Music and ‘mystery’: BTS, Taylor Swift tease puzzles ahead of new releases

The group later unveiled a website called ‘MNCR Logistics’, which dealt with the ‘delivery’ of the memory clouds. The mysterious site asked for a username and password, which fans eventually cracked as ‘ETERNAL YOUTH’. This generated an invoice, immersing visitors in a series of puzzles where players had to crack passcodes related to words and dates in BTS’ journey. Youthfulness—its joys, problems, rebelliousness—has been a core concept in BTS’ music, and there is speculation that ‘Monochrome’ will tie into their past HYYH albums, whose nine-year anniversary is on April 29.

As the band is on South Korea’s mandatory military service, fans correctly guessed that ‘Monochrome’ would not be a live show. Big Hit Music, their label, has now confirmed that the ‘Monochrome’ puzzles were teasing a series of pop-up stores that will spread across six cities (Seoul, Tokyo, Jakarta, Bangkok, Los Angeles and Manila) from April to June. The pop-ups will offer exclusive portraits, on-site events and minimalist merchandise, celebrating eleven years since the band’s inception.

BTS Monochrome Merch.
Concept Photo (3/3)

📦BTS POP-UP : MONOCHROME
2024. 04. 26 – 2024. 05. 12
서울 성동구 성수일로4길 12, AP AGAIN

📦Weverse Shop
Coming Soon#BTS #방탄소년단#MONOCHROME #MNCR pic.twitter.com/DPPcNRGJ5U

— HYBE MERCH (@HYBE_MERCH) April 18, 2024

Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’ puzzle

Fans of Taylor Swift have been tackling a daily puzzle ahead of ‘‘The Tortured Poets Department’, the singer’s eleventh studio album releasing April 19. Apple Music had launched a ‘word a day’ challenge, where Swifties had to sleuth out jumbled words from playlists featuring Miss Americana’s old songs. These playlists corresponded to the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—and possibly hinted at TTPD’s themes.

Unlike BTS’ puzzle, there was no clear guidance on what to look at to find a solution. But the Internet prevailed anyway, uncovering hidden words like ‘hereby’, ‘conduct’, ‘this’, ‘post’ and ‘we’ from the lyrics on her playlists. These had ‘glitched’ to show random capitalisations, whose letters fans collected and rearranged to reveal the answers. What do these words mean? We’ll probably find out on the album tomorrow.

 

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A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

Swift has a history of using cryptic codes to promote her music, the most recent being a Google puzzle that hid her bonus tracks ahead of the release of ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’. Both her and BTS’ puzzles often break the Internet. Traffic from the 1989 game had temporarily stalled Google Search, while the ‘Monochrome’ pop-up has left WeVerse, BTS’ multimedia fan platform, on a timeout today.

Love pop culture and wordplay? We invite you to try Indian Express’ Mini Crossword, which packs in the best of both. For ideas or feedback, you can write in to puzzles@indianexpress.com or @iepuzzles on Instagram. Happy solving!