Mixed-Up Mixtape

We see two mixtapes, each with playable songs.

Since the flavortext tells us that solving the first mixtape will give us a clue for the second one, we start with looking at the first tape.

First Mixtape

We start by identifying each of the 9 songs. We also note that the music clips are of varying lengths. We see that there is an enumeration, (4 5), which is a total length of 9, so we conclude we will need to extract one letter from each song. We index the clip length into the song title. (We could try the artist name, but the indices are too large.)

We read an intermediate clue phrase, SAME ALBUM. Looking back at the flavortext, we see that there are a few things wrong with the second mixtape:

• Its track listing is all mixed up (not in order)
• And the song titles on the track listing do not match with the music on the tape

This clue tells us that, while the track listing doesn’t have the exact same songs that are on the tape, it will be songs from the SAME ALBUM.

Reading the Symbols

However, we aren’t ready to start solving the second mixtape yet. So far, we’ve ignored the strange symbols that appear on the track listing. Since the second mixtape’s track listing isn’t in order, we’ll need to figure out how to read the symbols before solving it.

We can assume that the track listing for the first mixtape does, in fact, match up to the songs. So, we can match up the symbols and song names, and begin looking for patterns. We can find common words between the songs that also share a common part of their symbol.

For example, we find a common symbol, a straight line, in the top left of both “I Will Always Love You” and “I’ll Be.” We can infer that the straight line means “I.” When the straight line occurs in the top right of the symbol, such as in “Move Me” and “Somebody Told Me,” it means “me.”

Eventually, we realize that each symbol is made up of 3 parts, SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT reading from top left, bottom, top right. We can identify words such as

• I/me
• You
• They/somebody
• Know/understand
• Believe
• Life
• Rock

As well as some basic grammar like

• Questions
• Imperative
• Negation
• Past, present, and future tense

We also notice that phrases are not translated word-for-word; instead they are translated using the overall meaning. For example, "Don't Stop Believin'" is translated as "always believe" or "continue believing" (imperative).

See A Primer on Blobbish for Earthlings for a full explanation.

Second Mixtape

We are now ready to work on the second mixtape. We begin the same as before, by identifying the songs, artists, and clip lengths. Since we know that the album is relevant, let’s write down the album as well.

We could try indexing the clip lengths into the song titles as we did for the first mixtape, but the indices are too long, and don’t spell anything. Instead, we conclude that we should be indexing into the song title as listed on the track listing.

Each of the symbols on the second track listing corresponds to a song that’s on the same album as one of the above songs. We need to read the symbols and try to match them to songs.

With our previous knowledge of this language, here’s approximately what we might be able to decipher:

“We” (literally “you + I”)

“You believe not-[unknown] ?”

“I not-believe you”

“You rock me (imperative)”

“I knew/understood [unknown] you were [unknown]”

With some creative thinking, we can match these to the albums:

Indexing the clip length into the new song title gives us the answer, BREAK.