So, as we're well into advent, it's time to roll out my infamous Christmas Tunes Acronym Quiz again. This year, I've bumped it up to 160 songs - most of which are either carols or secular seasonal pop songs (i.e. ones that actually mention winter / snow / Christmas, rather than just those that share nothing in common with the season other than release date), but there's a handful of secular songs considered traditional and the occasional novelty / parody track.
There's both a collaborative version to fill out online (also shared with social networks, to maximise the chances of everyone between them getting most of the answers! Needless to say, this version has an extra column to initial your contributions), or a downloadable spreadsheet to print off and attempt with colleagues / RL friends / family.
If you think it's a challenge too far for them, drop me a PM and I'll send you a link to the answer sheet so you can create a custom version (but obviously if I do send you the answer sheet, avoid the temptation to join in on the collaborative online version :P)
Hint: if you have a Christmas CD handy, the index card might come in useful... :)
Comments
No Winter Wonderland?
No Winter Wonderland? http://www.41051.com/xmaslyrics/winterwon.html
I am Santa Claus http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/b/bobrivers10338/iamsantaclaus...
Winter Wonderland
That's in there, but I made a typo - the second word of the first line was encoded as L rather than B :)
Meanwhile, one problem with asking for initials rather than usernames: identifying the contributors! "AS" has filled in a whopping 60, followed by "EH" with 13.
As they're identified as anonymous users, it indicates they're either from here or Facebook rather than Google+...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
EH is me
I got distracted and stopped but I was on a roll for a bit there. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Identities
BR is me, but I am probably identified because of my G+ account.
It's harder if you change the
It's harder if you change the letters. :) Shouldn't Winter Wonderland have been bolded, since the last two words are the song title?
Bold text
Which entries are bolded and which aren't is largely due to Google being unable to accept partial bolding within a cell - if you preview the Excel version, hopefully most titles (where forming a part of the acronym) will be in bold. The first iteration of the sheet (several years ago) was written in Excel, since then it's been roundtripped to Google and back a few times - sometimes to Excel, sometimes to LibreOffice. I've saved the downloadable version in Excel 2003 format for maximum compatibility with whatever spreadsheet software you may be running.
However, just as I mistakenly got the acronym for Winter Wonderland wrong, I may have been inconsistant on emboldening titles - when sifting through a sheet with 170 tall rows (I deliberately increased the row height to aid legibility), the occasional error or two can creep in :)
Oh, and in case anyone's wondering how well they're doing compared to the competition, you may have noticed a second tab on the spreadsheet, which uses the very handy UNIQUE() function and Countifs...
The XX is an entry I spotted that someone had filled in but not initialled.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
AN(ansi)
Only a handful so far for me. I'm actually finding it easier to think of a song and then see if it's been filled already, but most of the ones I can think of have already been solved.
I feel like I should know more of the NPs, but most of the ones I know are kids' variants on more traditional carols ("Deck the halls with gasoline!" "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg!", etc.), so there's that.
NPs
There's a relatively obscure one by a former Beatle, one's a variation on the song below it, and there are a couple of Bob Rivers ones that haven't been guessed yet. However, most of the other novelty / parody tracks appear to be Erin's specialist subject :)
(Is it sad I had to look at the answer sheet to remember some of those?!)
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Bob Rivers et al.
I thought I got most of the Bob Rivers ones!
I'm an old Spike Jones, Dr. Demento and Weird Al fan, what can I say. :)
I keep getting distracted while working on the list, then I'll come back and discover someone has filled in a few that I knew but hadn't got to yet. There are two songs on the list that I knew the title in the square bracket but you got me on lyrics because I didn't know they had lyrics! And one of them, yeah it has lyrics in French but they don't match what you have there and the title is translated into English.
It's a good list and I'm surprised sometimes by songs that AREN'T there, or at least, I can't find them. And sometimes you have them under a title I didn't recognize.
I got the Paul McCartney one and I looked for Ringo's Christmas song and didn't see it. I guess it is there somewhere.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Let's see...
I'm giving away vague hints as you're all doing so well with this :)
One person did a collaboration with a group of others, the result being a differently titled variation on a theme of his primary Christmas hit - which probably isn't very well known outside the UK.
I haven't included Ringo's Christmas hit, but George did one which is included. There's also a set of lyrics to the Classical Music world's most famous one hit wonder, courtesy of a rock outfit who've done a lot of Christmas stuff.
Two Bob Rivers ones haven't been guessed yet (and I thought they were two of the more popular ones he'd done... but hey, what do I know...)
Heck, with all the stuff from the people in the past couple of paragraphs that's reasonably well known, next year's might be approaching 200 songs! Since a few have mentioned songs not included / under-represented artists, there's now a third tab called DIY (initialism for Do It Yourself - the UK term for self-service hardware stores and by extension, DIYer - someone who carries out home improvements / decorating themselves rather than hiring tradespeople) - if you've found a song not on the list, but you think others might scratch their heads trying to identify, add it to that tab - this time there's an initials column for question setter as well as question solver.
-oOo-
Needless to say, treat the format of the sheet as public domain - if you want to create a version filled with songs relevant to another time of year (the event in mid February might be a little too easy though!), feel free to download the spreadsheet, wipe all the content and fill it with those kind of songs (obviously you'll also need to think of a different categories as well; or even scrub the categories column entirely). Heck, you may think of being able to adapt it to poetry / novels / titles of stories on BCTS...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
I filled in the two Bob
I filled in the two Bob Rivers songs (I think) and Georges and the Classical piece. Your hints are too hinty. :)
I'll try to resist the temptation...
...to give identifiable hints about the remaining 43 tunes :)
I'll try and limit my hints to these vague statements: There's a handful of childhood classics, one of the non-English ones (fairly old but fairly well known), a couple of people who've had one of their hits identified but not another, and a couple whose titles could be said to contain metadata...
Feel free to give me a virtual kick if I give away any more hints...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
While shepherds washed their
While shepherds washed their socks by night watching the BBC
The angel of the lord came down and switched to ITV
Of course there was no room at the inn! What did they expect, it was Christmas!
It's okay, I know where the door is...
Also...
I always thought the Shepherds were watching ITV, but the Angel preferred BBC (keeping tabs on The Doctor's whereabouts, perhaps?)
A quick 'net search also reveals these variations:
Here's a Three Kings variation I remember:
Oh, and an interesting one found on the 'net:
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
I'm AS
I'm AS. I love Christmas and I'm a quiz addict. I've got most of the carols/songs on my iTunes, that's how I recognized them.
Thank you mittfh for providing us with a fantastic quiz.