Sunday, July 20, 2008

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jul 20): Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle

Well, this is an interesting post. I'm on vacation, so I'm actually still not around to be able to tell you what the puzzle is or to give you any hints.
Q: What is the answer to the puzzle on the NPR Website?
My wife and I should be in Akureyri in Northern Iceland at this point. We are planning on doing a whale-watching trip. I think we'll need to bundle up because it can get nippy out on the water watching whales frolick. If I'm lucky, that will be a fruitful clue to this week's puzzle and be central to solving it, but I doubt it. Help each other out, but don't give away the puzzle until after the dead line on Thursday 3pm ET.

25 comments:

  1. The puzzle is pretty easy. I got it. Did anyone else get the answer?

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  2. I haven't solved the new puzzle yet, but I did like one aspect of today's broadcast. The on-air player came from Terre Haute, a city whose name uses six letters of the alphabet, five letters in the first name, five in the second, just like Ethan Allen. If only his name had been Arthur True, it would have been perfect.

    p.s. Some joker keeps calling himself "the real Ben" on this site. The record speaks for itself, so I won't dignify that foolishness other than to say I take his doing so as a personal compliment. :)

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  3. It didn't take me long to solve although I hadn't heard of one of the words before now. It wouldn't surprise me if there is more than one solution.

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  4. No one should get frustrated or angry about this one. It is a bit obscure.

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  5. I had to sort through a mountain of words to find the 5-letter word, but my uphill efforts topped out successfully.

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  6. "The Real Ben" is indeed a joker, is happy to compliment (or complement) the "imposter" Ben anytime, did indeed solve the puzzle this week, and doesn't really believe that anyone outside of a novel could be named Arthur True.

    I also think there are two answers. At least.

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  7. I agree with Ben that there is more than one answer to this one. I have one, so we'll see what Will thinks.

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  8. I think I came up with the same answer Don did. He's such a rogue it gives me fits, almost! But then I think, "That Don, he's such a card."

    P.S. I love this comment section -- it gives me the chance to make such non-sequitur comments! This is how the French must feel!

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  9. Nadahlman,

    We haven't met, and you have figured me out. Oh, such wounded pride!

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  10. I submitted the two pairs clued above and also a topper. It's fairly obscure and perhaps arguable but has two web references that indicate the sixth letter may be silent, at least in English; the 6-letter word refers to the 5-letter word for its definition.

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  11. Don't panic. Perhaps appropriate adjectives could distinguish which worthy Ben is blogging. I'm a fan of Arthur Dent too.

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  12. I have been thinking so hard that I strained my oblique muscle playing croquet.

    I am curious about one thing. Does anyone want to play crazy eights?

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  13. The Real Ben is more than happy to have "The Real" replaced by another adjective, as long as that subsequent adjective can be spelled by the letters in "Ethan Allen" and has no silent letters.

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  14. Okay, after enough generously broad hints I figured it out. I hope nobody takes offense to my pointing out that, generally, in English-speaking countries, the last letter of the longer of the two words is not silent.

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  15. Hope nobody was bored by my little digression...

    Oh well, the grass is always greener...

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  16. Carl,
    Geri just raised the same objection to me offline about the last letter not being silent according to Wikipedia. On the other hand, TheFreeDictionary's entry shows silence in the main entry and non-silence in the thesaurus entry. And Merriam-Webster's 11th shows both pronunciations with the silent one listed first.

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  17. All this angst because
    the language we speak is
    NOT phonetic. And it is
    known as "the GREAT borrowing language."

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  18. You made the mistake, understandably, of taking me seriously. I don't care enough how anyone pronounces the word to make it an issue; I just needed a vehicle to offer some shamelessly revealing hints. Oh--and I won't be surprised if there is more than one solution; I got the "topper" hint.

    And a little digging, using a well-known search engine whose name I won't mention (rhymes with "poogle") reveals there are lots of people in the world named Arthur True. What can one expect? There are, after all, LOTS of people in the world...

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  19. It seems that there are more than one correct answers to the puzzle. There is no question that my six letter word is only pronounced one way. The last letter is always silent. So you may wish you think again about the answer you came up with.

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  20. Corpse is the one I submitted.

    Anyone care to offer any others?

    Ben

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  21. My careless failure to click the "email follow-up comments" box has kept me from enjoying all these comments until now.

    I don't even know what word pairs people are alluding to in their various comments above. Congrats to everyone who came up with any kind of answer. I sure didn't.

    -Steve False
    (a friend of Arthur True)

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  22. puzzles like this one tend to frustrate me because it seems like there's too much luck involved; sometimes one's brain doesn't conveniently go to the right word, and there are a heckuva lot of words in our language...

    Anyway, corpse and corps seems like it must be the answer. Both very common words and totally fits the criteria stated.

    Help! How do I recall my password so I can post from my new computer?

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  23. Thanks Mandy. That worked. I'm assuming joe w meant toque and toquet when he referred to a "topper."

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For NPR puzzle posts, don't post the answer or any hints that could lead to the answer before the deadline (usually Thursday at 3pm ET). If you know the answer, submit it to NPR, but don't give it away here.

You may provide indirect hints to the answer to show you know it, but make sure they don't assist with solving. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the deadline. Thank you.