Sunday, November 21, 2021

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Nov 21, 2021): Grab Your Passport

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Nov 21, 2021): Grab Your Passport
Q: Name a country of 6 or more letters. Change 2 letters to name a resident of another country's capital.
Hint: 1011101111₂

Edit: ...equals 751. Foreign relations between Pakistan and France were first established in July 1951 when both countries agreed to open embassy services in each country.
A: PAKISTAN --> PARISIAN

226 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 Wednesday 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 Wednesday deadline. Thank you.

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  2. Can I submit my entry before NPR posts the puzzle? I don't want to submit the right answer to the wrong puzzle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Submit Your Answer link on every puzzle is the same, so you should be able to use last week's puzzle.

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    2. But if you are worried, just wait a few minutes. I hope it will be posted soon.

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  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. Good one. For the life of me, I couldn't think of a hint that wouldn't result in a "This comment has been removed..."

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    3. LOL! You guys are gonna get my obscure-enough clue pulled for TMI.

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    4. For me, your clue was TMI as originally stated.

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    7. Just looked at this again and the first medicine I thought of worked.

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    8. Yeah, I shouldn't have read this clue...first medicine worked. D'oh!

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    9. Well, rats. I made the old mistake of forgetting how clever people are here. I will be more obscure next time. Apologies.

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  4. Blaine regular Lego Lambda is a good bet to guess another capital city I'm thinking of.

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  5. First resident that came to mind.

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  6. I looked at the map on the kitchen wall, and my eyes fell upon the correct country within the first minute. I had a lucky break there.

    Take the two letters that were replaced in the country, the two letters they were replaced with, and one more letter that appears in both the country and the resident. Rearrange to get an article of clothing.

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  7. Take the name of the country. Remove a letter. Rearrange to get some snakes.

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  8. Remove a letter from the capital resident, rearrange, and get something you might need if you're struggling with this puzzle.

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  10. BTW, is the submission deadline the usual Thursday at 3 p.m., or is it Wednesday because of the Thanksgiving holiday?

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  11. On the air they said Wednesday

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Bryan. I missed the on-air segment.

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  12. I solved this one working backwards. Then I enjoyed a “ native” breakfast with a nice topper.

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  13. Replies
    1. daisy the cat persists on banging on the blinds only after I go to bed. I have no choice but to rasie the blinds then there is too much light.

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    2. Obviously you have been blindsided by your cat.

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  14. One clue above took me straight to the answer.

    73.

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  15. Music clue...

    A certain tame animal's cousin?

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  16. This is a good puzzle for Thanksgiving.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There was a recent puzzle about Pakistan, Karachi->Ankara on October 3. Ankara is the capital of Turkey. People eat turkey for Thanksgiving.

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  17. Hm, I have what might be an alternative answer. If you remove the first letter of the original country and rearrange, do you get a noun that sounds rather unfriendly...but that has a much more friendly-sounding second syllable?

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    Replies
    1. Ha, never mind, I have the intended answer now! Let's just say I had to exercise my best judgement to figure this out. Will be curious to see if anyone else gets my alternative answer above...

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    2. Ahh, I see what you did there!

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    3. Dr. Awkward (aka Veronica): As you saw, my comment “Aha” comprised the initials of Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, the 3 goddesses in the Judgement of Paris. “Judgement” was a nice hint….

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    4. Thanks! And a very nice "aha" moment. My alternative answer was "Vietnam / Viennan," which I eventually rejected; my initial clue pointed to the word "inmate."

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  18. Delete an e from a common vehicle.

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  19. Easy enough. I did a part of my university studies in this capital.

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  20. Hamlet had a point: we'd rather bear those ills we have.

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    1. Since the aspirin clue seems to have unlocked the puzzle for many of us (it did for me), I punned on the trade name "Bayer." And now that you've read this far, watch Victor Mature as Doc Holliday give his reading of this part of Hamlet's soliloquy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROJP6AGwgEA.

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  21. I think this one will even top the numbers of the last 3 weeks. I solved it while still in bed and right after the segment ended. There is a connection with Burma, but it only has 5 letters.

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    Replies
    1. Burma that is. Burma is only 5 letters. I did not mean the connection.

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  22. I got my Moderna booster shot yesterday and woke feeling a bit off, so I slept in. Just took my temperature and it is very high for me at 97.8. Last time I took it it was 95.0. But speaking of Covid 19 side effects, they say having a reaction after the shots indicates the immune system is working. I discovered another benefit to the side effects as my farts no longer smell.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://www.inquirer.com/health/paul-offit-overkill-when-modern-medicine-goes-too-far-20200730.html

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    2. Thanks, I just now read that article and will look for the book. Even as a teenager I thought it did not make sense to try and bring down a fever. I reasoned the fever was there to help the healing process. Oh, and my fart remark was meant as a joke. I thought it up before I even got outta bed. And, come to think about it, I haven't yet had a safe-door blower yet today.

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    3. I like Offit's stuff. Very critical of Linus Pauling.

      Very controversial on DDT. Willing to go at the data on aspirin as a blood thinner. I learned not to trust the recommendation to take the entire course of antibiotics.

      He gets vilified by the anti-vaxers. He was one of the few votes at ACIP in the early 2000s to stop giving the small-pox vaccines in the US. Last December, in the FDA advisory committee on BioNTech and Moderna CoVID 19 vaccines, he really went at the people advocating against approving the EUA (who wanted more data). Dr. Offit was pretty good at expanding the criteria on when the BioNTech 3d shot came before the FDA Advisory panel this August or Sept.

      His father's insistence on an operation on a clubfoot (that was botched) dumped him in a children's ward at a young age. He comes at pediatrics sincerely.

      Eagle's fan.

      Interview of Offit recorded before the BioNTech CoVID 19 results were released: https://peterattiamd.com/pauloffit/

      Don't know what he says on farting. ;0)


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    4. Routine smallpox vaccinations in the US ended in 1972.

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    5. There's a good layperson-friendly analysis of the evidence on the DDT controversy at https://askentomologists.com/2017/04/22/do-we-need-to-bring-back-ddt/. This article reminds us, among other things, that we must always take the social context into account.

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  23. The relationship between the subject words is interesting but of no import.
    I never give hints, TMI ones or otherwise, so I can't understand the continuing disregard of Blaine's plain rules about them.

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  24. I seem to be having trouble posting a clue. Perhaps the "clue" is too brief? It is:

    e

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    Replies
    1. Nice, Ben! Always a pleasure to see the Universal Clue. I look forward to reading your path to the answer. (I have one in two steps.)

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    2. a brief clue might be Fruit of the Loom.

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  25. Today's New Word: demonym -- native or inhabitant of a particular country, state, city, etc.

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  26. 3³ is a hint for my alternative answer. There's no point in hinting at the 'real' answer anymore.

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  27. Well, it was the first capital I thought of, so it was pretty easy to find the country from there. I have never been to this country, nor the capital, although I've been to the country whose capital the resident is from.

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  28. The clues all lead me to a name for the native that I never heard before in my life, although I know many people from that capital. Am I 'way off?

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  29. Never mind. I think I have the preferred answer.

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  30. I presume the "6 letter" condition was to eliminate multiple correct answers. Solved it before Will or Blaine posted, so working on other projects now.

    But, "Name a country. Change 3 letters to name a resident of another country's capital." (There is one).

    Maybe I will look at "Name a country. Change 2 letters to name a resident of another country's capital." later this week to see if there is an alternate answer with 4 or 5 letters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Spoiler Alert!!! There are some:

      JAPAN, SUDAN -> JUBAN and TOGO -> ROLO (from Bogota) are some alternate answers

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    2. I think the intended answer is "residents of", rather than "a resident". That would be more of a telephone book exercise. Not the most artfully phrased question.

      Yemen --> Roman is a 3 letter change answer.

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  31. I give up. This puzzle has taken up 2 hours of my time and there are other things to do, like flying around and saving people. Have a good week, folks.
    CAP

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    Replies
    1. He's not a pilot, but he can fly faster than a beeding spullet.

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    2. There are videos of pilots exercising bad aeronautical judgment. Good way to lose your license.

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    3. And I stand for "Truth, Justice and the American Way" . As the announcer on the old TV show used to say.

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    4. Definitely, once the Orange one got hold of it

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    5. It's been an oxymoron long, long before Trump. In fact I would say from day one.

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  32. If you can change two letters to nothing, there's another answer.

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  33. Unfortunately, Newcastle is not the capital of England. Otherwise Georgia -> Geordie would have been an alternative answer.

    Interesting fact: remove 3 consonants from the name of the country and you get a monetary unit that is used in it.

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    Replies
    1. Wow, that is really beautiful.
      I mean, your not-quite-alternative, not the interesting fact :)

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  34. As usual, the really hard puzzle is figuring out Blaine's clue.

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    1. I see no way whatsoever that the following observation could lead to the answer, but I've observed that Blaine's binary string = 1357 in octal.

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    2. I may actually understand Blaine's clue. In any case, I learned something.

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  36. I hope it's not TMI if I say the answer I found(whether intended or a pretty good alternative)has the two letters that are changed replaced by the letters that follow them in the alphabet(I hadn't even noticed until a few minutes later).
    pjbHopefullyGoingNowhereNearThreeMileIslandWithThisPost

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    1. By some of the more recent posts I would say some of you do not have the intended answer. Also, both answer words must be 6 or more letters each.

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  37. If you could change 2 letter in Romania to blanks (or a blank and an s) you get Roman (or Romans). That cannot be the intended answer, but it works.

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  38. There's a connection to a recent puzzle.

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  39. Take the name for a resident of a country's capital. Drop the last letter. Change two of the remaining letters to get a country. You'll get the answer I arrived at before landing on the correct one. Interestingly, the residents of the capitals in each puzzle are on the same continent, and the two countries are on the same continent as well (as each other, not on the same continent as the capitals).

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  41. When I struggle with solving the puzzle I think looking at the clues in Blainesville is always a good idea.

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  42. I think I have an answer. Don't you think there are several world capitals where at least some residents might refer to each other as Hermano?

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    1. While it may not have been stated in the official rules, I took it as understood that the puzzle of the week was an extension of the on-air puzzle, during which Will gave the assurance that the first letter would never be amongst the two letters that were changed.

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    2. Perhaps for Wolfgang's alternate answer. Let's face it; it's been well established by now that there are multiple alternate answers, one of which has been blatantly given away by one of the other posts above.
      Blaine did NOT delete that, so why should mine be TMI?

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    3. Enya: Sorry. Perhaps those were WS's instructions after all. I will have to listen again. Must be ok with the administrator on this blog.

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  43. I liked this puzzle in that I was able to solve it while still in bed simply by using a little logic. I don't think it to be a great puzzle though. And for those who are having trouble solving this week, I suppose you consider it to be a capital offense.

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  44. Rearrange the letters in the capital of the country to get something you wouldn't want to buy from a butcher.

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  45. Ralph,
    Is that a clue or a statement of fact?

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  46. If you add a couple of zeroes inside Blaine's clue - you can pin-point the capital.

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  47. LegoLambda, as I—and the rest of you may—know, has a connection to the puzzle.

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    1. *Crito posted on Sunday:
      Blaine regular Lego Lambda is a good bet to guess another capital city I'm thinking of.
      *Dr. K posted on Monday:
      LegoLambda, as I—and the rest of you may—know, has a connection to the puzzle.
      *LegoLambda (aka Joseph Young) is posting now on Tuesday that he has no clue about the capital city to which Crito alludes, and no clue about Lego's connection to the present NPR puzzle to which Dr. K refers.
      Worse yet, Lego has no clue whatsoever what the answer to this week's NPR puzzle is!
      Granted, Lego may not be much of a puzzle-solver, but he did compose a halfway decent "Schpuzzle of the Week" which appears currently on Puzzleria! Here it is:
      “Name a part of a vegetable and insert a letter to name how a chef may cook the vegetable.”
      Sally and Missy each come up with an answer to this puzzle. But they are different answers for how the chef may cook the veggie.
      Sally solves the puzzle correctly after reading it carefully. Missy misreads one letter in the puzzle’s text and thus gets a wrong answer.
      What are their answers?

      We post our answers this puzzle (and all our other puzzle answers) tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon PST. But, in the meantime, feel free to give hints.

      LegoWhoIsMoreOfAWatsonThanHolmes(EvenWhenPostingInTheThirdPerson)

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  48. Name a country of six or more letters. Remove two consecutive letters that represent a US state's postal abbreviation and add another US state's postal abbreviation in its place to name a Nobel Prize winner. Take the name of the country's capital and add two letters to get another country's capital. Remove one letter from the Nobel Prize winner's name to name an animal. Neither the country, nor the Nobel Prize winner's birthplace, nor the capital with the two added letters, nor the region where most of these animals live are located on the same continent.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Google this if you dare:

    An obscure doctrine may allow Trump to win in 2024 regardless of the popular vote

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    1. SDB: Can you post the site? I cannot find it. When written? This is important to me. Thanks. I may need to apply for dual citizenship in England.

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    2. If you highlight my above post it googles right to it. It was posted 10 hours ago. Or try the below link.


      An obscure doctrine may allow Trump to win in 2024 ... - Medium
      https://medium.com

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    3. I tried that before. Will try this one. tks.

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    4. Did you find it? If not try this:

      https://nicklicata.medium.com/

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    5. Took more than the six minutes claimed to read.
      It will take even more to digest the details of the plan.
      It seems anyone smart enough to carry this scheme out should be too smart to want to do it.

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    6. Sdb: yes, tks. Too complex for me.

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    7. I don't know how it got the 6 minute to read notation, but I am sure it is some algorithm and not Nick Licata. "This scheme" is no more extreme than what Trump and his cronies have been doing all along. If these people were actually "smart" rather than devious, they would not do most of what they do.

      I did not find it complex at all. Nick is a prolific political writer now he has retired. He is one of the most intelligent, honest and effective politicians I have ever known. I wish he had not retired from the Seattle City Council, but he was there for many years. He is still very involved and active.

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  50. Two famous women are connected to this puzzle. One of them is famous for valid reasons, the other for silly ones.

    Coincidentally, both are newlyweds.

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    1. Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, famous for standing up to the Taliban and getting shot in the process, is from Pakistan. Paris Hilton , famous for a sex tape, reality TV and rich parents, is named Paris. Malala Yousafzai married Asser Malik on November 9, 2021. Paris Hilton married Carter Reum on November 11, 2021

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  51. I was trying to solve this in my head, but had to resort to writing places on paper. Three places and "Bingo" I had it.

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  52. For those who have yet to solve this easy puzzle I feel inclined to point out that the answer is not the residents of Lisboa a.k.a. Lisbon. They are known as Lisboetas and not Lisbians.

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  53. Thank you Blaine. It was very easy for me this week. Modulo 2.

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  54. Does Skydiveboy jump out of airplanes?

    F = Gm1m2/r2. Thank you.

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    1. Not any more, unless you count dreams.

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    2. OK. Sir Isaac Newton was correct! I enjoy reading your posts. Happy Thanksgiving!

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    3. Thank you. Isaac Newton never did skydive. I suspect that may be because he understood the gravity of the situation.

      I no longer jump. The photo is of me hanging by my feet from the wing outside a Cessna 170 over Issaquah, WA.

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    4. Happy D.B. Cooper Day, skyDiveBoy!

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    5. Anyway, that equation only works in a vacuum, where parachutes don't.

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    6. I do not want to be associated with D.B. Cooper. I think you already know this, but others may not. I never even think about that unless someone mentions it.

      Parachutes do not work in a vacuum because, for one thing, they will not open. It requires air to open a parachute. It would not open if an astronaut who is wearing a rig outside the space station were to pull the ripcord, and yet he is traveling at a high rate of speed. I am sure you already know this too.

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  55. Replies
    1. eleemosynary as pronounced by my law prof

      Delete
  56. I just now watched, live, the judge in the Georgia case read all the mostly guilty verdicts in the murder trial. I am really surprised and overjoyed. I did not think it would turn out this way. The judge seemed to be on top of things, not at all like that idiot in the other case.

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    Replies
    1. The laws in Wisconsin are flawed, so justice did not prevail. In Gerogia, at least in this case, the applicable laws were just, so justice has prevailed.

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    2. Couldn't agree more with this sentiment.

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    3. I suspect the laws in Georgia are no more just than the laws in Wisconsin, but that how a judge conducts his courtroom, regardless of what state it may be in, has far more to do with the outcome of any particular trial, not to mention lawyer incompetency, withholding of evidence, money and bias.

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  57. PAKISTAN, PARISIAN

    "One clue above took me straight to the answer." >>> Rob's clue about a medicine took me straight to aspirin and then to PARISIAN and PAKISTAN.

    "73." I spent the Summer of '73 bicycling through France, starting in PARIS, visiting Mont Saint Michelle, Quimper, Bordeaux, and ending in Marseille. It was fabulous!

    Blaines's Clue of 1011101111₂ which EaWAF translated to 1 3 5 7 in octal which adds up to 16 which may refer to the 16th Arrondissement (one of 20 neighborhoods) in Paris. Note:

    1 + 1 = 2
    1 + 3 = 4
    4 + 5 = 9
    9 + 7 = 16 (or 1+3+5+7)
    16+ 9 = 25
    25+ 11 = 36
    36+ 13 = 49
    49+ 15 = 64
    64+ 17 = 81
    81+ 19 = 100
    100 +21 = 121
    121 +23 = 144
    144 +25 = 169
    169 +27 = 196
    196 +29 = 225
    225 +31 = 256
    256 +33 = 289
    289 +35 = 324
    324 +37 = 361
    361 +39 = 400

    And so on...

    Adding consecutive odd number strings adds up to perfect squares...and the 16th arrondisement in Paris is a "perfect" neighborhood with a lovely square that includes part of the Arc de Triomphe, and a concentration of museums between the Place du Trocadéro and the Place d'Iéna.

    Blaine, was I anywhere near the right neighborhood in interpreting your clue?

    Or perhaps 1011101111₂ or 751 in base 10, a PRIME number, points toward the Paris Meridian Arc or French Meridian Arc which was a long-standing rival to the Greenwich meridian as the PRIME meridian of the world. Maybe that's it.

    Happy Thanksgiving to all you perfectly imperfect folks. You are all 1011101111₂ in my book (since this post is turning out to be a bit of a tome).

    --Word Woman--
    ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤




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    1. I thought your 73 referred to the 1973 Pakistan constitution.

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    2. JAWS, Good one! Both happened the same summer. Although the only thing Parisians wanted to talk about that summer was Watergate.

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    3. NICE! (pun intended)

      My clue about adding a couple of zeroes to the middle of blaine's hint-->

      His hint in decimal is 751. If you add two zeroes to the "middle" it becomes 75001, which is one of many postal codes for Paris.

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    4. Ralph Loizzo, yes, very Nice!

      Oui, 75016 and 75116 for the southern and northern parts of the 16th arrondisement, respectively. It's the only Paris neighborhood with two postal codes. Viva 16, 16, and 16!

      Delete
  58. PAKISTAN & PARISIAN

    My Hint:
    "There is a connection with Burma, but it only has 5 letters."
    Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was a member of the British royal family, Royal Navy officer and statesman, a maternal uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II.

    He was nicknamed Mountbatten of Burma during WWII who became Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command and oversaw the recapture of Burma and Singapore from the Japanese by the end of 1945.

    Soon after the war ended he became the last Viceroy of India of British India, and the first governor-general of the Dominion of India. He supervised India splitting into two countries: India and Pakistan. So my hint is that Mountbatten of Burma was responsible for the birth of Pakistan.

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  59. My clue was, "Delete an e from a common vehicle."

    Trike minus e is trik; t, r, i, k are the four letters involved in the transition from Pakistan to Parisian.

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  60. PAKISTAN —> PARISIAN

    My hint: “Remove a letter from the capital resident, rearrange, and get something you might need if you're struggling with this puzzle.”

    If you remove the “a” from “Parisian” and rearrange, you get “aspirin.”

    It was only after I had posted the above hint that I saw that Rob had already hinted at “aspirin.” Subsequently, there was lively discussion about whether or not Rob’s clue was TMI. Whatever the case, as Rob himself acknowledged, Blainesvillians can be “clever people.”

    Hint #2: “LegoLambda, as I—and the rest of you may—know, has a connection to the puzzle.”

    The somewhat choppy syntax may have been a giveaway. “Lambda as I” is an anagram of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

    Nice--and good--day here in the Great Southland. Time to go play some basketball.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I figured Dr. K and I were giving essentially the same hint! I said,
      "Blaine regular Lego Lambda is a good bet to guess another capital city I'm thinking of."

      LAMBDA IS A

      is an anagram of ISLAMABAD, another capital city I was thinking of...

      Delete
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  62. Clues about "headache medicine" gave it away to me. I'd skipped over Paris, thinking the residents were called Parisiennes. I guess that term only applies to roughly half of them.
    3³ is just a "clever" way of writing 27, which is the number of characters in the set of all English alphabet letters plus a "space" or "blank". It was intended to point to the semi-legitimate ROMANIA/ROMAN answer and have nothing whatever to do with PARIS or PAKISTAN. Nodd found a way to break on through to the other side, however.

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  63. PAKISTAN (change K to R & T to I) → PARISIAN (-A = ASPIRIN)

    ReplyDelete
  64. PAKISTAN —PARISIAN

    I only posted a red herring this week, the post containing “Hermano” (which, of course, was in jest—a reference to “Germany,” per puzzle instructions).

    It took me a day to solve the puzzle. SDB’s mention of “using a little logic” was helpful; I took that as saying to start with “-ian” for a world-capital resident, and find a country ending in “-(s)tan” from there.

    It also took me a day to get Jyqm’s joke about “Islamabad” anagramming to “bad salami.” When I finally got it, I almost posted a reply saying “I wonder what took me so long, since part of it was staring right at me,” but I feared that might be TMI.

    Speaking of TMI, though: Blaine removed a handful of posts, but not Dr. K’s À demain clue posted yesterday (!) just after 3pm ET (!). It has been a day, and I still don’t get it. Oh well, perhaps just another case in point of this week not being my “sharpest.” I guess it’s time to give it a rest for the holiday. Therefore…

    🍂🍁 Happy Thanksgiving, Blainesvillians! 🍁🍂

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    Replies
    1. Yes, Bad salami was the best! A new travel slogan for the city perhaps? ;-)

      I took "À demain" to be a nod toward the French language for Lego. He has often mentioned spending time in France.

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    2. I plead guilty. I simply meant "'Til tomorrow." Sometimes, my (our?) clues are not intentional but unwitting (unconscious?). Last week, I hinted that Blaine had "axed" my first hint, forgetting at that moment that "axe" is slang for guitar. And I'm a guitarist. Oooh boy...clueless...

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    3. You've read, I hope, Sigmund Freud's groundbreaking work "Puzzle Clues and Their Relation to the Unconscious." There are no accidents, just bad puns.

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    4. I actually had been thinking about Freud's treatise in the context of what I wrote above, and then Emily Dickinson came to mind, in particular when she wrote of "internal difference –
      Where the Meanings, are."

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    5. Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. Peter Ustinov

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  65. Our friend GB has prepared four fun yet cunning puzzles for us to ponder on this week's Puzzleria! They appear in his "GB's Bafflers" feature and are titled:
    "Beginning at the end,"
    "A country 'conumberum,' "
    "I'll alter a name to get an isle," and
    "Fixing freedom."
    Also on this week's menus:
    * a Schpuzzle of the Week about lip-smacking cold-turkey leftovers on Black Friday,
    * a Puzzle Slice about gaming mavens pondering Scrabble wrinkles,
    * a Dessert Puzzle about people we don't want following the Golden Rule, and
    * a handful or two of riff-off's of Will Shortz's "Karachislamabad-but-ParisiaNice" NPR puzzle.
    (We upload Puzzleria! every early Friday at Midnight PST.)
    Also, here is the offical answer to my Schpuzzle of the Week that I posted here yesterday around noontime:
    “Name a part of a vegetable and insert a letter to name how a chef may cook the vegetable.”
    Sally and Missy each come up with an answer to this puzzle. But they are different answers for how the chef may cook the veggie.
    Sally solves the puzzle correctly after reading it carefully. Missy misreads one letter in the puzzle’s text and thus gets a wrong answer.
    What are their answers?
    Answer:
    The "part of the vegetable" is its "stem."
    Sally's answer: Steam (Sally "inserts" an "a" between the "e" and "m" in "stem" to form the verb "steam".)
    Missy's's answer: Stew (Missy misreads "insert" as "invert," and so inverts the "m" in "stem" to form the verb "stew".)
    Stem=>"Steam" (inSert a letter) and Stem=>"Stew" (inVert a letter)


    LegoWhoUrgesAllToJoinUsEarlyFridayForSome"GanGBusting"Fun!

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  66. PAKISTAN -> PARISIAN

    > There's a connection to a recent puzzle.

    But, to a PARISIAN, à la mode has nothing to do with ice cream.

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  67. Quibble. Parisian only applies to approximately one half of the residents of Paris. The others are Parisiennes.

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    Replies
    1. So far no one has mention Parisites.

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    2. I was thinking of posting "Pontiac", which made a Parisienne model, but thought it would get deleted.

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    3. Canadian auto model clue to which I added Pontiac but in Cyrillic alphabet I usually use french but couldn't this time

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  68. Pakistan, Parisian

    I believe that the explanation for Blaine's clue is that 1011101111 in binary is 751 in decimal, and 751 was the year of the end of the Merovingian dynasty in France. Parisians are from Paris, the capital of France.

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    Replies
    1. Once I worked out 751, it only made sense to me as a clue if it was a reference to that date in French history. Maybe Blaine has another explanation.

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  69. I had commented, "Take the two letters that were replaced in the country, the two letters they were replaced with, and one more letter that appears in both the country and the resident. Rearrange to get an article of clothing." Removing K, T, and adding R, I, and an S, leads to SKIRT.

    I had noticed quickly when looking at the map that "ISTAN" of that whole set of countries in Asia could become ISIAN. Pakistan to Parisian jumped off of the map a few seconds later. Obviously, I couldn't say anything about that until now.

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  70. Happy Thanksgiving, to one and all!

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  71. Have you noticed the price of party balloons has risen sharply lately? Could this be due to inflation?

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  72. Would you agree that global warming has become a polarizing issue?

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  73. Ben posted the old "e" clue again, which has worked on many a puzzle. I'm not sure what his path was, but my logic goes like this: To get a resident of Paris, add "ian"; to get a resident of Pakistan, add (phonetically) "e."

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  74. PAKISTAN -> PARISIAN

    The "universal clue" of "e" was actually quite appropriate in this case, but maybe only for those of us fortunate enough to have lived in Paris.

    In most cities, you live in a neighborhood -- so your friends in San Francisco might say I live in Sunset Park, or The Mission, or Noe Valley, etc.

    Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements, which are numbered. I have family in Paris, so my French cousins would say I live in the 18th arrondissement, or the 12th, or the 11th.

    But in Paris "the 12th" is written as "12e," so I have cousins in the 18e, the 17e, the 12e, and the 11e.

    And, of course, 18e in Paris is pronounced as "le dix huit-ieme" le deez WHEAT ee EM.

    So e seemed the perfect clue for Paris.

    As for Pakistan? Never been.

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    Replies
    1. Having read all the different interpretations of Blaine's clue, I am beginning to think that 751 might become the new e.

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  75. PAKISTAN --> PARISIAN. My clue, "Mr. Mojo Risin'", is a line from the Doors' "L.A. Woman", which also has the line "Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light." "City of Light" is frequently applied to Paris.

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    Replies
    1. Wow. All I took from your clue was that Jim Morrison died in Paris. Didn’t know that term City of Light. Good clue!

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    2. Thanks, I wasn't aware of that further connection!

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  76. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    Replies
    1. Let's try this again:

      Anyone remember the double ACH clue Will pointed to from the Sunday Puzzle in SHORTZ--Double Jeopardy $800 clue?

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    2. No, and a Google search and a search on the NPR site turned up nothing. But Will did use this, sort of, in a puzzle in Games Magazine, in March, 1990:

      The same three letters, in the same order, will fill each pair of blanks below to complete an eleven-letter word.

      1. STOM _ _ _ _ _ _ E

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  77. I think the value of skywriting is blown out of proportion

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    Replies
    1. ...and I suppose, due to my sloppy proofreading, its period has ended.

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  78. I can understand why it may be frowned upon to discuss politics and religion at Thanksgiving dinner, but why is global warming such a hot topic?

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  79. I get it that, due to stress, we sometimes need to unload, but why are we about to see RELOAD now when we post?

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  80. Blaine, I love your hint, now that I understand it, but weren't you worried it might be TMI?

    Happy Thanksgiving, Blaine!

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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.

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