Friday, March 28, 2014

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Mar 23, 2014): A World of Instruments

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Mar 23, 2014): A World of Instruments:
Q: Name a capital of a country. Change the first letter to name a familiar musical instrument. What is it?
It's not easy to come up with a thumbnail that doesn't give the answer away.

Edit: My hints were to an alternate answer. The photo is from a music store in Yuba City, California. The word "ThUmBnAil" contains "TUBA" in order.
A: Caracas (Venezuela) --> maracas.
Juba (South Sudan) --> tuba

155 comments:

  1. Here's my standard reminder... don't post the answer or any hints that could lead directly to the answer (e.g. via a chain of thought, or an internet search) before the deadline of Thursday at 3pm ET. If you know the answer, click the link and 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 give the answer away. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the Thursday deadline. Thank you.

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  2. Everyone should come up with two acceptable answers. May the chickens rest in peace.

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  3. Pretty sure I won't be visiting either of these cities any time soon. I'm too chicken.

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    Replies
    1. In fact I have a third city! These chickens are multiplying...

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    2. You can use the South African Rand to purchase my band of 3 instruments.

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    3. @WW - Which to choose? You might want to choose the older capital city, as a not-so-little birdie tells me the government may soon cross the road from the newer capital to an even newer one.

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    4. Sound advice, Bob K.

      Did anyone else find "I'm sorry, America!"" from today's on-air contestant, completely charming and endearing? I am going to remember that for future use as I could identify with him today ;-).

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    5. I think that had to be a shout out to Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks...

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    6. Thad, you could be right...

      Again with the chickens!

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    7. I just went with the first one I hit alphabetically.

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    8. It pains me to see that even though we now have a new puzzle some of you are still in this fowl humor.

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  4. bucGAWK! buc-buc-bucGAAAWK! Huh? You speak chicken? Good. Well, then, let's talk turkey. There should never be a Sunday Puzzle with several obvious answers.

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  5. Mamaw Creek sent in the one that is most suited to her while old Zeke went with the obvious for him. What's the difference between a piano and a fish?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish. Or a chicken.

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    2. Observant readers who were with us on May 07 of last year may recall "You can tuna, salmon, and sardines; but
      you don't can Steinways, Baldwins, or
      Yamahas."

      It was one of my better paraprosdokians.
      I'll bet Bill and Melinda are still laughing.

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    3. Paul, that is excellent!

      Gatesway drug?

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    4. WW,

      Why do I have this gnawing feeling that what you see as 'excellent' is something I never suspected?

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    5. I don't know why you have that feeling, Paul. But, don't get too unnerved by it. I really think it is a very clever parapro*******.

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    6. WW

      Don't ever SYH.

      Just good policy, IMHO

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    7. Didn't want to be clueless, Paul. I know clever =/ excellent.

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    8. Oh, now I see. Right in front of my nose, and I never suspected. Excellent!

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    9. Oh, I'm happy, Paul. I thought Blaine might have excised my clue so I'm glad it was a mystery to you.

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  6. This puzzle brings me back to 5th grade when I jammed on the muatemala city in the school band. I was way cooler than those nerdy bubliners.

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  7. So, Neal DeGrasse Tyson is sitting on a dock just looking at the planks of wood very carefully.

    A fellow scientist asks "What are you doing, Neal?"

    "Pier review."

    Inspired by a Sunday morning NPR story.

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    Replies
    1. Neal has been behaving like a total prima donna lately.

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    2. Some pezzonovante. . .

      Btw, Mr. Duck et al, there is a clue in my NDGT story above.

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    3. I went with Caracas, Maracas.

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  8. One of the answers (w odd number of letters) has a few connections to last week's puzzle.

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  9. Did anyone see a clue in Blaine's comment?

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  10. I had a hard time picking one instrument over the other, so I submitted both in my entry. What's that old saying... "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's guitar." I'm not sure I'm remembering that saying exactly right.

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  11. One answer came to me just thinking about the puzzle. A second answer nearly jumped off the page as I was scanning a list of world capitals. A third still eludes me. Are we sure about a third? Is there a clue to be had?

    Chuck

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  12. I saw it, Natasha. This brings up the question, "Can a really awful crossword always stink?"

    ReplyDelete
  13. Word Woman:
    You would know the answer to this:
    Is the period of time from when your car breaks down until it is repaired a PREFIX?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Too bad Tyre is not a capital city. Also I think it is a shame that Crumpet is not the capital of the UK.

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    Replies
    1. It seems a disproportionate number of NPR puzzles involve world capitals or Roman numerals. Apparently, Will composed this week’s “gem” while preparing his on-air puzzle (Change one letter of these geographical places to form a lowercase word with a different number of syllables: Lima becomes lime or limb; Chile, child or chill; France, fiance; etc.)…

      WS: “Hey, if I change a letter in this world capital it becomes a lowercase word. But, phooey, these words have the same number of syllables. But that’s okay, I’ll just use it for this week’s puzzle.”

      I only have found two possible answers, using the MW Dictionary, still no WiFi access. I had not considered jan’s observation that Will might have used “capital” in its monetary sense. It’s an easy (would be harder had Will not specified “first letter”) yet kind of fun puzzle, though I do take slight issue with how Will worded it. (I’ll explain on Thursday.) It’s kind of fun because another of this county’s large cities, if you change its last letter, forms the same musical instrument. And the country itself echoes another “musical instrument,” one that is quite obnoxious.

      (My second (possibly acceptable) answer involves an ancient world capital. Big flat phoney deal.) If you transpose two letters in the middle of a capital, there is an answer that involves a brand name of musical instruments that Blaine pictured above.

      Piggyback puzzle involving food instead of world capitals: Change the first letter of a food item to form a musical instrument. I have two answers, one in which the food is a hyphenated brand name.

      Backtracking to last week: These Blaine’s Blog posts ought to be bottled and preserved for posterior… er, that is, posterity. (Incidentally, since anterior is posterior’s antonym, shouldn’t “anterity” be coined as a synonym for ancestors/forebears? We need more words!) The “downtime/poultry” section was especially entertaining, clever and hilarious. (Thanks, ron, for getting, and keeping, that ball (a ball indeed!) rolling.) WW’s application of the riddles to Blainesville denizens was a nice “local angle.” jan’s Click and Clack parody was so spot-on I thought it was transcribed from an actual broadcast. All participating posters deserve maximum kudosity. (BTY, sdb, Pet Clark recently recorded a new rendition of “Downtown.” Maybe she should consider recording “Downtime.”)

      WW,
      Yeah I empathized with the on-air contestant’s “I’m sorry, America” comment also. When I was an on-air contestant (Yes, I have the lapel pin! I wear it on my sleeve.), I felt like saying something similar. Interesting that he is a freelance saxophone player, given this week’s puzzle subject. Let’s see… Taxophone? A good renaming of Washington D.C.? Actually, Faxophone would have been a good name for the fax machine, and Yaxophone a good name for telephones used by (sexist, stereotypical comment ahead) teen and tweenage girls.

      sdb,
      Your post above touches on my secondary answer for this week’s puzzle, and on one answer to my piggyback puzzle.


      Finally, a special shout-out to Ward for composing his recent ingenious THREE/ETHER/THERE (silent-b number) anagram puzzle, a true gem (no quotation marks needed) against which most puzzles NPR offers up will fall shortz.

      Lego(silent-b)Lambda

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    2. I advocate making the crumpet the monetary unit of the UK. All in favor say 'Aye'.

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    3. When I think of Washington D.C., I don't come up with any musical instruments, but just a lot of sour notes.

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    4. lego, since those who come after us are Posterity, clearly we are pre-posterous.

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    5. Clearly.

      Bob Kerfuffle and lego, casting no asspersions that way.

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  15. I finally found three answers that meet technical requirements. However, one was head and shoulders above the others so that’s the one I submitted.

    Chuck

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    Replies
    1. Would you mind lending a hint to a young and naive mind Chuck?

      Delete
    2. Matthew Duck,
      What you are actually saying is that a revealing hint would be instrumental in your being able to solve this puzzle. I hope you are taking notes. Organization might be helpful too.

      Delete
    3. Mr. Duck,
      Are you into computer programming/scripting at all? (Could be a hint here)

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    4. mike_hinterberg, who do you think was the most influential computer science person? Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? Who was Mr. CS?

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    5. How about Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS? And by the way, I have met Bill Gates.

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    6. Wondering if I'm missing a clever hint ;)
      "Influential" is tough, because it may rightly include a large degree of capitalized influence, if even (mild) notoriety.
      For "Mr. CS," though, I'd be biased towards the science and art of algorithms. SDB's got a great answer and is mine as well: Alan Turing. He also has a 2:46 marathon to his name! Something that has not escaped my notice and awe.

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    7. Yes, I was just hinting with well-known names. Gates & Jobs can't really be considered computer scientists at all.

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    8. It would seem the plurality is voting for Alan Turing.

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    9. jan:
      Your comment reminds me of the joke that was popular when I was in the army regarding our mess hall cooks. They were said to not be cooks, but scientists who could turn perfectly good ingredients into shit without it passing through the human body.

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    10. Very good, jan -- I figured "Mr. CS" played in, but I missed that, having spent all my vowel money on the "U" in Juba/Tuba.

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    11. I was suggesting to Mr. Duck that this is a neat, easy problem to solve algorithmically -- taking a leap that a young person interested in puzzles might be interested in that sort of solution. I was even too lazy to do it with a script, but instead just used Excel (there's your Bill Gates link): copy/paste a country capitals and instrument list next to each other, strip the first character, and compare.

      Interestingly, since I used this list for musical instruments, I missed "Caracas" because "Maraca" was listed singularly.

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  16. "Zing! Went the Catgut of My Heart"

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  17. Do they play the Vuvuzela in Venezuela? Do they play the bongo in the Congo?

    I think the answer has to do with Flying Fish Cove.

    ReplyDelete
  18. After college I hobnobbed around Europe a spell and landed a job as a singing gondolier’s assistant on the canals of Venice. My boss was a good egg (to quote WW, “Again with the chickens!”) named Little Luigi Grandioso whose clientele consisted largely of Londoners on vacation who paid him in crumpets, the British currency at the time. Luigi was an illegally blind Venetian, so he could not distinguish between “Italian bread” (crossword clue for lira) and limey crumpets. “Blimey!” was an interjection Luigi had picked up parrot-like from his British passengers, and he must have gone overboard using it.

    My main duty was to keep Luigi’s gondolier pole and oars cut to just the right hydrodynamic shape for optimally efficient propulsion through the canals, using a handsaw he kept on board. My secondary duty was to accompany Luigi’s singing by playing this oar saw, as Luigi called it, which also functioned as a musical instrument.

    That was a crumpetty limey story… Now for a strumpetty limey limerick:

    “Just a pence I’ll pay, like it or lump it!”
    Said the john to a Londontown strumpet.
    For such recompense crummy
    She lay listless, a dummy.
    (She’d have (CENSORED) had he coughed up a crumpet.

    And so, Paul, regarding your crumpet proposal (proposition?) count me as an “Aye” (as in “Aye-Aye, Captain Luigi!”).

    sdb, Don’t you mean “…the catgut (of) my tongue”? (I’m assuming your tongue is as tightly strung as your keyboarding fingers. Forget skydiving. Each week we witness your pillory-to-post balancing act upon high-tension tightrope wires as you hurl down zingers like thunderbolts from Thor.)

    Righto, Bob K, preposterous we are. A fine word, preposterous, with a kind of double-prefix and etymology that suggests “putting the cart before the whores… oops, I mean horse.” (Sorry, I got strumpets on my mind.)

    LegoLuigi

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    Replies
    1. I was replacing "strings" with "catgut." Don't ask me why; it just came to my mind. I may repent later, but don't count on it.

      You just reminded me of back in 1972 when I was living in Fiuggi, Italy and working on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's International Staff. Jerry Jarvis, his right hand man, was once asked, "Instead of it being, 'I think, therefor I am,' could it not be, I think I think; therefor I am I think'?" Without pausing, Jerry replied, "That's putting Descartes before the Source." Maharishi was always cautioning us not to become distracted from the Source.

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    2. I suppose I should now add that the above anecdote has become a source subject for me.

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  19. Across the bay I see a great opportunity to resume.

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    Replies
    1. Across from Caracas is Maracaibo meaning resume.

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  20. There is at least one nation that contains this property.

    Also, a variation on last week's challenge: take a well-known brand of an item found in a grocery store. Remove a set of consecutive letters (I won't tell you now many). You will have the brand name of a car. Hint: a letter in the first brand name is pronounced far differently in the second brand name.

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    Replies
    1. Update: There are at least three (3) political entities that share this property. I'm not going to get any more specific other than at least one is a capital and at least one is a nation.

      Let's see how many we can come up with and post what we've found at 3 PM Eastern this coming Thursday.

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  21. Singing my ditty and I love my city! I'll love 'er even more when she lowers my taxes

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    Replies
    1. Speaking of ditties about loving your city, anybody catch the prologue to last's week's This American Life? Had me laughing out loud.

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    2. No, but I thought much of our conversation last week had a lot of pluck. Perhaps this one does too.

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  22. suggested thumbnail: musical notes from a work closely associated with this instrument.

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  23. Replies
    1. OSU band Script Ohio. Sousaphone player (lightweight tuba) dots the i.

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  24. The second city may be disqualified due to the wording of the puzzle stating a musical instrument.

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  25. Word Woman:
    Is it true that Colorado is now The Rocky Mountain High Pot News State? And speaking of mathematics, I am reminded of my younger brother who had a speech impediment during childhood, but turned out to be brilliant as an adult. We all thought it must be because his favorite TV program was M.A.T.H.

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    Replies
    1. No.

      What about you Washingtonians? New nicknames?

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    2. Washingtonians don't need no nicknames, we got badges!

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    3. Badgers, you say, sky dive boy?

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    4. Wrong president. Madison has the badgers.

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  26. Replies
    1. This sort of thing always gives me a creepy feeling that there's someone like a math grad student in his universe who's in charge of our universe.

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    2. ... i.e., that these are sort of like programmers' Easter eggs.

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    3. More chicken references from that grad student in his/her universe!

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  27. Sorry I missed all the galliformes fun last week when I was on vacation. Grazie for all the hilarious posts. I'm still smiling. In keeping with my online persona, here's one more:
    Silvio Berlusconi: "Those chicks were not underage. They were all at least 18 months old. And they crossed the road to my villa to present their credentials for the position of Minister of Culture in my cabinet. Bunga, bunga.

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  28. Also,
    Barack Obama: "We strongly urge the chicken not to cross the road. We will use all diplomatic means to dissuade it. Let me be clear, however. There is a red line in the middle of the road and..."

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    Replies
    1. MARGARET THATCHER: Because the chicken, without regard to the welfare of the country, crossed the road to go on strike, and that chicken will never work again in this country. I will break that chicken.

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    2. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A chicken coop divided cannot sustain itself. I intend to emancipate the chickens on that other side of the road.

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  29. FRED RODGERS: Wouldn't you want to go for a stroll on a nice day like this?

    WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, Jr.: I really don't know. I am simply at a loss for words.

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    Replies
    1. PYTHAGORAS: The chicken heard some of the squawks on the other two sides.

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    2. Py guy,
      Are drumsticks legs or sides?

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    3. I think drumsticks are legs, cole slaw and corn on the cob are sides, and drumsticks are also accessories to percussionism before the fact.

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  30. VLADIMIR PUTIN: Mmmmm. Chicken Kiev, delicious! We shall cross the road and get some. We shall get all!

    ReplyDelete
  31. J H
    I can see the traffic light straight up ahead.
    its just a cross(road) town traffic

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  32. Didn't skydiveboy refer to a certain surgery a few weeks ago?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. jan,
      Please elaborate. I don't recall.

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    2. CARACAS >>> MARACAS

      SMH referred to Shaking My Head, as in shaking maracas.

      The NDGT story referred to watching a pier move in an earthquake, a great shaking also. Some great video is out now from the USGS of this phenomenon in the March 27, 1964 Alaskan 9.2 quake.

      "It would seem the plurality is voting for Turing" alluded to MARACAS being a plural word.

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    3. My inner Sheldon insists on declaring that "maracas" are NOT a "musical instrument; they are a "percussion" instrument.

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    4. So a piano is not a musical instrument?

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    5. The piano, the marimba, and the tympani, for example, would be both percussion and musical. They both produce musical tones when they are struck.

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    6. I'm concerned by the shared etymological roots of percussion, concussion, and discussion. There may be repercussions...

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  33. JUBA > TUBA

    Come on now, admit it. You haven't been to a tuba recital since you last visited Juba, South Sudan in your sedan. Well?

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  34. tuba/ Juba, South Sudan. My hint regarding "important to keep up to date," given that South Sudan is a new country.

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  35. > Found two so far.

    CARACAS (Venezuela) -> MARACAS
    JUBA (South Sudan) -> TUBA

    > In crosswords, Will often uses "capital" to refer to currency units. There's an answer that works that way, too.

    DONG (Vietnam) -> GONG

    > Who was Mr. CS?

    Mirroring Blaine's hint, TUBA is to THUMBNAIL as MR. CS is to MARACAS.

    > Didn't skydiveboy refer to a certain surgery a few weeks ago?

    A TUBAl ligation?

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  36. Official answer:
    Juba (South Sudan), tuba

    Alternative answers:
    Caracas (Venezuela), maracas
    Rome (Italy), gome, an African drum (Google gome drum)

    Last Sunday I said, “I finally found three answers that meet technical requirements. However, one was head and shoulders above the others so that’s the one I submitted.” If you’ve ever seen someone play the tuba, you’ll understand what I meant about head and shoulders.

    Chuck

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  37. 1. JUBA, Republic of South Sudan. TUBA.

    2. CARACAS, Venezuela. MARACAS.

    3. Don't trust your list, Chuck:

    TYRE, Ancient capital of Phoenicia. (after 11th Century B.C.) LYRE.

    The legochallenge:

    food item>>>musical instrument:
    corn>>>horn
    jello>>>cello
    bass(fish)>>>bass (no need to change a letter, just pronunciation)

    LMP Challenge: (Brands of cars in bold)

    Plexus (weight loss products)
    Propel (Fitness Water)
    Kinshasa (Congo capital)
    Slovakia (Country)
    Saudi (Citizen)
    Nokia (Smart phones)
    Oxford (shoe)
    Miniskirts
    Taffeta (fabric)
    Anagram !

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  38. Now can we please get back to playing Chicken in Kiev?

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  39. Caracas maracas
    maraca is a musical instrument.
    maracas are musical instruments.

    Juba tuba is the preferred answer.

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    Replies
    1. What is the sound of one hand shaking?

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    2. For that matter, what's the sound of two hands shaking? Is there a chirality issue?

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  40. Chicken joke newsflash!

    The Obama administration announced Thursday it is placing the lesser prairie chicken on a list of threatened species, a move that could affect oil and gas drilling, wind farms and other activities in five central and southwestern states.

    Look at that, even has a tie in to fracking for Word Woman!

    I wonder if all that road crossing has taken a toll?

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    Replies
    1. Had breakfast with a friend from Exxon-Mobil. Lively, shall we say, discussion of fracking, Keystone pipeline, tar sands. No lesser prairie chicken talk this go round.

      Tollhouse Chickens?

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  41. None of you got DOHA (Qatar) and BOHA (a type of bagpipe)? I think this should be the preferred answer, because Qatar is sort of, almost, kind of, pronounced like a misical instrument.

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    Replies
    1. It may be debatable (1) that the boha is familiar, and (2) that the bagpipe is a musical instrument :-)

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    2. Have you not heard The Chicken Dance on bagpipes?

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    3. Points for originality though, David. I learned about both the boha and Misical, Mexico. . .And one more chicken entree never hurts.

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    4. Yes, -OHA showed up on a comparative list in compared by computer. I thought this was the 2nd answer referred to by others, since I missed "Maracas" due to the plural!
      (Short, 2-word "junk" also showed up, mostly due to "San-X" capitals and "Pan-X" instruments)

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  42. Variation: Think of a former world capital. Insert one additional letter to name an instrument that is traditional to the area.

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  43. My posts explained:

    (Ward, thanks for the good downtime puzzle. A good weekend diversion.)

    I said I took “slight issue with how Will worded“ the puzzle because in my best answer (Caracas/maracas) maracas are musical instruments, plural. But, again, Dr. Shortz is smarter that I. My apologies to Will and any blog-goers I may have misled. Will may justifiably not accept Caracas/maracas because of the plural issue, as zeke creek also noted.

    My second (possibly acceptable) answer was lyre/Tyre. “Big (as in Big Sur; Tyre was aka Sur) flat (as in flat tYre) phoney (echoes Phoenecia, where TYRE was situated) deal. (reading my explanations is an orDEAL)” My non-answer was Luigi’s “oar saw”/Warsaw.

    I think WS’s preferred answer will be Juba/tuba, but he may also accept Chuck’s Rome/gome, David’s Doha/boha, Tyre/lyre (mentioned by ron, and sdb) and, especially, jan’s Dong/gong, or at least give such solvers “kudos for creativity,” as he sometimes does. I was blissfully ignorant of all but lyre/Tyre.

    Still, and besides. Caracas. Venezuela’s third largest city is maracaY (you change its last letter), and its second-largest is maracaIBO. It’s a quite percussive country. Venezuela itself echoes the vuvuzela, a “musical instrument” that some consider quite obnoxious.

    “If you transpose two letters in the middle of a capital, there is an answer that involves a brand name of musical instruments that Blaine pictured above.” Lisbon > Libson > Gibson (guitars).

    My challenge: Change the first letter of a food item to form a musical instrument. My two two answers were trumpet/crumpet and Jell-o/cello.
    ron nailed this challenge, as usual, and gave answers I had not even considered bass/bass, which I love, and (duh!) horn/corn! Then he goes and gives a car-lot-load of responses/riffs to LMP’s capital/auto name challenge.

    Lego…

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    Replies
    1. I could also give you carp/harp (carp are pretty bony, but edible) and root/lute, as well as my fave: crumb/drum. And all of these will be played in a grand performance of the frittata cantata.

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    2. Guess I got carried away there with rhyming instead of letter substitution. How about Life (cereal) and fife?

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  44. Downtime Post. If Will Shortz is the NPR Puzzlemaster, I wish to nominate SDB as the Punmaster of Blaine's Blog. Here are my candidates for:
    Puns for the educated....

    1. King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years
    of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of
    the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world.
    Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan.
    Croesus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it."
    "But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested.
    "Don't you know who I am? I am the king!"
    Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star,
    makes no difference who you are."

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

    2. Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid
    bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss League records were destroyed
    in a fire, ...and so we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

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

    3. A man rushed into a busy doctor's surgery and shouted,
    "Doctor! I think I'm shrinking!" The doctor calmly responded,
    "Now, settle down. You'll just have to be a little patient."

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

    4. An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine
    man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin
    strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew,
    and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the
    medicine man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief
    shrugged and said, "The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on."

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

    5. A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and
    found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted
    on complaining to the local civic official, who apologized profusely
    saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."

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

    6. There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept
    on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three
    became pregnant. The first two each had a baby boy. The one who
    slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This just goes to prove
    that... the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws
    of the other two hides.

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

    7. A sceptical anthropologist was cataloguing South American folk remedies
    with the assistance of a tribal elder who indicated that the leaves of a
    particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the
    anthropologist expressed his doubts, the elder looked him in the eye
    and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds like these, you don't need enemas."


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    Replies
    1. ron, thanks for these. I've heard versions of all of them except for the hippopotamus one~~inspired. No chicken puns? ;-)

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  45. Connections to last week's puzzle: CARacas for the Mazda car and venezuela produces oil (though probably not for Mazola).

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  46. Ron Ron get it Ron I get it ron Anyway, love the spun puns, especially Malady Lingers (my dad's favorite thong I mean song!

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  47. ron,

    Yeah, Dr. Shortz and Dr. DiveBoy are pretty good, but you’re not a bad puzzle master and pun master yourself. Like RoRo, I too enjoy spun puns and punny puzzles.

    Snipper,
    Love your CARacas/MAZolDA/oil Venezuelan connection.

    ron & WW,
    As God is my witness (and I mean eyewitness; I’m in big trouble if God is my character witness!), the hippopotamus/squaw/hides pun was the only the only one of ron’s septet of puns with which I was familiar. Thus, WW and I are a bit like Jill and Jack Spratt. Or, better yet, we’re like brothers Tommie and Hank Aaron who, combined, hit more major league home runs than any brother combination in history, licking the platter (home plate) clean with their spikes 768 times. Hank had 755 homers, Tommie 13.

    See y’all tomorrow.

    LegoTommie

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    1. Yes, and thanks to both you, Lego and ron. I have been meaning to mention, though, that a couple of those jokes are actually not puns, but more on the order of Spoonerisms. Funny, just the same.

      I have been having a disappointing last 3 or 4 days. I was walking around Greenlake here in Seattle, near my house, when I made up a joke I thought would go over well, but I have only found three people who understood it. I frequently make up jokes I know will not be understood by young people today, but I have been so surprised almost no one seems to have heard of the candy that I grew up with and is the punch line of my joke. So here it is:

      If you owned a dog that was a complete slut, do you know the correct term to describe her?

      Answer: A horehound.

      I suspect most regulars on this blog know this candy.

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    2. Are you suggesting we're hoary?

      Seriously, though, I checked the pantry and found two bags of Claey's horehound candies, a gift from my centenarian friend who left us ... almost three years ago, now. While I'm trying to decide whether or not to open one up and find out if they're still good, I'm finding that they serve pretty well as maracas.

      I'm afraid I must mention that not all dogs are hounds; if I were to pick a slutty dog, it'd probably be the poodle; and there's another term which works quite well, in any event.

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  48. Next week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from listener Mike Reiss, a former writer and producer for The Simpsons. The film Wild Wild West had three W's as its initials. What prominent film of last year had two W's as its initials?

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  49. I've found TWO films of last year which each had a SINGLE W as their initial, and TWO films of last year whose initials were W,W, then a third initial which was NOT W.

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    1. Everybody knows what Tuesday is, right?

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    2. I think Paul's thinking of April Fools Day.

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    3. Actually, I'm thinking the day after M.

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    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    5. This one is close and sneaky.

      Expecting fun, freaky, palindromic posts on 4/1/14.

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    6. WW,
      I am looking forward to your STOEP blog on 41/1/4. (zeke creek may be kinda of backwoods, but I've always been kinda backwards.
      OgelAdbmal

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    7. What is an initial? The answer helps a lot.

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  50. Boy, am I glad I didn't get the call this week! That on-air game was painful!

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