History of Opus X

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Some who have not seen previous Opus X puzzles have asked for some examples so they can understand what to do. So with this thread, I have compiled all of the Opus X's presented in the past with their respective solutions following immediately after. If you want to attempt to solve these puzzles before seeing the solutions, I suggest you scroll slowly down this thread one post at a time, advancing only when you think you have solved the puzzle or when you want the answer revealed. Here we go:

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This was probably the least exciting Opus X so far. The solution is rather simple...

The group of men pictured is the '60's rock group called 'The Animals' placed against the background of a carnival, yielding:

Camille Saint-Saëns- Carnival of the Animals

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I flubbed this one. The composer is depicted with the background picture. That is Frank Sinatra's face superimposed of a statue of Julius Caeser, making it Caeser Frank or - César Franck.

That part worked, but the flub came with the composition. Those three smaller pictures are:

1. The Kingston Trio.
2. Indiana Jones, aka Indy
3. A young child, or a Minor

Yielding Trio in Dm!

Problem is, César Franck did not write a 'Trio in Dm'. The guy who alphabetically comes right before him in one of my reference books did. His name is Gabriel Fauré.

Because of this error, I created another puzzle for July 2005 to make up for it. It follows next:

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This one was trickier than I anticipated. I got downright devious with the clue for the composers last name, but everything else was pretty straightforward:

1. The cat highlighted in the larger picture is named Claude.
2. I used the same letter 'E' to create two different words, making it a Double-use 'E'.
3. The car is a Honda Prelude.
4. With a blue sky in the background, the clockface of Big Ben surely shows that it is Afternoon.
5. Jim Breuer's SNL character Goatboy is half man, half goat... or in other words, a Faun.

All of this yields: Claude Debussy- Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

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1. The doctor is a MD
2. The notes are CCC
3. X is... well, X!
4. That critter is a breed of lemur called an Aye-aye. From this you derive II

MDCCCXII is the Roman numeral equivalent to 1812.

1812 placed over the word "TURE" yields Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture"

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POOH + GENIE = Puccini

TACOS rearranged in the order depicted by the numbers gives you TOSCA.

This yields: Giacomo Puccini- Tosca

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This Opus X was two puzzles in one. I scrambled the order of the picture clues, so the first task was to get them in the right order. The clues you needed to do this were the compass points I placed in each picture (except for the picture that depicted the end clue, the map of the U.S.). These compass points explained which way to travel to get to the next consecutive clue. By placing arrows in the direction of each compass point, the path becomes clear:

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Now by solving the clues in the proper order, you get:



Which yields: Henry Purcell - Dido & Aeneas

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This was a revision to account for a common mispronunciation of the composer depicted in this Opus X:

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The three pictures in the background gives the phonetic pronunciation of the composer's name:

1. Dove
2. Ore
3. Jack (Americanized, replace this with Ak)

This yields: Dvorak

The Opus X in the foreground simple means name Dvorak's Opus 10 (X is the Roman numeral for 10), which was:

Dvorak- Symphony No. 3 in Eb, Opus 10

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