I assumed recognising a famous a snippet was likely to have relatively simple timing/octave, to the extent you could just write it in brackets or something, or use an accent mark (which most people should figure out). ("GGGEb...")

"I think I'm currently leaning more towards audio solutions than musical notation ones, simply because not everybody can read music."

Indeed. Though there's probably some correlation between not recognising stuff and

Have you tried services like http://www.shazam.com/music/ where you ring them up and hum it and they tell you the answer? I've never tried it, but I've heard it's a lot better than I expected.

The website suggests you're supposed to hold the phone out to the actual music, and doesn't mention humming it. I fear that might imply it matches on more than just the primary tune, which might imply that humming won't work.

I would certainly like to see a working tune search engine...

Mmm. But I'm sure I remember *some* service it was worth trying with. It'd almost be worth the cost of the call just out of curiousity imho