More than 300,000 people have crashed the world’s biggest search engine in order to solve a hidden puzzle.
Who would do that in their right mind, you ask? Swifties.
Taylor Swift is used to her dutiful fans playing Agatha Christie, analysing her clothing for clues and decoding her Instagram captions for a scrap of evidence for their wild (and, at times, correct) theories.
READ MORE: The Parent Trap co-stars discover unexpected connection
Now, she’s putting her fans to serious work by getting them to solve a whopping 33 million anagrams online in order to discover the names of the ‘From the Vault’ tracks that will appear on the upcoming re-record of her album 1989 – crashing Google in the process.
It seems the hundreds of thousands of detective Swifties managed to crash the vault just hours after it was first launched – something that made fans relive what Swifties dubbed ‘The Great War’, when Ticketmaster crashed on the day of Swift’s US tour sale and when millions missed out in the Australian sale back in July.
“Swifties, the vault is jammed! But don’t worry, there are no blank spaces inside. We’re in our fix-it era and will be out of the woods soon,” Google’s official Twitter account wrote to Swifties.
READ MORE: Gisele Bündchen addresses divorce from NFL star Tom Brady
https://twitter.com/Google/status/1704260127807648201https://twitter.com/TisTheDamnPhD/status/1704182233224110230?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
On Twitter overnight, official fan club Taylor Nation ceremoniously revealed fans could access a vault simply by Googling ‘Taylor Swift’.
Once you entered Swift’s name into the search bar, a blue vault graphic appeared with a puzzle to solve from a short clue.
“Love’s a game – and so is our latest easter egg in Search. Wanna play? Here’s how it works,” a blog post that appeared on Google overnight reads.
For a daily dose of 9Honey, subscribe to our newsletter here
“Dying to see how this one ends? We promise that the wait isn’t gonna be forever, but the prize will definitely be worth the pain. Cause darling, we’re a Swiftie dressed like a search engine.”
So far, clues have included “I Love You,” “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” “Karma Music Video,” “Likes, Job, Whereabouts Were Studied Intently.”
Coincidentally, one of the puzzle clues was “Sagittarius”, which comes just a week after Swift called Nicki Minaj her “favourite Sagittarius” whilst accepting an award at the VMAs.
It also comes just a month after Minaj tweeted, “Fighting the urge to say Sagittarius tingz right now so bad,” leading fans to believe the rapper will team up with Swift for a track on 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
According to Pop Base, fans have already managed to solve 1 per cent of the puzzles – which is still a tremendous effort considering it amounts to just over 300,000 anagrams.
Since Swift began re-recording her first six records, each release has included songs ‘From The Vault’. Vault tracks are songs Swift penned while writing the original album but ultimately decided to leave off the final version.
READ MORE: Kevin Costner and ex-wife Christine Baumgartner settle divorce
Not only do the vault tracks add an incentive to fans to access new music from their favourite Swift era, but the songs have been quickly embraced as some of Swift’s best.
This includes Mr. Perfectly Fine, a song Swift penned about Joe Jonas, which was released with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) as well as I Bet You Think About Me from Red (Taylor’s Version), which many fans suspect to be about John Mayer.
Swift spectacularly announced the re-recording of her seminal 2014 record, 1989, during one of her Los Angeles shows, which wrapped up the US leg of her record-breaking The Eras Tour.
READ MORE: Billy Miller’s mum speaks out after The Young & The Restless actor’s shock death
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvwPZgYuCcV/?hl=en
The New Romantics singer spent the entirety of the three-hour show appearing in blue outfits – the colour designated to 1989 – before finally announcing during the acoustic segment of the show that the record would be the next to be released, exactly nine years after the original dropped on October 27, 2014.
“To be perfectly honest, this is my most FAVOURITE re-record I’ve ever done because the 5 From The Vault tracks are so insane. I can’t believe they were ever left behind. But not for long!” Swift said after announcing the news.