NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 25, 2010): Name Two Birds...

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 25, 2010): Name Two Birds...:

Q: Name a famous person whose first name is seven letters long and ends with the name of a bird, and whose last name is also seven letters but starts with the name of a bird. Hint: One of these birds is the general name for the bird, and the other is a specific type of bird. Who is it?

Finally a nicely constructed puzzle with enough clues to confirm your answer, but not too many that they give it away. Are the bird names long or short? Is this person part of history? Or part of the present time? Not wanting to ruin the puzzle, I'm steping out of giving a clue this week and leave it to you to ponder.

Edit: If you read the last word of each question you get short/history/time --> A Brief History of Time. Also, I deliberately misspelled step(p)ing because that's what is left after removing the birds from his name.

A: stepHEN HAWKing

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 18, 2010): A Tale of Two Countries

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 18, 2010): A Tale of Two Countries:

Q: Name a country in six letters. Change two consecutive letters in it to one letter to get the name of another country. What countries are these?

Here's a related puzzle sent to me by Gillog Lautomy, "Name a country in seven letters. Change three consecutive letters in it to one letter to get the name of another country. What countries are these?"

Edit: The hint was the "name" Gillog Lautomy. You can insert the country names to form 4 words (gilGUY/ANAlog lauGH/ANAtomy).

A: GUYANA --> GHANA

P.S. The answer to the bonus puzzle is LIBERIA --> LIBYA.

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 11, 2010): Is it Thanksgiving Yet?

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 11, 2010): Is it Thanksgiving Yet?:

Q: Name something you might order in a restaurant — two words, eight letters all together, with four letters in the first word and four letters in the last. Drop the last letter. The remaining seven letters will read backward and forward the same.

Man, I've got turkey on the brain, and it's only April. If you think turkey too, I'm sure it will pan out.

Edit: There were a few clues in my short post. "Man I've got turkey" sounds like "Manavgat, Turkey" which is near "Side". A little more obvious is that Thanksgiving dinner usually consists of turkey and numerous side dishes. Finally, dishpan and outside contain the words "dish" and "side". What is left is "pan out". I hope those hints weren't too obvious and didn't give it away.

A: SIDE DISH --> SIDEDIS

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 4, 2010): Death and Taxes

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 4, 2010): Death and Taxes:

Q: Think of a 15-letter word that is spelled without using any of the letters T, A, X, E or S. And it means how Stephen King writes.

Every Sunday I feel the pressure to come up with a solution to the puzzle and then post a good clue as quickly as possible. Other times I can't figure it out and just have to rely on others to post their hints. I guess that's just the way it is.

Edit: My hints were "pressure" (as in blood pressure) and "way" (as in curds and "whey")

A: BLOODCURDLINGLY
Some have proposed blood-chillingly as an alternate answer, but most sources have it hyphenated

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Mar 28, 2010): The Name's the Same

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Mar 28, 2010): The Name's the Same:

Q: What 6 letter word beginning with the letter 'S' would be the same if it started with 'TH?'

So I was thinking I should have words like SOUGHT and THOUGHT, or SINNER and THINNER. But those aren't the same in the end. I'm open to any hints...

Edit: Indeed I did have "open" as my hidden hint. The puzzle intentionally tried to mislead us into thinking we were looking for synonyms. You'll notice I didn't put this puzzle in the synonym category however.

A: SESAME --> THE SAME