Most of you have probably seen the Revoltech figure of Professor Layton. I recently obtained one myself, and it's pretty awesome.



However, that's not what I'm here to talk about. You see, the package also included a card. A card with Japanese text on it. A card with some musical staves on it. A card with a puzzle on it. I figured out it was a puzzle using my minor knowledge of Katakana, and the word "hinto" (hint) near the bottom of the puzzle. However, that's basically all I can understand, and so your assistance is required.



Can you solve the puzzle on this mysterious card!?

Maybe the hint is... somebody doesn't know their time signatures.

Less snarky: maybe the hint has to do with there being too many beats, or not enough beats, in a measure. I'm guessing it's intentional... some calculation of beats, perhaps? That's about as much as I can suggest, seeing as I don't know a lick of Japanese. I thought it might have something to do with the melody, but when I tried to play it, I didn't recognize the song at all. (But since I haven't played Professor Layton frequently enough to know the music by heart, the melody might even come from there for all I know.)

By the way, are the second note in the first measure and the first note in the third measure both dotted? It's a little blurry, so I can't be sure.

Also, is the first measure meant to be an example, and not part of the puzzle?

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It's definitely not a real song. Those two notes are dotted, yes.

Also it's not really important to know what the hint is if I don't know what the puzzle is.

I don't really have any other information than that.

I don't think this requires any musical knowledge other than knowing that in musical notation notes go up or down half a line, as in:

----------------------

----------------------

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-O-------------------

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One note up:

----------------------

----------------------

----------------------
O
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or two notes up:

----------------------

----------------------

-O-------------------

----------------------

----------------------

Not knowing a lick of Japanese, my assumption is that the upper measure is an example, and the puzzle applies to the two bottom meassures. Notice how the first measure has a beginning (time signature) and an end (double bar), the second measure has beginning but no end, and the third measure has no beginning, but an end. So measure one is standalone and measure two is the beginning of a new tune, measure three being its continuation and end.

Measure one, most probably the example measure, has a character below each note, and the music goes down, then abruptly up, then down again, most probably denoting a scale. Notice how notes 4 and 6 are the same note and have the same characters below them. If those characters are Japanese for the musical notes, or unrelated, I have no idea.

Maybe the puzzle consists in that you need to follow the first measure's example of note position-vs-character it represents, and apply it to the two following measures, to find a hidden Japanese phrase amongst them. What I could get from the example measure:

1st note (G 1/32th-note): character "1"
2nd (dotted E half-note): character "2"
3rd (D 1/32th note): character "3"
4th (C 1/16th note): character "4"
5th (B 1/4-note): character "5"
6th (C 1/16th note): character "4"

Now, and if my limited musical notation knowledge doesn't betray me, regarding notes being half-notes (white), quarter-notes (black), eighth-notes (black with one wave), 16th-notes (black with two waves) or 32th notes (black with three waves), some being dotted, and that being a quarter-rest (I think?) in position 4 of measure 2... Yeah, regarding all that, I have no idea. Could be a red herring, maybe the quarter-rest means a space between two words. Also, correct me if these musical concepts are wrong, I may very well be.

Other than that WE NEED JAPANESE READERS! We should at the very least know what those characters below the example measure's notes mean...

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All I know is that the notes aren't following the rules of the time signature. In 4/4 time, there are only supposed to be four beats in a measure, with the quarter note having the beat.

If there's already four beats in the measure, including anything else would be incorrect. And in that first measure alone, you can see it's overkill. There's a surplus of 2 1/4 beats (the quarter note, the quarter rest, and the sixteenth note... by the way, I'm just picking on those for easy calculation reasons).

But in the second measure, there's a deficit of 3/4 of a beat (which equals 3 sixteenth notes, or a dotted eighth note, or an eighth note plus a sixteenth note, however you want to calculate it).

But yeah... some translated text would help a bunch...

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Okay...
Well, the white writing up the top says "Layton Kyoujuu kara no Nazo" which means "A Puzzle from Professor Layton".
The Katakana underneath the music notes reads "Nazo Kaimei" which I think means "Puzzle Clarification"?
I also think the hint says that the answer is two (Japanese) characters.

Would it be possible to get a better resolution picture or even a scan of this card? The kanji is hard to read in this pic. Then maybe I could do something better　

How's this?

Muuuuuuuuch better :)

Okay, here's what I think it says. I don't know much Japanese, so forgive me if there's any mistakes.

"A Puzzle from Professor Layton"

"Let's solve the puzzle and answer the question!

The tune here is called "Puzzle Solving".

Using this clue, I wonder if you can find the puzzle's answer?"

That's the puzzle...? The puzzle is "Solve this puzzle"...?

ಠ_ಠ

フリカイメイ
And what the heck is "fu ri ka i me i" supposed to mean?

^ Actually, I think the katakana reads "ナ ゾ カ イ メ イ" which means "Puzzle Solving"

Hmm... answer the question? What exactly is the question? "I wonder if you can find the puzzle's answer"? Or is the question in the tune itself?

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I think by "question" they mean the puzzle itself.
I think the clue is the notes with the katakana under them.

Also I did a bit more research about this card. Apparently, if you solve the puzzle correctly and send it to the address on the card, you can get a special gold version of the figure!
Although, seeing as it came out quite a while ago I don't think they'd still be available...

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