Thursday, February 27, 2014

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Feb 23, 2014): Six Words Puzzle

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Feb 23, 2014): Six Words Puzzle:
Q Write down these six words:
- Cupid
- Yoo-hoo
- Eyeball
- Entrance
- Seafood
- Wiper

The six words have something unusual in common. And when you've figured out what it is, that unusual something will suggest the name of a well-known U.S. city. Name that city.
It made me think of a TV show, instead of a U.S. city.

Edit: The TV show I was thinking of was "Quincy, M.E." with the italicized hint to me
A: The first syllable of each word sounds like a letter. Those letters spell out the name of a city: QUINCY (Massachusetts)

133 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 a chain of thought, or an internet search) 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.

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  2. Don't know exactly why, but I don't see any good coming from the cute little clues you guys have given at the end of last week's blog.

    A city that is not the right answer, say Tijuana, would be better.

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  3. essence
    eau de toilette
    elevate
    viola
    Aesop
    demon

    In 9 min.

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    Replies
    1. I see you had to cheat on a couple. I initially thought you had overlooked an important part of the puzzle, but the majority of your choices make me think that's unlikely.

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    2. esoteric
      eau claire
      article
      artisian
      widen

      envy
      eyesore
      season
      che sara sara

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    3. Et tu, Brute?
      What would Jesus answer?
      And will the answer play in Peoria?

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    4. Actually, EcoA, you must have been up all night with a charrette, otherwise you would have seen on the news that it was scheduled to play in Peoria, but they moved it about 35 mi. southwest to Cuba, Illinois, as it was a more fitting location. I heard the Detroit production was moved to Seattle for the same reason. The Seattle Times summed up the show in one word: "Extraordinary!"

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    5. I missed the word, "Illinois" the first time I read this, so I thought it odd, because I would say that Cuba the country would not be an appropriate location. But I guess it depends on who you ask...

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    6. just another caper, Abq, filled with ecstasy.

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  4. One could invoke musician(s), president(s), TV show(s), place name(s), ship(s), or historical sites(s) for this puzzle.

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    1. Or an adjective that describes the flavor of certain jellies.

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    2. Not being a man of great intellect, I would suggest we not overlook the hockey player. (The puck stops here).

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  5. (From prior thread)
    It took me about 15 minutes to solve in order to keep up with the Joneses here.

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    Replies
    1. Actually, Snipper, after reviewing the names of this morning's contributors, that should be "keep up with the Johnson's." Sorry if I seem a bit nit-picky.

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    2. Johnsons. Is nit-picky the best word choice here, AbqGuerrilla?

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    3. That's a lousy inference to make...

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    4. Hahaha, brilliant! And a US President! Will at his best!

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  6. I can see [answer] from my house.

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  7. The answer's okay as it is, but turn it around, and it really shines!

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    Replies
    1. Indeed! And it would still befit the puzzle, this week and last.

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    2. Clever, Nick! Similar to a small town in Washington with a slight difference.

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    3. WW, spelling yes, pronunciation not so much. To pronounce, leave out the second letter.

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    4. David, that was the difference I was trying not to mention. My Oregon friends thought it was so funny for me as we drove through this town.

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    5. (i. e., the elision did not elude me ;-)).

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  8. So just to clarify - the answer would not be a city that shared the same special something? Because I can think of at least four cities that have the same characteristic that are all (in my opinion) more well-known than what apparently, considering only those six words, the correct answer is. Two in Texas, one in the Midwest, and one on the Pacific coast.

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    1. That is my understanding -- the answer does not share the special something. Rather, the special something reveals something that suggests the name of a well-known U.S. city. Is that not how others read the puzzle?

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    2. Does share it, but misplaced.

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  9. Wow! The more comments I read, the less certain I am, but I will stick with my cheesy answer as posted at the end of last week's thread. I promise to confess if I am thinking of the wrong city.

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  10. Isn't anyone going to mention the attribute also applying to U.S. States?

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    Replies
    1. Not to mention a favorite Men's magazine. :-)

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    2. I believe there is also a current TV program that also fits.

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  11. Abq's adjective that describes the flavor of certain jellies may be less correct than the name of a certain abscess.

    I wonder if WS didn't repeat his statement of the puzzle for a particular reason.

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    Replies
    1. True enough, Hugh, but more pleasing to the palette for our fellow bloggers to be consumed with jelly descriptors than obsessed with abscesses.

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    2. AbqGuerrilla, palette or palate? This is a serious question.

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    3. It's palette, WW. I am assuming this blog is largely made up of busy artists who utilize their paint boards as sandwich trays so they can be more productive. How's that?

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    4. A man of fine taste, even while incarcerated. Thanks.

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    5. AbqG,
      How's that? That seems as if you're channeling our old pal Salvador Deli.
      Lego...

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    6. I thought it was Salivadoor Deli from Nude Delhi.

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  12. Of the 13 U.S. towns/cities that share this name, the most famous is [correctly] pronounced differently than the other 12.

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    Replies
    1. ppdoc, I share your sense of whimsy about this very topic.

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    2. If "whimsy" is supposed to be a clue, WW, it's pretty flimsy.

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    3. Just reaching out to a new blogger, AbqGuerrilla, hoping to make him feel glad to be in Blainesville. Aren't you also on the welcoming committee? ;-)

      Great blog name, btw, ppdoc.

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    4. Luckily, ppdoc has a photo profile, otherwise I would have thought s/he was Papa Doc. Just sayin'...

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    5. ppdoc's profile says male so I went with that. AbCueGuerrilla, aren't ya gonna explain your clues, Mr. Solved in 9 minutes?

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    6. WW:
      Good question. I suspect ABG made the same error as I did and then resumed his clemency request tasks before his three wives get their opposing request submitted first.

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    7. Perhaps, but I doubt Utah allows conjugal visits.

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  13. Have you seen the traveling exhibit by Bob Dylan. It's in Anchorage Alaska right now and features a striking self portrait.

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  14. Near the end of last week's thread, the following happened:

    I posted on Sun Feb 23, at 05:28:00 AM PST:

    Instead of a city, I would've said that the unusual something will suggest the name of an old TV show. And BTW, the title of that TV show was NOT the name of a city.

    ....And these were the first three replies:

    jan replied on Sun Feb 23, at 05:35:00 AM PST:

    It seems to ME that was only part of the title.

    ...Then I replied on Sun Feb 23, at 05:43:00 AM PST:

    You're right. The IMDb agrees with you. Ok, so the unusual something will suggest MOST of the name of an old TV show.

    ... And then Lorenzo replied on Sun Feb 23, at 05:56:00 AM PST:

    I'll go with the jazz man.

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  15. Boy, was I wrong! (Well, partially, anyway.) Under a barrage of comments that didn't match my proposed solution, I took a look at the challenge on the NPR website. I repent my error, and I now know the right answer. Not surprisingly, everyone else on this blog already knew it!

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    1. Understood. I thought there were several correct answers, but there's only one city. Well known? Not sure about that.

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    2. I think some of you are looking at the wrong city. I would say at least two qualify, but the one that should be most appropriate is not being hinted at here. We shall find out soon enough, but I think this easy puzzle could have been better stated in order to eliminate confusion. As far as I am concerned, anyone who figures out the oddity of the words and chooses a city that meets this standard should qualify. Not at all as good a puzzle as last week's.

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  16. Rather than sit around with you all comparing pears and oranges, I will reminisce of the good old days when I was a teen in El Barrio, playing pool

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  17. This week's challenge is a bit too easy and lots of hints & posts of the principle involved have already appeared here. I won't add to them. I will offer another challenge and I will post the answer to it at the usual time on Thursday, so if you know the answer to my challenge, don't give it away before Thursday so others can have a chance at it.

    Here it is:

    These words all have something in common; study each word & try to figure it out.

    1. banana
    2. dresser
    3. grammar
    4. potato
    5. revive
    6. uneven
    7. assess

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  18. "Suggest" is subjective.

    I'll take Manhattan.

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    Replies
    1. I'll take another clue as I'm not there yet.

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    2. Me neither. I'm sittin' here in the Port Authority tryin' to figure out where to go next. Why don't you call or text RoRo? Maybe we can get together somewhere in the Village.

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    3. Sorry, I got tired of waiting and decided to catch a bus for the Lehigh Valley. Maybe you can arrange something with lego.

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    4. Hope the bus was swift. Tuesday solve. Ha!

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    5. I got a little carried away and figured maybe we could RoRoRo your boat gently down the stream. . .

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    6. I don't want to R-gue about it, but I still prefer Nu York City and Bethlehem to N-E-thing I've heard so far, including (or do I mean especially) "Quincy". And a few hours ago Cairo came to mind, which is proving to be a lot of fun.

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  19. Comments/observations about Will’s offering this week:

    1. Too easy, our eternal complaint. (Although the recent Lady Gaga and ShE/hIS puzzles were pretty challenging. I suspect that Will, or one of his lackeys, is regularly reading Blaine’s blog. Let‘s face it, some/many/most of us are puzzle nerds [or “Nurds“ as the Roches spelled it in their delightful self-epithetted album]. I can see the sequel now, a BlaineWorks production titled “Revenge of the Puzzle Nerds.” I’d cast sdb as Lewis, and AbqGuerrilla as Gilbert, pending possibility of parole.)

    On NPR Sunday, Will Shortz raved that the Lady Gaga/Gay/GLAAD puzzle was “one of my favorite wordplay discoveries of all time.” Nice puzzle. But, really?

    2. The “something unusual” Will’s six words have in common could have been maintained with alternative, “more elegant” words. “Yoo-hoo” gave the puzzle away for me because it is just is too unusual compared to the other five. What‘s more, Cupid and yoo-hoo do not share something “nifty/elegant” the other four do have in common. To remedy this, yoo-hoo could be replaced with any of a handful of more subtle words seen much earlier in the dictionary, and a handful of lower-case words could substitute for Cupid, one familiar to most people from the Bible.

    The puzzle would be more “pure” also if “entrance” were replaced by word possessing a different “elegant property” possessed by the other five. But I cannot think of an entrance-substitute that works. And all otherwise “more elegant” substitutes for “yoo-hoo,” as I suggested above, fail to possess this particular elegant property that yoo-hoo shares with Cupid, eyeball, seafood and wiper. Indeed, I cannot think of a yoo-hoo substitute that possesses it either. (Talk about your puzzle nerds! Maybe I could portray Lewis or Gilbert.)

    3. On-air contestant Dillard Faries of Dublin, OH used logic, he said, and struggled not much in solving the Lady Gaga/Gay/GLAAD puzzle. But he struggled a bit more with Will’s difficult on-air challenge: Name famous people with four letters in their first and last names. Will provided the persons’ initials and an anagram of their entire name, for example A and R, NINE ACRE = ANNE RICE. Had Dillard struggled a little more before getting Lady Gaga, he might encountered possible names like Eric Idle, Teri Garr, Pete Rose, Kate Moss and noted rapper/dancer Karl (M.C.) Rove http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5RD9BhcCo before Will hit him with them on-air.

    4. I’ll wager NPR Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin reads this blog too. She seems familiar with libertarian math professor, Word Woman, our resident geologist, and others of their scientific ilk here in Blainesville. When Dillard Faries told her he was a retired physics professor, she mused, “Science, puuzzles -- there’s a connection there.” When Dillard said he enjoyed crosswords, sudoku and cryptoquotes, Rachel marveled, “Crypoquotes, that sounds very complicated!”

    5. ron, I like your puzzle. I printed it out and put in on my bedroom dresser, next to Mr. Alarm Clock.

    Finally, a PB puzzle:
    Write down these six words:
    - Dire
    - Serum
    - Unforeseen
    - Unvarnished
    - Suffer
    - Dare
    Three of the words beginning with D, S and U have something in common, and other three others beginning with D, S and U have something in common. And when you've figured out what it is, those somethings will suggest the name of a somewhat-well-known U.S. city that was also the name of a television show. Name that city. (Hints: 1. Will’s presumed intended answer (PIA) this week has four letters in common with this puzzle’s answer, in the form of two pairs of letters separated by a vowel. 2. Hot Springs)

    LegoMaGaga (baby at my breast, wonder how I manage to get my rest!)

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    1. Lego, must agree with you on "the favorite wordplay discoveries of all time."

      Thanks for the Bell Curvean puzzle, also.

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    2. Or, I, too, was not as gaga as Will was over that puzzle.

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  20. It sort of reminded me of a fruit.

    Chuck

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  21. To the average Joe, the most significant birth in this city is not that of any of its notable sons.

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    1. Not sure about that one, jsulbyrne, but where I live, the most significant berth is the upper bunk.

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  22. or one of the most notable sisters of the Butts family

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  23. This reminded me of a Final Jeopardy final answer in the category of U.S. Presidents. Amazingly none of the contestants got it correct.

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  24. Seattle, El Paso, Eugene, Arlington and others.

    The first syllable of each of the six words is pronounced as a single letter, but does not begin with that letter. All but one of the words omits the actual letter. Entrance, is the exception, which I think was a poor choice.

    My Hints:

    “Isn't anyone going to mention the attribute also applying to U.S. States?”
    Wyoming and Arkansas.

    “Not to mention a favorite Men's magazine.”
    Elle, which is actually a woman’s magazine, but I was being tricky.

    “I believe there is also a current TV program that also fits.”
    Arsenio Hall. I think this is a program, but I have never seen it.

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    Replies
    1. Quincy, MA is "well known"? Not to me it isn't. Anyway I did think I might have missed something due to a few of the posts here, but I think the puzzle should have been stated more clearly. I think WS should have said when these words were looked at in order. It is clever, but poorly presented, in my opinion.

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    2. Two U.S. Presidents were born in what now is Quincy MA.

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    3. Jim,
      I thought most of our presidents were born in Kenya. Good to know at least two of them were born here. :-)

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    4. And although the Presidents pronounced it QuinSee, the city in MA is pronounced QuinZee. I grew up in New England but just learned that with this puzzle.

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  25. Please note: This puzzle solution is 100% upside-down-alarm-clock free.

    The first syllable of each word is phonetically a letter of the alphabet. If you string them all together you get QUINCY. There are several Quincy’s in the US so you can’t be sure which one the puzzle is referring to but probably the largest and best-known is Quincy, MA.

    Last Tuesday I said, “It sort of reminded me of a fruit.” Specifically, a quince.

    Chuck

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    Replies
    1. Unless you grew up in the Midwest, in which case the puzzle clearly refers to Quincy, IL.

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    2. Bryan,
      I live in Seattle, but know about Quincy, IL, due to skydiving, but not the one the puzzle refers to. We also have a Quincy, WA, but not what I would consider well known.

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    3. Chuck, I thought you meant cucumber.

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  26. First syllables of the 6 words spell out QUINCY

    "Whimsy" = whimZee, a la QuinZee, MA.

    Small town in WA was Sequim (pronounced Squim), riffing off Nick's clever clueing to Sequin (versus the syllables reversed in Quincy).

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  27. The first syllable of each word, when pronounced out loud, is the name of a letter:

    cupid = Q
    yoo-hoo = U
    eyeball = I
    entrance = N
    seafood = C
    wiper = Y

    So the city is QUINCY. There are a total of 12 cities/towns with this name in 12 different states. See HERE.


    There are a lot of “well-known” & less well-known U.S. cities/towns where the first syllable, when pronounced, names a letter of the alphabet. They all therefore SHARE, but do not SUGGEST, this “unusual something.”

    Detroit, MI>>>D
    Seattle, WA>>>C
    Omaha, NE>>>O
    Olympia, WA>>>O
    Eugene, OR>>>U
    Ames, IA>>>A
    Eagle, ID>>>E
    Eaton, OH>>>E
    Eden, NC, TX>>>E
    Arlington, MA, VA>>>R
    Escondido, CA>>>S
    Enterprise, AL, OR>>>N

    “My Challenge” (easy):

    These words all have something in common. What is it?

     
      1   Banana
     
      2   Dresser
     
      3   Grammar
     
      4   Potato
     
      5   Revive
     
      6   Uneven
     
      7   Assess

    In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word as the original word.

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    Replies
    1. I thought the "unusual something" was supposed to suggest the city, not vice-versa.

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  28. I am an idiot. You knew that, but I want to be sure that you know that I know it.

    My initial comment, posted on last week's thread, was that Will had spit out the six example words so fast that I couldn't write them down, but I thought that had nothing to do with the solution. Of course, it had everything to do with it.

    I simply heard words whose initial sounds were like letters of the alphabet phonetically, so I thought immediately of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, hence my references to "cheesy." It was only after I looked at the puzzle as posted on the NPR site that I saw that those sounds spelled out QUINCY, presumably Massachusetts.

    Somehow didn't expect a two-step meta here!

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    Replies
    1. Bob, I feel your pain. This one took a bit as I am more of a visual person (and did not listen to the podcast til later in the week). I was looking at keyboard letter positions, places in Maine (ME) (thanks, jan and Blaine ;-)) before I got to pronunciation. Anyone else have this happen also?

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  29. P.S. to ron - I think it should have been part of the solution that the name of the city start with the sound of a different letter than the way it is actually spelled. So Seattle would work, but Detroit wouldn't.

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    Replies
    1. Also, pretty hard to spell "en" without an 'n.' Is there a a purer word suggesting a city using Bob's criteria and without the 'n', 'm' et cetera factor?

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    2. how about Cambridge, or Catonsville (near Baltimore)

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    3. Hmmm, ecoarchitect, I was thinking of a city which does not use the letter to create the syllable, a la Cupid, Yoo-Hoo, Eyeball, Seafood, and Wiper.

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    4. "K" in Cambridge and Catonsville, but no K in the word.

      Is that any different than C-food (or C-attle, for that matter, and Cuba IL and Eau Claire mentioned by others)? Or am I missing your point? - my only excuse being up until 5 am for a deadline.

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    5. I was thinking of a city like the fictional 'QUICY" (without the N) where all the words making up the five word list are made up of initial syllables not using the actual letter (no Q, U, I, C, Y appear in the five respective words). Sorry, that may be more confusing. Hope you are pleased with your deadline product!

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    6. how about:
      Jeep
      eyeball
      Jesus
      au pair
      yoo-hoo
      xenon
      et tu
      seashell
      Put them all together and you get Gigouzac, a charming town in southern France?

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    7. C'est tres charmant! I like the cross-cultural aspect, too, ecoarchitect. Wonder what you'd come up with on a full night's sleep.

      A tout a l'heure.

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    8. I can see your guys points. French pronunciation of Quincy.

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    9. zeke creek, "can see" I get. "guys points" not so much ;-)

      Quimper'-ily,
      Word

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    10. Being from the coast and all perhaps it should have been youz guyz :)

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  30. I said initially "Don't know exactly why, but I don't see any good coming from the cute little clues you guys have given at the end of last week's blog", where WHY, I, SEE, ANy, CUte and YOU anagram to Quincy.

    Also, Tijuana is my very obscure clue (nothing to do with the T sound at the start), as follows:
    Tijuana refers to the song "Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCEexG9xjw&feature=kp) which has the lyric "I wish I was in Tijuana, Eating barbequed iguana", and the iguana in the comic strip Fox Trot is named Quincy (http://www.foxtrot.com/about/).

    LetsSingIt - Your favorite Music Community

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  31. QUINCY

    > It seems to ME that was only part of the title.

    The show was QUINCY, ME.

    > And the Oscar goes to ...

    Jack Klugman played Oscar Madison on TV's The Odd Couple, and the title role on QUINCY, ME. (He won Emmys, but no Oscars, BTW.)

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    Replies
    1. This week, a South African bakery apologized for making cookies that, referring to the upcoming Bladerunner trial, read, "And the Oscar goes to ... jail."

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    2. Very, very bad...but good timing and creativity. And likely why they won't have a jury decide the case.

      But on cookies?

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  32. Quincy's nickname is "The City of Presidents". This puzzle would've been more appropriate the previous weekend, but I guess Will's Lady Gaga jones needed satisfying.

    I can look out the front porch of my house in Boston and see Marina Bay, Quincy's lackluster version of South Beach, in the distance. (I considered posting a "I ran errands there yesterday" clue instead of the Palinesque one, but didn't want to give it away in case any blog visitors happened to spot me at Frantic Framers on Franklin Street in Quincy last Saturday morning.)

    An average Joe can buy an average joe at Dunkin' Donuts which opened its first store in 1950 in Quincy Center. I suspect most folks would claim that Dunkins affects them more significantly on a daily basis than John Adams or his son.

    A 2011 report notes that no Bostonian lives more than 1.45 mi away from a Dunkin' Donuts location: http://bostonography.com/2011/observe-memorial-day-within-2-miles/newdistdunk. Before moving to the city, I lived in a nearby suburb, famous for a day last April, which once in its four square miles had six Dunkin' Donuts locations, or one for every 5500 people.

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  33. My comments/observations explained:

    2. The something “nifty/elegant” shared by eyeball, entrance, seafood and wiper is that removal of the homophones of the final four letters in QUINCY (eye, en, sea and wi) results in real lowercase English words (ball, trance food and per). But “pid” and “hoo” are not words after you remove the CU and yoo-. Yoo-hoo could be replaced with words seen much earlier in the dictionary, such as eu-phony or eu-logy, and lower-case words that could substitute for Cupid include cu-test, cu-bed, cu-cumber and the biblical cu-bit.

    The puzzle would be more “pure” also if “entrance” were replaced by word possessing a different “elegant property” possessed by the other five. The homophones of Q, U, I, C and Y (Cu, yoo, eye, sea and wi) do not contain those respective letters, but the en of entrance contains an N. I’m sure the puzzlemaker/puzzlemaster worked hard to find a word beginning with a homophone of N that contained no N, but just could not do it. But still, it is nice that none of the initial letters of the six words (C-Y-E-E-S-W) match the corresponding letters in Q-U-I-N-C-Y.

    5. ron’s puzzle. “I printed it out and put in on my bedroom dresser, next to Mr. Alarm Clock.” D-RESSER shares the palindromic property of his listed words. MR ALARM, if you look at it upside-down, starts and ends with a W and has a 7 in the middle. (Oops, sorry. Still living in the month-ago past while wasting my liver with liquor from my cabinet.)

    Finally, my PB puzzle:
    Write down these six words:
    - Dire
    - Serum
    - Unforeseen
    - Unvarnished
    - Suffer
    - Dare
    Three of the words beginning with D, S and U have something in common (Dare, Unvarnished and Serum) are associated with Truth (Truth or Dare, the unvarnished truth, truth serum), and other three others beginning with D, S and U have something in common (Dire, Unforeseen and Suffer) are associated with Consequences (dire consequences, unforeseen consequences, suffer the consequences). Truth or Consequences is the somewhat-well-known U.S. city that was also the name of a television show.

    (Hints: 1. Will’s presumed intended answer this week has four letters in common with this puzzle’s answer, in the form of two pairs of letters separated by a vowel (QUiNCy; truth or conseQUeNCes). 2. Hot Springs is the former name of Truth or Consequences.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_or_Consequences,_New_Mexico )

    (Shouldn’t there be a city in Michigan, or New York or someplace named Truth or Dare?)

    ELephantEAgleJEEraffeEAUde-cologne (Eau de Cologne is a homophome of Odie Cologne, the cartoon skunk)…

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  34. No sense in dancing around with junk puzzles.
    3 Quincy Jones standards:
    ai NO corrida
    DANCING soul bosa nova
    JUNK Sanford and son theme.

    Lorenzo, QJ was awesome with an out of this world saxophone section in a shoe box sized club.

    Bob Dylan's Alaskan exhibit with his self portrait.
    Dylan had on his album Self Portrait his rendition of his song Quin the Eskimo.

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  35. "15 minutes to solve" referred to quince (in spanish), close to quincy. "Keeping up w joneses" referred to Quincy Jones.

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  36. A downtime challenge:

    What English word has vertical symmetry in its lowercase spelling and horizontal symmetry in its UPPERCASE spelling?

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    Replies
    1. ron, that ought to bridge some downtime nicely.

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    2. Yes, in this case the little western town did lose their chief law officer. ;-)

      But, yes, it matters.

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    3. I sought the serif, but it did not suit the Dyslexie.

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    4. The font is sans serif and it is a word of two letters or longer. "I" and "O" do not count.

      Delete
  37. Next week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from listener Harry Hillson of Avon-by-the-Sea, N.J. Take the first name of a nominee for Best Actor or Best Actress at Sunday's Oscars. You can rearrange these letters into a two-word phrase that describes his or her character in the film for which he or she is nominated. Who is this star, and what is the phrase?

    ReplyDelete
  38. Next week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from listener Harry Hillson of Avon-by-the-Sea, N.J. Take the first name of a nominee for Best Actor or Best Actress at Sunday's Oscars. You can rearrange these letters into a two-word phrase that describes his or her character in the film for which he or she is nominated. Who is this star, and what is the phrase?

    Here we go again. I don't pay any attention to movies until they come out on DVD and I HATE the Oscars! Not sure I will even try to solve this one.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Next week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from listener Harry Hillson of Avon-by-the-Sea, N.J. Take the first name of a nominee for Best Actor or Best Actress at Sunday's Oscars. You can rearrange these letters into a two-word phrase that describes his or her character in the film for which he or she is nominated. Who is this star, and what is the phrase?

    ReplyDelete
  40. Wow, a triple strike!!!

    ReplyDelete
  41. Replies
    1. Paul,

      A hint, please, about your crypto-post?

      I DID happen to notice that if for the key, you enter any 7-letter name or word, followed by the two-word phrase asked for in the puzzle, then when decoded, the 3rd word becomes an actual word ONLY BACKWARDS!!

      Delete
    2. I just checked with dictionary.com, and while what I said above is true; I'm lucky, as I initially had not quite accurately reversed that third decoded five-letter word.

      So I now post that if you enter just the third word of Paul's crypto-post, and as the key, skip the first 3 letters of the puzzle answer's two-word phrase, then when you decode, you'll get a valid but not well known 5 letter word backwards. If you switch two certain adjoining letters in the result, you'll now have a much more familiar 5-letter word backwards.

      Delete
    3. I don't think we can possibly have the same answer.
      I sense a teachable moment here.
      I'll open the envelope on Thursday, I promise.

      Delete
  42. For your consideration, the nominees are:

    Christian Bale – American Hustle as Irving Rosenfeld
    Bruce Dern – Nebraska as Woody Grant
    Leonardo DiCaprio – The Wolf of Wall Street as Jordan Belfort
    Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave as Solomon Northup
    Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club as Ron Woodroof
    Amy Adams – American Hustle as Sydney Prosser
    Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine as Jeanette "Jasmine" Francis
    Sandra Bullock – Gravity as Dr. Ryan Stone
    Judi Dench – Philomena as Philomena Lee
    Meryl Streep – August: Osage County as Violet Weston

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't you need to include the "in a supporting role" nominees also?

      Delete
    2. OK:

      Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips as Abduwali Muse
      Bradley Cooper – American Hustle as Agent Richard "Richie" DiMaso
      Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave as Edwin Epps
      Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street as Donnie Azoff
      Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club as Rayon
      Sally Hawkins – Blue Jasmine as Ginger
      Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle as Rosalyn Rosenfeld
      Lupita Nyong'o – 12 Years a Slave as Patsey
      Julia Roberts – August: Osage County as Barbara Weston-Fordham
      June Squibb – Nebraska as Kate Grant

      Delete
    3. BTW, both of the lists above were cut and pasted without editing from Wikipedia.

      Delete
  43. With only 10 choices, this puzzle is too limited to permit much hinting. But I think it's a cheat, since the answer doesn't involve two words at all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Per Bryan, make that 20 choices. Still too limited.

      Delete
    2. I have an answer but it's rather awkward.

      Delete
    3. Bah. Too fast and easy for a clue this week.

      Delete
    4. WW,

      Your awkward answer; Is it at least consistent with my clue replies in Paul's post two threads above?

      Delete
    5. I don't think so, EWAF. But sometimes your cryptoposts (and Paul's) leave me wondering. . .

      Delete

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.