursday I was thinking about restacking Monday’s puzzle as a Note and opening up the challenge to anyone who hadn’t seen it yet. But before I had the chance to do so, Frank Balla Jr, who’s already had FOUR wins (out of the ten puzzles solved), posted this in the comments: “All the album covers are a shade of blue 💙“.

That indeed was the correct answer!! Well done to Frank, who seemingly awoke with that brilliant thought: “it just dawned on me this morning, all the album covers have similar shading. The morning seems to be the time when I get my best thoughts”. I’m lucky if I can think at all in the morning, especially if I haven’t had my dose(s) of caffeine yet!!

Kudos to you Frank!!

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The Playlist

Below is the playlist for this week’s installment—I’ve selected one track from each album—which is sequenced in chronological order by release date. As Substack and Spotify don’t always play well together, I’m also providing a hardcoded link to the playlist.

As I mentioned on Monday, with AOTY season (and the festive season!) upon us, this is the last puzzle of the year. The series will be back in January—at a frequency yet to be determined—so be sure to keep your thinking caps handy!

Please feel free to share the Joy with anyone else you know that loves music!
Because, after all, sharing is caring, right?

As always, I’d love to hear from you. Please jump into the comments and let me know your thoughts on this week’s musical connection, or whatever else is on your mind!

• Were you able to find all of the words in the word search?

• If you couldn’t find the tenth word, was “Cymande” the one eluding you?

• What did you think of the connection?

• Which of these albums (or the songs selected) is your favourite?