Sunday, December 25, 2022

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Dec 25, 2022): A Puzzle for Christmas

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Dec 25, 2022): A Puzzle for Christmas
Q: Name a prominent geographical location in the United States. Change the fifth letter to an S. The resulting string of letters from left to right will name a game, a mountain, and a popular website. What place is it?
plɹoM

Edit: Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) from Hamilton has the lyrics "Lafayette is there waiting in Chesapeake Bay!"
A: CHESAPEAKE BAY --> CHESS, PEAK, EBAY

215 comments:

  1. Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah!

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  2. That's a timely hint, Blaine.

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  3. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to one and all! And greetings from the left coast, where my better half and I are visiting the kids and soon I’ll be getting together with my godparents’ son, a childhood friend I haven’t seen in 40 years. Puzzle? There’s a puzzle?

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    1. Oh, yes, and by the way, "[A]nd on earth peace, good will toward men."

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  4. Merry Christmas to all!
    And oh, please remove once you've sung carols... amen!

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  5. This one came to me quickly. Merry Christmas to all.

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  6. Nice puzzle. Even the website comes out with the correct lower and upper case. Happy Birthday to your and my one and only Lord and Savior!

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  7. Hark the Herald Angel Sing!

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  8. Take the first three and last three letters of the geographical site. Rearrange. You get a word describing parts of the site.

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  9. I retrieved the answer. "For unto us a child is born." Merry Christmas to all.

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    1. I'll bet you could enlarge the middle part of that hint.

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    2. You mean like this?
      For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

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    3. That's a good thought, though I was referring to enlarging a different aspect of your comment.

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    4. Leo, I meant that your reference to the dog named after the Bay could be “enlarged” to name the kind of horse known as a bay, as referred to in the song “Camptown Races.”

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  10. I got the answer quickly, after only a few minutes. Then a bird got into my house (a sparrow, not a swift, which would be ironic). Then I got the bird out fairly quickly. If it had been a swift, I could say I swiftly got the swift out of the house. But alas, I can only say I swiftly got the sparrow out.

    May all of you have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

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    1. Sounds to me like that sparrow didn't know Jack.

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    2. Probably had never Heard of him.

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  11. A marvalous puzzle!

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  12. They say the first three rules of real estate are location, location, and location.
    This rule also applied, at least for me, in solving this week's challenge.
    Happy holidays to all.

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  13. Maybe the "New Names in the News" for 2022 quiz will be next Sunday. So far, these are the names I've come up with. And at least one of these names is related to the answer.

    Brittney Griner
    Volodymyr Zelenskyy
    Rishi Suna
    Mary Peltola
    Cassidy Hutchinson
    Hans Niemann
    Frankie Lasagna
    Moonikin Campos
    Dimorphos
    Endurance
    Ketanji Brown Jackson
    Liz Truss
    Sam Bankman-Fried

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    1. Rishi's surname is Sunak.

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    2. I'd add a former elected official but I can't recall who it is and it might be TMI anyway.

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    3. No one yet can exactly identify George Santos. Who he is or where he came from.

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    4. My wife went to high school with the Democrat he beat in November.

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    5. A few more names to add:
      Mahsa Amini
      Shireen Abu Akleh
      Droupadi Murmu
      Lionel Messi

      And of course Rishi Sunak* (hoping I don't have any more typos)

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    6. The former official I was referring to is Chesa Boudin, whose name might be TMI as to Chesapeake. I could not “recall” him because he has already been recalled by the voters. QWERTY was not a clue but close; ASDF is a clue because Boudin was formerly the San Francisco District Attorney, or SFDA.

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  14. The first insight--a brilliant one that led the rest of us to the solution----came from my daughter-in-law, whom I've now dubbed "Queen of the NPR Puzzle."

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  15. Well, at first, I thought this puzzle would defeat me. But I did get it and realized that I had spent two years of my life just south of the location. Still don't get Blaine's clue.

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  16. I fed this puzzle into ChatGPT ... its response:
    "The place is Las Vegas. The game is craps, the mountain is Mount Everest, and the website is Reddit."
    Merry Christmas!

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    1. I guess we're safe from killer AI for another year!

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    2. I'm surprised that site performs so poorly. It reminds me of the apocryphal stories about early natural language recognition programs that were given test phrases to translate from English to Russian, and then back again. "Out of sight, out of mind" came back as "Invisible idiot", and "The spirit is strong but the flesh is willing" came back as "The vodka is good but the meat is rotten".

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    3. [^^^... flesh is weak...^^^]

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    4. Well, a lot of what we do here is word play, while ChatGPT is designed to *use* language rather than hacking it to bits. In most normal usage, ChatGPT is brilliant ... as e.g. Google Translate has become in recent years. We're just lucky it can't do word puzzles yet!

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  17. I know this place well. It reminds me of a gas company.

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    1. I live in Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay is in Virginia. The gas company is Mobil, which was used with eBay in the Mobil, eBay->Mobile Bay puzzle on September 9, 2018.

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  18. Take the geographical location's name, minus the website's name, add one letter and rearrange to get a kind of person who might regularly use the website.

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    1. Like Weird Al? Clever hint, but caution if you have weak ankles.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. Confirms my answer which I think is not the best.

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  19. Merry Christmas! 👋🎅 I started with the "popular website," and that turned out to be a good tactical move. Once I had the website, a Google search led me to the answer. I have flown over that location a couple of times. Pretty clever puzzle! :)

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  20. I have been a serious mountaineer/climber since 1976, but it was only this morning that I discovered the reason why so many mathematicians are into mountain climbing. Do any of you here, besides Bobby, know the reason?

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    1. Does this have to do with what you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?

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    2. Come on, Jan, you know that's impossible!

      What's the best anagram of "Banach-Tarski"?

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    3. It is not an anagram puzzle. Rather a play on words.

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    4. Does it involve a figure eight, either to tie in or for rappelling?

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    5. No, the best anagram for 'Banach-Tarski' is Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski'.

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    6. Nodd,
      No, but I suspect you climb too. Can you tie a rewoven figure eight blindfolded? How about a tied off bowline?

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    7. They made us do that for the Sierra Club course (if by rewoven figure eight you mean what they called a figure eight follow-through). Also a water knot and double fisherman's, if I remember correctly.

      Skydiving and mountaineering! Don't you Everest?

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    8. Lhotse if I can remember. Oh, and you must mean Kanchenjunga.

      Yes, a doubled figure eight. I never heard it called a follow-through, but that is what it is. It is a bombproof tie in knot, whereas a bowline can easily come untied if not tied off, and even then it is not as secure. But a rewoven figure eight is complicated, and if you are worn out and cannot see, you might be better off with the bowline. I love knots.

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    9. Me too, but probably knot as much as you. Is the answer to your question that both deal with slopes? No? How about both are concerned with scalene?

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    10. I would say no, not in the way you are thinking. In other words, not those words.

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    11. I'm at a disadvantage since math is not integral to my profession. I'll have to try to recalibrate my thinking.

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    12. Well then, since I am not a math geek, I would suggest you recalibrate downwards.

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    13. A mountaineer Summits, while a mathematician Sums it?

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    14. SuperZee,

      You solved it! I just now finished my dinner and was going to offer up a hint in the spirit of a holiday I do not celebrate, and as I sat down at my computer I saw your post.

      My answer was going to be:

      Mathematicians tend to be people who are more adept than most of us at knowing when and how to sum it up.

      My hint would have been:

      What is the goal of most mountain climbers?

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    15. In that case, what kind of pet would a mountaineer want?

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    16. Hint: It's a kind of dog.

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    17. Answer: Bloodhound. They have the same objective as mountainers: ascent.

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    18. Nodd,
      That attribute is not exclusive to bloodhounds, but I believe applies to all dogs.

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    19. sdb,
      Probably so, but the attribute is typically associated especially with bloodhounds, and "a dog" by itself could not be the answer since I gave that as a hint. Nobody answered anyway :( so it's a moot point.
      Have a nice day.

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    20. Nodd, It is typically associated with many different dog breeds, such as German Shepherds law enforcement use for their nose abilities. That is just one example of many. Dogs along with pigs are used to locate truffles. The list goes on and on.

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    21. sdb, I would have accepted any of those. I just gave my "intended" answer.

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    22. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4859551/

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    23. "With a record-breaking 300 million scent receptors, the Bloodhound is the gold medal-winner for sniffing out anything you may want to find. " https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/family-and-parenting/dogs-with-great-noses-2022-here-are-the-10-breeds-of-adorable-dog-with-the-best-sense-of-smell-including-the-loving-labrador-3353766

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    24. So what? I read one site stating the Doberman Pinscher is even better, but again, who cares? Coco Chanel could have been the answer.

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    26. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    27. But Coco Chanel wasn't a dog, and probably not a good companion for a mountain climb either.

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    28. At least as good as any dog. No dog is able to climb a mountain.

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    29. I have seen coyotes effortlessly surmount slopes I couldn't climb. But if you mean technical climbing, you are right.

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    30. A Chesapeake Bay Retriever has a pretty good sense of smell, but probably can't climb mountains or play chess. For that you probably need one of those Boston Dynamics robot dogs, like in Black Mirror.

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    31. Jan, I wasn't familiar with your reference but I looked it up and those robot dogs look like they'd be great at hiking. Fittingly, I notice the actress is named Peake.

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  21. My wife and I have been over (and under) and over this.

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  22. contributes daily and annually.

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  23. Now when it says "NAME a game, a mountain, and a popular website." Well..........

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  24. Clue: When a river meets the sea, magic will happen.

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  25. The answer came to me as I was searching through some old staples in my pantry.

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  26. Like Wolfgang, I started with the website first.

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    1. Ditto. I can imagine anyone starting with the mountain!

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    2. An old puzzle from a year or so ago prompted me to start with the correct website, which led me to a manageable list of geographical locations.

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    3. I started with the game, figuring as I went through the list, there would be a good chance that the geographic location would come to me quickly. It worked.

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    4. Yes. Which games have a fifth letter S? Darts, craps, jacks, canasta, and the one that is the answer to this puzzle, etc.

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    5. And yet, the game might be Go, Tag or Risk.

      LeGoTagOrRisk

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  27. I am reading four books at the moment, and I want to bring to your attention one that I believe you will thoroughly enjoy and learn from. It was published this year by The New Yorker author, Andy Borowitz. When I first learned of this new title and then saw who the author is, I thought, well I'll check it out but probably will soon put it down as being not really worth my time. Boy was I wrong! I don't know if Mr. Borowitz is both brilliant and humorous because he graduated from Harvard, or in spite of that accomplishment, but I suspect the latter. This is a very serious read that is appropriate to our times, but is also extremely humorously conceived and put together. Rarely have both humor and serious discourse been presented in such a compelling book. The book is only 242 pages of text, including the introduction, and it is a page turner. Please do yourself a favor and request this book from your local library or give to Jeff Bezos to have copy delivererd to your doorstep. You will be glad you did.

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    1. Sorry, just realized I forgot to mention the title of the book. It is, Profiles in Ignorance. Subtitled: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber. I attribute my forgetfulness to the wonderful Spanish bottle of wine I partook from, but do not blame just the same. Never would I do that.

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    2. Gosh, my only choices are to use my local library, or give Bezos money? I was hoping to support a local independent bookstore, but then you made these crazy rules...

      Just kidding. :-) I think I'll let some folks know I'm interested, in case they are looking for a birthday gift for me. (not asking you blog folks for a gift, but rather my in-person family)

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    3. JAWS,
      Amazon just doesn't cut it as a local bookstore, but I confess to using it sometimes to read the reviews. I do not do business this them however. If you do read this book I hope you will let us know what you thought.

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  28. Well it is Christmas, so I won't complain about the puzzle. Happy holidays to all.

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  29. Having solved the puzzle, I'll bid you adieu to enjoy some more family time :).

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  30. Didn't hear it clearly this a.m. because I was zipping out to begin the first of three Christmas services I was holding but when I read it, it took all of ten seconds to solve. Helped that I started with the right game. Then all the other pieces lined up.

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  31. Here are three more mathematician riddles:

    How is a mathematician:
    a) Like a Fortune Teller?
    b) Like a Lifeguard? and
    c) Like a blind man?

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    1. a) both deal with sines/signs (at least if the fortune teller relies on horoscopes)?
      b) both deal with a lot of tan gents?

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    2. Very nice, SuperZee! You are a true wordsmith.

      LegoWhoNotesThatMathmeticiansAndBankersBothDealWithCosines/Cosigns

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    3. A non-mathematics puzzle: Using all of the letters in an African capital, form a four-word hyphenated phrase describing something to be avoided if you are susceptible to high blood pressure. (Letters may be used more than once.)

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    4. Answer: Mogadishu --> a high-sodium dish.

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  32. It's bigger than you might remember.

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  33. I was driven to solve this puzzle and now I feel like singing.

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  34. I don't know if you may have heard, but Santa Clause arrived back home at the North Pole totally worn out and exhausted, and asked the elves to feed and take care of the reindeer as he turned to go in the house. Mrs. Clause asked him if he wanted something to eat, or something else perhaps, but Santa just said he was both too full of crappy cookies and tired to eat. With that he dropped down into his easy chair as he was too tired to bother with going to bed. Almost immediately after he sat down Mrs. Clause excitedly asked, "Santa!, what is that noise?" Santa had had about enough disturbance for the remainder of the year at that point and gruffly replied, "It's just the rain, Dear."

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    1. I take it you've heard the one about what Rudolph, a Russian communist, said when his wife questioned his prediction of a storm?

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    2. Nodd, No, but I think I see where it is going. I don't pay much attention to other people's jokes nowadays. I prefer to make up my own jokes. It is so much more fun and creative and satisfying. This blog is one of the very few places I am able to share a joke I make up now due to the pandemic lockdown, my friends almost all dead, moved far away, or no longer friends in a couple of cases, and now being the only one left in my family. Politics do make strange bedfellows, and certainly at this time. So, when I coin a really clever joke, I am compelled to put it on display. And, some jokes are not obvious as to how they will be received unless they are tried out in different forms. It is especially satisfying if I get a negative comment from one blogger here whose opinion on most things I find idiotic. And, no, Mendo Jim, I am not referring to you. LOL

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    3. Okay, I won't send any more of my jokes your way. (Pity, I made up one today I thought you'd enjoy in view of our dynamic discussion of orchestral conductors last week.)

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    4. Nodd, I think you are misunderstanding my post. I love to hear original jokes. I do want to hear yours. What I do not enjoy is when I make up an original joke and post it here and then someone follows up with an old chestnut everyone has known for decades.

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    5. I see. Okay (remember you asked for this), what would you call a lawn ornament seen in a large urban center?

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    6. Well, you say LARGE, so I suspect the answer might begin with mega, such as megaplopolis or mega*hit. Jokes are usually made from the punchline and can be difficult to figure out for that reason.

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    8. You are pretty close on the first part of the answer.

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    9. I seemed to have missed the last part of your post indicating conductors. I don't know your answer.

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    10. Nodd, see the image that accompanies Appetizer #10: "Musical-Metro-Gnome"!

      LegnomeLambda

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    11. When I read lawn ornament I thought of a dog dropping. Metro gnome is the punch line to a joke I made up over 30 years ago. I don't want to repeat it here.

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    12. I guess my riddle was not as original as I thought. (If you are "inclined" to try the mountaineer pet one I posted above, here's a hint -- it's a kind of dog.)

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    13. I would say your joke is original. If you come with something on your own then it is original to you. My joke had to do with a midget Paris subway driver. Not my best effort.

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    14. skydiveboy makes an excellent point, Nodd. If you come up with some idea independently, it is, as sdb puts it so well, "original to you." I find that this phenomenon happens often in puzzle-making, puns and other wordplay.

      LegoWhoSuggestsWeJustChalkItUpTo"GreatMindsCreateAlike!"

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    15. Thanks to both, but really, you never know for sure if you may have heard something elsewhere and internalized it so that it seemed original to you, as in the George Harrison "My Sweet Lord" lawsuit.

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    16. Yes, listen to Lego, he knows what he is talking about. Well, just as long as you understand it does not apply to Lego. LOL Just kidding!!! Oh, God, my purgatory is going to take forever. Oh, wait. Purgatory is an illusion and does not exist. Whew!

      I think I may have posted here about this some time back. I was driving downtown and listening to the radio NPR news. It was mentioned that the Tiger Woods fiasco had produced web sites devoted entirely to jokes about his indiscretion. Now, this was about a week and a half after the story broke. I thought that I hadn't made up a joke about this fiasco, but had enjoyed a few of the better ones. Then I thought I probably should see what I could come up with. Then I thought that was not going to work out because I have never swung a golf club. I also thought that all the good jokes would have been coined already, and I want something fresh. But I decided to try anyway. My first thought was that they kept asking the rhetorical question on the news, why was Tiger Woods driving an Escalade? I then thought maybe I should try to answer that question. The answer came to me instantly. Why was Tiger Woods driving an Escalade? Because any time a golfer is that successful he can choose whatever Caddie he wants. I knew right away it was a clever joke, but that it was so obvious to me that it would have already been made up. When I returned back home I spent a couple of hours Googling Tiger Woods jokes to see if I was right. I could find nothing that even alluded to caddy's. So, you never know. My theory is that most were trying to come up with sexual jokes, because they always get a laugh, no matter how lame, but I try for clever. Not that I am against sexual humor, I am not, but I want clever to be the achievement.

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    17. So did you get to use your joke? As you say, it was a clever one.

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    18. Thanks. Yes, I use it when I can. Like here. I have never been to a comedy club, let alone performed in one, but I did something similar when teaching skydiving or lecturing to groups. I have always been totally comfortable using humor when speaking to a class or a group, the larger the better, but going on stage at a comedy club would be scary at first I think. Hopefully Will Smith would not be in attendance.

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    19. I participated in skydiving briefly a long time ago and the jumpmasters all used humor liberally. The on-site rigger didn't, probably appropriately.

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    20. I don't see why. I am not only a rigger, but a master rigger, and I used humor all the time. When I returned a rig to someone, either a jumper or a pilot, I would always tell him I guaranteed it to work or he could bring it back for a full refund. Did you ever happen to notice that parachutes seem to run in packs?

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    21. Yes, I guess that's so they can do relative work. BTW, how did the pilots feel about the jumpers using pilot shoots?

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    22. Well I think first you should know that they shoot pilots in order to see if something will fly with the studio moguls and get it off the ground beef prices have gone up considerably since the pandemic has ended the practice will make one a better off dead end streets are an annoying itch on his foot in the door in order to obtain a Job was a major character in the bible belt tornadoes can destroy props which are frequently used in filming pilots.

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    23. If they shoot the pilots, nothing's flying anywhere.

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    24. Another reason to always fly Paper airplanes because they tend to stick with their flies.

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    25. If you upgrade from paper to wood you get Mosquitoes instead of flies. Or switch from Paper to Piper, but you have to pay if you want to do that.

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    26. I used to jump out of a blue and white 1931 Curtiss-Wright Air SB Sedan that was fabric, wood and metal, not to mention lots of duct tape. I am the last person to have jumped out of it.

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    27. How cool! I used to fly Grob fiberglass sailplanes. The light airframe made the controls highly sensitive and it was hard not to overcontrol, but I did asbestos I could.

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    28. Of course; you weren't retardant.

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    29. Did you ever jump from a warplane? One day a B-25 showed up where I was jumping, but only the more advanced jumpers got to jump from it.

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    30. I flew a J-3 Cub, which is the same as the Army L-4. Did I fly a warplane?

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    31. I suppose so. One of my instructors flew a Cessna Bird Dog in the Vietnam war, so I guess a civilian plane can serve as a warplane, broadly speaking.

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    32. I don't think so, but I would've jumped at the chance. I always wanted to jump out of the Goodyear Blimp. However, years before I ever jumped, I was home on Xmas leave from cryptography training at Ft. Gordon, Georgia. My father used some connections he had to obtain for me a military hop from the Sand Point Naval Air Station, located 2 or 3 miles from our house, on a Marine C-147 that was leaving December 31, 1963 and supposed to land in South Carolina after spending the night at Scott AFB. Right after I boarded the pilot informed me that I should wear a harness which he handed me that a parachute could be quickly attached to, because it was not uncommon for these aircraft to crash he said. He also said I could attach the 'chute now if I wanted, but I declined. Although we did not end up in South Carolina, but were diverted to Tampa, Florida, I did not get to jump. I was invited to fly up front in the cockpit though.

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    33. I jumped from a Sikorsky H-34 from ten grand though.

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    34. That's interesting. Did you first start jumping while in the Army?

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    35. After my training I was stationed for my remaining 30 months in Germany. In summer 1964 a few enlisted guys in my unit took lessons at another base that had an airfield. I found out about it and decided I would join in, but before I could they quit because they said the open parachute of one of them had collapsed and then reopened again. This scared them off. I do not know what actually happened, but not that! The parachute cannot suddenly collapse on its own. These guys had only made a couple of jumps and didn't really know what they were talking about. So, it was years later that I finally made what was going to be my one and only jump.

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    36. Wow! And it ended up becoming a career. Life takes strange turns indeed.

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  35. I sort of remember another puzzle with parts of this one.
    Oh well, there is not much to say about this one.
    It will probably be in the 2000's again.
    I should credit WS for adding the cockle/cackle alternative, but if the staff doesn't report the answers to him, where did he find it? Here?

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  36. Mendo: I found the other puzzle with parts of this one.

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    1. Good. Looking forward to seeing it when the time is right. Happy New Year.

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  37. Not easy to find. I will let you know.

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    1. I think I have the same puzzle as you. It was another puzzle where a geographical location was half the answer.

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    2. I will let you know later today.

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  38. I think the description of the things it's to name is a little unfair. But I started with the website.

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  39. President Theodore Roosevelt was known to bust trusts. President Trump was known to trust busts.

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    1. What word for a kind of musician describes the cause of many of 45's legal woes?

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    2. Not one word, I realize, but I was thinking, "someone who plays the 'base'."

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    3. I like that one too, and it has the advantage of being PG rated unlike my answer.

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  40. CHESAPEAKE BAY; CHESS, PEAK, EBAY

    "I was driven to solve this puzzle and now I feel like singing!" >>>

    A ria is a drowned river valley that remains open to the sea, like the Chesapeake Bay. >>>

    And now I feel like singing an aria ;-).

    *************

    Shades of the Mobile Bay/Ebay/Mobil puzzle we've seen here before. NPR keeping the puzzle world at bay, as it were.



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  41. CHESAPEAKE BAY → CHESS, PEAK, EBAY (eBay).

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  42. Chesapeake Bay — chess, peak, eBay

    My clues:
    I started with the “popular website,” and that turned out to be a good tactical move.
    An oblique reference to chess, which essentially involves strategy but also tactical moves.

    Literary clue: Sandra Newman.
    The main character of Sandra Newman’s novel The Country of Ice Cream Star is part of a nomadic tribe that is originally from the Chesapeake Bay area. The title of the novel would have been TMI; when you Google it, you easily get results with mentions of Chesapeake Bay. I even got rid of the mention of The Country of Ice Cream Star in my blogger profile (as one of my favorite books) to minimize the risk of that connection being made.

    Though not really a clue, I also mentioned I “have flown over that location a couple of times.” That would have been on several flights from Boston to Florida and back.

    And once again, as several folks have hinted, the way the puzzle was worded may have been flawed: For the string of letters to name…a mountain, it would have to give the name of one specific mountain; “peak” alone is hardly it.

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    1. That Peak answer really did not make sense and I thought my answer was incorrect until I read the posts on this blog. I started with the websites which one of the posts helped with.

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  43. CHESAPEAKE BAY —> CHESS, PEAK, EBAY

    My hint was all true: My d-i-l did in fact have a “brilliant insight,” suggesting that we start with “eBay” and then work backwards, and I did dub her “Queen of the NPR Puzzle”, but her well-earned designation also included a covert chess hint, the name of the most powerful piece on the board, i.e., the queen.

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    1. I went a similar route. My hint was: "oh, please remove once you've sung carols... amen!" If you remove the 'o' from "sung carols amen", you get an anagram for "Magnus Carlsen".

      Delete
  44. Chesapeake Bay >>> chess, peak & bay

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  45. Chesapeake Bay - a + s to get Chess, Peak and eBay.

    My comment about location making this puzzle easy for me was based on living in the DC suburbs, near Chesapeake Bay, and regularly eating at the Chesapeake Bagel Bakery.

    Take Chesapeake Bay, subtract, “eBay,” add the letter, “T,” and rearrange to get Cheapskate, the kind of person who might regularly search for bargains on eBay.

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  46. Chesapeake Bay --> chess, peak, ebay

    Earlier this week I clued “Jimmy.” Jimmy is the informal name for an adult male Blue Crab such as those found in Chesapeake Bay. It can also be used to name a crab that’s molting. In either case, they’re delicious!

    I grew up outside DC, near the bay. My friends and I would scoot across Bay Bridge on the way to the beach and order Jimmys by the dozen at one of the many run-down crab shacks that dotted two-lane roads away from the beach. Some of the crab shacks were actually just shacks – sitting on loose cinder blocks, not even on a real foundation.

    Usually, you would sit indoors at a picnic table with a large hole cut in the middle. A garbage can was positioned underneath the hole. They gave you a couple of simple tools, a disposable bib and fresh steamed crabs, caught that day. You ate off of paper plates on top of old newspapers. Your “napkin” was a paper towel torn off a roll hanging down from the ceiling on a bent coat hanger. True gourmands could also get fries and/or a beer. When you were done, everything except the tools got pushed into the hole in the picnic table, falling into the garbage can below. Heavenly dining! I taste it still.

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    1. That sounds so good! My kind of eating place.

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    2. Chuck, great memory. Do the Jimmys taste different from the Janies?

      Delete
  47. b>CHESAPEAKE BAY -> CHESS, PEAK, BAY

    > A prominent location in Morocco.

    I've flown to Tangier Island in CHESAPEAKE BAY. With rising sea levels, it won't be there long.

    > A bit of a cheat.

    PEAK is a synonym for mountain, not the name of one. Except, apparently, for Mt. PEAK in Connecticut (?), which is pretty obscure.

    > That's a timely hint, Blaine.

    "The World Turned Upside Down" was written in the 1640s as a protest against the policies of Parliament relating to the celebration of Christmas.

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  48. Chesapeake Bay. My hint was, “E.T. phone home.” An extra-terrestrial object is believed to have formed the bay.

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  49. I wrote, “Take the first three and last three letters of the geographical site. Rearrange. You get a word describing parts of the site.” That’s BEACHY.

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  50. CHESAPEAKE BAY, CHESS, PEAK, EBAY

    I really did have a sparrow in the house on Christmas morning. I made references to swifts, because Earl Swift wrote Chesapeake Requiem, A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, a book a highly recommend.

    I had considered saying something about vanishing swifts, but when I googled that, the book came up in the top 10 results. That felt like too close to a "simple internet search."

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  51. I considered using time to change my antifreeze as a clue, but thought it too much of a giveaway as PEAK is a major brand name.

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  52. I wrote: "The answer came to me as I was searching through some old staples in my pantry." I was referring to "Old Bay Seasoning," named after the Old Bay Line, a passenger ship line that plied the waters of the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia in the early 1900s.

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  53. Another "Holiday Edition" of Puzzleria! is is store this week, featuring three canny conundrums composed by our friend Mathew Huffman in his "Conundrum Set" Christmas/New Year's Package.
    We upload Puzzleria! very early Friday morn, just after Midnight Pacific Standard Time.
    Also on this week's menus are:
    * a Schpuzzle of the Week that involves headlines from bygone centuries, including “Feller Was Unhittable,” and “Buyers of radios on eBay boogeyed to rock ‘n’ roll,”
    * a Puzzle Slice the features "Ancient mythology, modern fiction,"
    * A Slice of Dessert chock-full of “Muggers and mug shots,” and
    * Ten Riff-offs of Will Shortz's "Chess-Peak-eBay NPR puzzle that strives to answer the question, "Is the Vatican the “PayPal Residence?”
    Come help us ring in 2023 a few days early by uncorking these sixteen sweet and intoxicating puzzles!

    LegoWhoDrinksNewYear'sChampagneFromAMugAndPfister'sBierFromAFlute!

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  54. "contributes daily and annually"

    I live in suburban DC, so my sewage (via Blue Plains treatment plant> and the Potomac River) winds up in the Chesapeake.

    Also I make a small annual contribution to the Chesapeake Bay Fund in my MD state taxes.

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  55. Looks like Blaine's annual family video puzzle is up.

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    1. It is and it is another fun look at the family adventures, including croquet in tall grass.
      Thanks, Blaine.

      Delete
  56. Chess NAMES a game, Ebay NAMES a website. Peak does NOT name a mountain. It is a synonym for mountain. Naming a mountain would be something like Everest, Denali, Matterhorn, Jungfrau, or even Pike's Peak.

    Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph!!

    Like Word Woman I tumbled to this by remembering the Mobil-Ebay --> Mobile-Bay puzzle from 2018. Doesn't seem like it has been that long.

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    1. I agree Mort Canard. Although my son got it, I thought 'peak' = 'mountain' ... was pretty weak, especially when the middle word could have been an antifreeze brand.

      Delete
  57. Chesapeake Bay->chess, peak, eBay

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  58. It always pays to read the Wikipedia home page. Otherwise, you might miss the story of Pablo Escobear, a 175-lb black bear who ate 75 pounds of cocaine that had been dropped from a Cessna 404 by Andrew C. Thornton II, a narcotics officer and lawyer who became the head of a drug smuggling ring in Kentucky, and who subsequently jumped from the plane with a faulty parachute, a bulletproof vest, Gucci loafers, night vision goggles, a green army duffel bag containing (another?) 75 lbs of cocaine valued at $15 million, $4,500 in cash, six 1 oz gold Krugerrands, knives, and two pistols. Thornton apparently died on impact, the bear OD'd on the coke but will be the subject of a major motion picture coming in February, and the poor plane flew on all alone for another 60 miles before calling it quits. Something for everyone in the whole family!

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    1. "Caught in his parachute." I would love to hear that explained. He ruined that bruin. Ursine of the times.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. According to the NTSB report of the plane crash, the guy's body was found wearing a parachute and a deployed reserve parachute. And "a key to the crashed aircraft was found on the body". Taking the key with him was smart; wouldn't want someone stealing the plane!

      Delete

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