• Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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    14 days ago
    Spoilers

    Both are used. Ti is more common in English speaking places. Si pretty much everywhere else. The case my clarinet reeds come in all say Si♭ on them and that’s what I’m personally most familiar with (well, apart from “B”, which is orders of magnitude more comfortable to me than either).

    But I will say, ti has the advantage of having a unique consonant. If you use si, sol/so and si both begin with s. If you use ti, every note starts with a unique consonant.

    But regarding the main question, I’ve never seen a puzzle that can be solved more than one way that I’ve noticed. You might find 4 that fit into a category together that aren’t correct, but you won’t find 4 categories of 4 that work.

    As for how you find them, it can be tricky. I think it’s more about breadth of knowledge with a smidge of lateral thinking, rather than a skill like logical deduction or something. It helps to think of different short phrases that use the word, or to try breaking down the word to find sub-words in it—that’s often how the purple is made. For others, thinking about other less obvious definitions of the word can help (Wiktionary can often help with this, since it often lists very obscure definitions if you scroll far enough), or references like sports teams, movies, popular idioms, etc. It often can get very hard if you’re not American, but more often than not it’s solveable without that, because it’s rare for more than one to rely on American-specific knowledge.

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      hmm, maybe it’s the fact i’m not American and have adhd that’s causing me such issues with that. even before i knew what it was i was playing the Wikipedia game in my mind as a kid, associations & connections come incredibly easy to me, and i always see various different ways to categorise those group 16 into 4s

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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        14 days ago

        I would love to see you share your alternative solution to the puzzle. Partly, I’ll admit, because I’m sceptical, but mostly because I love the idea of proving the puzzlers messed up in creating their puzzle (because a well-designed puzzle should have only one possible solution).

        It might also be possible, if you share that, to explain why that wasn’t the solution I came up with/why I think it wasn’t what the puzzlers intended, which might help you learn how to think like the puzzlers.

        • shneancy@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          okay so i kept this message unread for a few days telling myself “yeah i’ll do that later” and- i probably won’t 😅 using creative energy for a thing that always frustrates me is something i can procrastinate until the heat death of the universe

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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        14 days ago

        Are you sure? Fa is normally (by sheer coincidence) F. The note here is B.

        Or in other terms, Fa is normally up a perfect fourth from Do/C. This note is up a major seventh (or down a minor second).

        This screenshot:

        From near the end of this Spanish-language video seems to agree that Spanish is no different from French and Italian, and only differs from English wrt “si/ti”. Which makes sense, since it all goes back to an old Latin hymn.

          • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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            14 days ago

            Yeah what you learnt there is correct. The note being pointed to was a 7th up from the note it explained is “do”. Which makes it “si”, often in English also called “ti”.

              • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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                14 days ago

                Oh, right.

                Um, yeah. That puzzle would have been especially hard if you can’t read music! That aspect of the problem genuinely did not ever even occur to me.