Thursday, January 10, 2008

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 5): Happy New Year!

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 5): Happy New Year!
Q: Take the phrase, Yeshiva Center, a place of Jewish studies, rearrange these 13 letters to name a well-known movie. It has three words in its name. What movie is it?
I've had a long-time yearning to come up with the ultimate clue to one of the puzzles... and sorry to say, all I have is a mediocre set of clues for this one. I don't have any wonderful insight into how to solve the puzzle. I just kept rearranging letters on the paper until I saw a couple words that were familiar. I suppose you could use an online anagram solver, but what fun is there in that? Anyway, my first instinct was to think that one of the words was a common article like "the" or "an". I'll just tell you, don't bother. Also, none of the words is extremely long, so don't get too fancy. Finally, my really useful hint is if you rearrange the letters you can spell "I envy teachers". (I guess I really meant to say useless hint. Fortunately I have another 51 weeks to come up better clues on future NPR puzzles.)

Edit: My post mentioned a "long-time yearning" and included the word 'year' a couple times. Time for the answer:
A: YESHIVA CENTER --> SEVEN YEAR ITCH

3 comments:

  1. Instead of starting with an anagram server, I anagrammed some words myself and then searched in a movie database.

    Perhaps one of the three words is a proper noun like "China," which wouldn't come up in a database of non-capital words. Or perhaps "Craven," as in a movie like "Wes Craven's Yeshiva Center." (which I must have missed)

    Still no luck.

    This is a tough one.

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  3. Regarding the number of times 'Year' is mentioned, it's also in the title a couple of times (as well as in yearning and 51+ weeks)

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