c4countdown

Whilst going through my old CD collection the other day, I couldn't help wondering how many song titles could make conundrums. To put it to the test, I decided to make a conundrum quiz based around song titles. To make it a bit easier, except for the last section, all of the songs reached the top 40 in the UK singles chart.

The task involves solving the conundrums and identifying the artist that recorded each song. In some cases, more than one artist is possible as an answer. In these cases, the year when each song was released has been stated.

Music Conundrums Quiz

Answers

Extra Info
There are 41 conundrums in total. Give yourself a point for each conundrum solved and each artist correctly identified. There are bonus points available where more than one artist recorded either the same song or a different song but with the same title. There are also bonus points available in the last section for correctly identifying albums from which each song was taken.

The quiz has been split into four sections. The first section is considered easy, the second is medium difficulty, the third section is difficult and the fourth section includes songs that weren't released as singles in the UK.

For the easy and medium conundrums, there are 25 points available. For the difficult ones there are 32 and for the last section there are 18 points, thus making 100 points available in total.

It's hard to judge what would be a good score but I reckon if I hadn't set it, then I could have comfortably scored over 50 and I'm by no means good at conundrums and my musical knowledge certainly isn't vast. Therefore, I would say anything over 50 is respectable, over 60 is a good effort, over 70 is impressive and over 80 is outstanding. I doubt anyone will get over 90 but hats off to anyone who can manage it.

I've also made the different sections as an online quiz against the clock, but in doing this, I wasn't able to include the bonus questions.

Easy

Medium

Dificult

Non-singles


Disclaimer

Hopefully, the quiz is designed so that everyone can have a good attempt at it. Quite a few of the songs in the difficult section are fairly obscure but the artists are generally quite well known. In terms of eras and genres, there is probably a slight bias towards 90s indie/rock but I've tried to include a variety of artists from across the board. Where there is more than one possible artist, it may be the case that I've missed out one of the possible artist as I considered them to be too obscure. If there are any other errors that you feel I've made, please let me know.

Helpful Hint
Not all the conundrums are Countdown valid. 11 of them would not be valid, including one that is spelt incorrectly.

Peter - this is absolutely superb! Really enjoyed doing that. There are just a couple of minor points (below) that you might want to change. Thanks though, I always love finding interesting quizzes on here.

The anagrams for MILKSHAKE and SURRENDER don't work - I guessed that was probably where you were going with them though! Also, it was Genesis, not Phil Collins, who had a hit with Paperlate. Finally, and most shamefully, Let Loose had a Top 40 hit with Seventeen, so you can move that one out of the album tracks bit if you like!

Glad you enjoyed doing it, Bob Thanks for pointing out those mistakes too, which I've now changed.

Have to admit I didn't know about Let Loose having a hit with Seventeen! However, according to Wikipedia it didn't quite make the top 40, so I've just added a note to that section so that I can keep that one in.

EDIT: Oh bollocks, just seen that it got to number 11 after a re-issue. Changed the wording again now.

Peter: I had a go at these on sporcle; thanks for sharing. Spoiler: For WATERFALL, I went for Atlantic Ocean before thinking of the Stone Roses, but I'm guessing you dismissed them as too obscure. Or maybe they were included in the Word version of the quiz.

Matt Bayfield wrote:Peter: I had a go at these on sporcle; thanks for sharing. Spoiler: For WATERFALL, I went for Atlantic Ocean before thinking of the Stone Roses, but I'm guessing you dismissed them as too obscure. Or maybe they were included in the Word version of the quiz.

They're not in the Word version either - I didn't know about that one but probably would have left it out anyway because as you say, it is a bit too obscure for most people.

Great quiz Peter. Thanks.

I picked up the same extra artist as Matt in his spoiler, not too obscure if you were into that scene at the time!

One more spoiler note

I had Darude for Sandstorm, not sure if it in the Word doc, as I'm on my phone. Was a big dance track at the time and crossed over to the mainstream

Cheers Sean.

sean d wrote:One more spoiler note

I had Darude for Sandstorm, not sure if it in the Word doc, as I'm on my phone. Was a big dance track at the time and crossed over to the mainstream

Yep, I've included that one as an alternative in the Word document.