Thursday, July 31, 2008

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jul 27): Egomaniac Anagram

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jul 27): Egomaniac Anagram:
Q: Re-arrange the letters in the word 'egomaniac' to spell a sign seen in many stores. What is it?
Well we have returned home from Iceland safely. One thing I will say, is if you try and pronounce the place names, you'll find most Icelanders replying, "what did you say?". A pronounciation hint -- the town of "Höfn" sounds like a hiccup. The 'fn' is pronounced 'b' so don't say "Hoffin", say "Hub" as you inhale quickly. As for the puzzle, it's so easy, you can solve it faster than you can say, Kirkjubæjarklaustur (trust me, don't try...).

Edit: There were a couple hints above -- returning to a place, and the phrase "What did you say?". I initially thought that there would be a gerund with "ing" so I pulled those letters aside. I then saw the word "come" in the remaining letters and knew the answer.
A: EGOMANIAC --> COME AGAIN

15 comments:

  1. Yes it was too easy. So easy in fact that I want to give hints to some obvious wrong answer that's actually an anagram of "egomaniac."

    Pretty distracted lately because my landlady is catatonic...

    For breakfast I whipped up a tropical fruit smoothie and took steps to change its state from liquid to solid...

    How I love to remember when the arcades didn't make you buy tokens...

    Sometimes I obsess over the most ridiculous things; what would the three wise men have done if there'd been a large body of water in their way?

    Just before my landlady slipped into unconsciousness she mumbled something. I kept asking her to repeat herself, but to no avail...

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  2. The puzzle is very easy. Only 400 people sent in solutions last week and I still did not get called!!!! This week there should be thousands of people responding.

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  3. After last week's fiasco
    we're back on easy street.
    But I've searched my memory
    and cannot come up with
    having seen that sign anywhere.

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  4. I can't remember the title of the novel, maybe something by Tom Robbins, but I believe it contained a woman who had that (the correct puzzle answer) tattooed on one of her inner thighs. Can't remember what she had on the other. I know, kinda nasty, but I didn't write it.

    Anyone else peeved that Click and Clack never disclose how many submissions, correct or otherwise, that they receive? I've sent in more than my fair share of correct answers and still not picked.

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  5. Opps, forgot to click e-mail follow up. Guess I need to post this to fix that.

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  6. geri, the words in question are often preceded by another phrase or word. Could describe further but would be giving people too much information. Google image search the words, adding "sign" to help (slightly) narrow the search...

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  7. Carl, Thank you for the
    suggestion. Perhaps I
    should do some after-hours
    shopping.

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  8. Well, it took a while but I just figured it out. Must be the jet lag. I can't actually enter as I will be traveling most of the rest of the week.

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  9. Did anyone solve the Car Talk Puzzler?

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  10. What was it (I deleted the e-mail and I'm too lazy to go to their site)? I kinda bag on the summer vacation ones as well as the CarTalk replays. No fun sending them in of there is no chance to hear your name read. However, I thought the first one was Henry Ford, I wasn't sure, but I was right.

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  11. Nix that. Looked it up. That one is wicked easy (and a not so old repeat). Clue: It takes a bit of serial/parallel thought.

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  12. Opps, nix that, thought I saw:
    335 444 553 _ which is very easy. 335 443 554 _ is a bit harder.
    Now I've got some thinking and tinkering to do (or looking through the puzzler archives)

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  13. Hint: Don't group them... think of them as nine individual digits.
    3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 4

    If that doesn't help, search Google for "OEIS"

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  14. Thanks for the hint for Car Talk puzzle. I got the answer.

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  15. Did anyone figure out that my landlady's name is Angie, as in Angie coma? Does anyone care?

    The other wrong answers were a mango ice, a coin game, and magi ocean.

    Do any of you find "WordScrimmage" about as insultingly stupid as anything ever to appear on a newspaper puzzle page?

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