Thursday, March 08, 2012

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Mar 4, 2012): Can't see the Forest for the Trees

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Mar 4, 2012): Can't see the Forest for the Trees:
Q: Take the trees hemlock, myrtle, oak and pine. Rearrange the letters in their names to get four other trees, with one letter left over. What trees are they?
How about a monkey tree?

Edit: If you take the consonants in "monkey" you get the last letters of each of the trees.
A: ELM, LEMON, TEAK and HICKORY (with P left over)

47 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 Google or Bing) 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.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven't heard the puzzle yet myself, but my friend renata tells me that there are two solutions:

    http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=8079648#post8079648

    (The hint she gave me was S first, stick, street, and balls drop. I hope that's not too much of a giveaway.)

    [NOTE: I deleted my previous attempt to comment because the published comment formatted poorly. Sorry.]

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  3. I have solved this puzzle, but I don't have a good clue yet. Now that I think of it though, it does remind me of the one bottle of booze my folks used to buy each year.

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  4. Musical clues: Peter, Paul & Mary and Johnny Horton.

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  5. Tough to give hints for this one, so I'll just say this:

    "I think that I shall never see an NPR Puzzle as lovely as a tree."

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  6. This one gave me nightmares.

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  7. Take the first letter of each new tree plus the extra letter and arrange to name what came before the CD.

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    Replies
    1. Gosh, you must be older than I am!

      Delete
    2. I thought I had the answer, but there's no way I can do this with my answer to get "8 track."

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    3. OK, well maybe not "right" before the CD.

      Delete
  8. Why am I reminded of the taste of fish? Why am I reminded of an ex-President?

    Chuck

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    Replies
    1. That's an old President. Not a sweet guy. I bet he read the Iliad. Do you think he smoked cigarettes?

      Delete
  9. I should point out that it would be pointless to even consider CACTUS. Sorry if I appear a bit prickly today.

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  10. Easy as a nursery rhyme

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  11. Here's a clue - one of them is not maple !

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  12. Okay, then I will try palmistry.

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  13. Take the game after Mother, when to a Roman there might be a long, thin object, who can hear the tree for the date. Coming to a ship's pier, rodents come to one here (strike that), once they heard the time that is, hear a mystique you can't miss (um; in a word, "4" parenthesis, perhaps; nothing too small for a mouse at Christmas). What is it, my dear, are you wanted by Bell?
    The first clue's Roman can be absolutely square now. And speaking of that letter, it's not supposed to be 2.718. That's not a typo. And in those objects is another definition for the same tree.

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  14. Who cares about the puzzle. Let me tell you about my Saturday. Started with a beautiful day on the water. While at the wheel, my wife brought me a wonderfully flavored cup of coffee; then for lunch, a beautiful porterhouse; then in the evening I settled in to a great read about a former Tour de France winner. A good day.

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  15. okay, I am still trying to get bhunters hint, which I thought was related to jan's.


    Most of the other hints I get except for Michael's. I'll wait 'til the end of the week for that too.

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  16. Blaine, I prefer a money tree. New wood or antique I would not care

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  17. I was more interested in trying to suss what Nova Land's friend Renata's second solution might be. I did come up with one "close, but no cigar" solution for which her first two hints held true. Her next trees might have had the pattern 1223 and 4566. But 4566 seems to be a verb from which the noun 4566ard springs.

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  18. Difficulty in solving this puzzle may be caused by inability to see the trees due to the forest blocking the view.

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  19. Batter on deck?! Nah, he's not worth the money we paid for him. They don't make his kind no more.

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  20. Looks we'll top 65 degrees in Ann Arbor today. Don't even want to think about sweating yet, so here's an easy puzzle.

    Walk this way

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  21. I still wonder about Nova Land's post on Mar 3, 2012 11:35 PM:

    "I haven't heard the puzzle yet myself, but my friend renata tells me that there are two solutions:

    http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=8079648#post8079648

    (The hint she gave me was S first, stick, street, and balls drop...)"

    It seems to me that that hint was only for the same solution up with which WE have all come.

    I equate "S first" with Siz's "beautiful porterhouse", "stick" with the "wonderfully flavored cup of coffee" (also my musical clue of Johnny Horton), "street" with "While at the wheel" (that was the one that gave Jan nightmares), and "balls drop" with "a former Tour de France winner" (also my musical clue of Peter, Paul and Mary).

    I tried going to that forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=8079648#post8079648. You have to register into James Randi's forum before you can even READ any of the forums. I registered this morning and tried again and found out just before sending off this post that I can now indeed read that thread. Nothing more yet from Renata.

    So Nova Land, can you get Renata to leave any clues to the *other* solution?

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    Replies
    1. I agree that Renata's hints were for OUR solution. I have already said that her first two hints were good for what I thought her alternate solution might be.

      The tree with the 1223 pattern is legit and is in MWCD. Women may be more familiar with this name, but it is new to me.

      The 4566 pattern stands for something done to a tree, and that tree becomes a 4566ard, strictly speaking.

      Delete
    2. Sorry, I should have mentioned that the Puzzles section of the JREF forum is members only. I meant to mention that in my comment, and forgot.

      (Much of the rest of the JREF forum is open for anyone to read. I am hoping some day to convince the JREF folks that the Puzzles section should be in the public area as well.)

      Delete
  22. ELM HICKORY LEMON TEAK

    I hinted at Hickory by referring to my memory of my folks buying a bottle of Old Hickory bourbon each year.

    This turned out to be a lush forest also populated with apple, apricot, cork, holly, kapok, larch, maple, monkey, neem, palm, peach, pear & pecan trees.

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  23. From above-

    Take the first letter of each new tree plus the extra letter and arrange to name what came before the CD.

    T - eak
    H - ickory
    E - lm

    L - emon
    P - leftover letter

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  24. Last Sunday I asked: “Why am I reminded of the taste of fish? Why am I reminded of an ex-President?”

    Don’t know about you but I love to drizzle lemon juice on broiled fish. “Old Hickory” was the nickname of Andrew Jackson.

    Chuck

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  25. Yes! For me coming up with this answer was more fun. After solving WS's puzzle by looking at it, I built a list of 34 possible words from the MWED (electronic?) included with MWCD (collegiate), and started from scratch.

    With a puzzle like this it's easy to overlook a possibility, and I wonder whether Renata had a good answer vs. this questionable one.

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  26. Right about apple. I must have been thinking apple when I meant lime.

    Rather sad that anyone would take Wikipedia as the final authority on any subject. You might just find it in:
    www.treenames.net/common_tree_names.html.
    Neem Tree Azadirachta indica, syn. Melia azadirachta.

    Also check out:
    www.discoverneem.com/neem-tree.html.
    A headline quote from their site:
    "The neem tree has lately been called the world's most researched tree." and "Neem belongs to the botanical family Meliaceae. That means it is related to the mahogany tree."

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  27. Doesn't this work?

    Maple
    Elm
    Hickory
    Kent

    with an "O" left over?

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  28. Apologies for being late to return; I'm very short on time and running late on almost everything these days.

    Renata's hint to me was: S first, stick, street, and balls drop. That clues both the answers. Here's how:

    S first => S-teak
    stick => hickory stick
    street => Elm Street

    That leaves balls drop

    balls => melon balls
    drop => lemon drop

    A lot of you spotted the teak-hickory-elm-lemon solution but it looks like you missed the teak-hickory-elm-melon solution.

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/melon+tree

    There's a friendly nursery about 25 miles from me which sells melon trees. From their catalog, here's a picture and description: http://www.hiddenspringsnursery.com/plants.html#Melon_Tree

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  29. New one is up. These puzzles aren't getting any younger!

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    Replies
    1. Laughing now! I should have thought a bit more prior to posting that.

      Delete
  30. New puzzle just came up and I thought it was going to be very difficult, but since I already have sent in my answer I guess it turned out to be fairly easy or I just lucked out and got a handle on it quickly.

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  31. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  32. Another one at which my usually off-line procedures failed.

    However, the name, when capitalized, is usually preceeded by a number. Argonouts in Ohio?

    ReplyDelete

For NPR puzzle posts, don't post the answer or any hints that could lead to the answer before the deadline (usually Thursday at 3pm ET). If you know the answer, 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 assist with solving. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the deadline. Thank you.