Thursday, April 09, 2009

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 5): Keep It Short

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 5): Keep It Short:
Q: Think of a four-letter word with a short 'A' sound, and specifically the 'A' is the second letter. Switch the third and fourth letters and you'll get a new word, also with a short 'A' sound. The two words go together to make a phrase that names something that existed from 1982 to 2000. What is it?
Hint: The answer is something that still exists in some places today but the most famous version existed from 1982 to 2000.

Edit: Will was obviously thinking of the Broadway version of this.
A: CATS CAST

28 comments:

  1. an old english folk band's name was inspired from a character in a t.s. eliot poem

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  2. My temperature is high and I am itchy.

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  3. This seems to be a very playful one. But I feel kinda lazy so I think I'll go find a sunny spot to take a nap, and work on the puzzle later... Mmmmmmhhhhhhh, I need to stretch more.

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  4. Searching on Google for "1982 - 2000" I learned a lot about the war in Lebanon, the last bull market on Wall Street, and Generation Y. However, to solve the puzzle, I started at the beginning of the alphabet trying various 4-letter words. Fortunately, the answer didn't start with a "z".

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  5. Lorenzo, glad you got it. Those of you who haven't, don't quit. Really, break a leg!

    Did ANYONE understand my clue to Dave's puzzle? Or are you all just a bunch of hairy primates with no more substantive goals than securing your territorial water hole and killing the occasional tapir? I hope we can evolve beyond that but it's a dim hope I'm afraid, dave...

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  6. I'm glad I kept my "Time Almanac 2001". Except for one, it listed all the facts.

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  7. I got it but I had to rely on my memory....

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  8. in the 1976 movie "logan's run" logan and jessica meet an old man in the senate chamber, during their search for santuary...he explains that many of these have three names: one common, one fancy, and one that only it knows...

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  9. I'm having an allergic reaction to this puzzle...

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  10. i laughed, i cried, then my wife and i figured it out. not a bad puzzle this week.

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  11. Ted Nugent fans probably had an easy time with this one. Funny thing is, I will be seeing one of the incarnations soon in Seattle.

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  12. I got it with the help of your hints, thanks. I was just daydreaming about some of the Broadway productions I've seen while on business in NYC; however, that was a number of years ago.

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  13. Saw it in London in 1984. Seemed like it played the Winter Garden Theater forever. (I wouldn't have posted that giveaway but many of the previous posts are giveaways too.)

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  14. I'm very surprised that I knew the answer was a musical in addition to the animal.

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  15. You guys are going to get into trouble; you've given it away.

    It's a lousy puzzle in the first place. The answer doesn't fit the
    clues very well.

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  16. Carl, I got your clue to my puzzle from last week. Nice!

    To anyone who didn't see the puzzle, take the name of a country. Remove the last letter and you have a defunct company. Put that latter back. Remove the first letter of the country and read the word backwards. You now have the name of a company.

    Thanks to all the clues, this week's puzzle was easy. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the production. It was by far the worst that I've ever seen. In fact, I would consider it a catastrophe.

    Don, the Nugent tune was a favorite of mine many years ago.

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  17. We just returned from a 2 week vacation on Maui. Left my computer at home, and my cell phone only works as a phone. I was amazed that some places charged a fee of $2.00 per minute to go online...

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  18. in refence to all the comments: once you let it out of the bag it's worse getting it back in

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  19. Like herding a bunch of dogs.

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  20. It was unintentional but my clue, "break a leg," was rather elegant. Not only a reference to the stage (as I intended), but also conjures the image of a "cast..."

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  21. Carl, great double meaning to your clue.

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  22. ...did my clues snag your tongues? the first one referred to "mungo jerry" (going up the country), the second, t.s. eliot's collection "old possum's book of practical cats"...

    ...my wife once had a cat named "espn" (pronounced ess-pin)--cuz all it did was:
    "eat, s***, play and nap"...

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  23. Timmy, Mungo Jerry's big song was "In the Summertime." "Going up the Country was by Canned Heat." Good try, though.

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  24. Iron lithium neons=fe li nes=felines=cats

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  25. i put "going up the country" just to see if anyone was listening--thanx

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  26. Timmy, I'm always listening.

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