Add three letters and rearrange to name a person who might work on a movie.Q: Think of an eight-letter word for a certain musician. Switch the order of the second and fourth letters and you'll get a word for a certain writer. What words are these? The answers are words, not famous people.
Edit: Add H, L, Y and rearrange to get HAIRSTYLIST.
A: SITARIST, SATIRIST
I didn't make much original progress on this puzzle until I concentrated on my areas of expertise.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't give the answer away, but I got the answer immediately after reading your clue in conjunction with another clue.
DeleteGot it. Clue coming.
ReplyDeleteTake either of the words. If a letter repeats, remove all instances of that letter. You are left with a subject of recent headlines.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately!
DeleteNearly 600 correct answers last week.
ReplyDeleteHey Will owned up to the 'inverse function' mistake last week!
ReplyDeleteGot the answer. Onto sweeping the floors.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'm having a hard time coming up with a decent clue. And I don't get Blaine's clue. (But that's par for me.)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteSorry I got my singular and plurals mixed up. Thanks for the suggestion. I've corrected the wording.
DeleteThis one hit a chord with me.
ReplyDeleteDarn, I thought I had it right away, but my first thought doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteSo of course, as soon as I post that, the correct answer comes to me. The only clue I have thought of so far is TMI.
DeleteRearrange the letters into a two word phrase that could describe many famous people.
DeleteAdd two letters and rearrange to get a word for certain musicians.
ReplyDeletePart of Clark's clue above can precede the answer to Rob's clue above to get the reverse of another clue.
ReplyDeleteOh jeez.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it's true that Blaine posed his clue slightly wrong the first time, that's not why I couldn't understand it. I just misread which letters he said to add!
Okay I finally have a clue obscure enough for me to be confident it isn't TMI:
Both terms have (had) fairly popular specious etymologies.
May I propose that you think of the writer first?
ReplyDeleteHm, I think you've missed the boat.
DeleteNo worries. My grandparents caught the boat for me.
DeleteI'm not the sharpest cheese on the tray and I got this without too much effort. I think we'll be back to 1000+ correct responses this week...
ReplyDeleteRemove the first two letters from the musician and move one letter to describe both the musician and the writer.
ReplyDeleteBlaine's hint was TMI for me. Maybe others, too?
ReplyDeleteOkay, I made it less specific. Is that better?
DeleteToo late.😊
DeleteBut probably totally impossible to solve now.
DeleteI recall first listening to a musician, of the indicated type, many years ago, but I can't recall ever needing the services of the person Blaine refers to.
ReplyDeleteI like kohlrabi – do you?
ReplyDeleteIf you asked people to name an example of the musician, I'd guess pretty close to 100% would give the same name. Less so for the writer, but someone here is thinking of the same one who quickly came to my mind.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteTMI led me right to it.
DeleteZAP!
DeleteAre you sure of that? I have an answer that fits all the clues including Blaine's, but doesn't match this one or Rob's. It was easier to work back from Blaine's clue.
ReplyDeleteHm, which clue is "this one"?
DeleteBut I agree, I don't see how Rob's clue fits. (Although I can see a simple mistake Rob might have made, and then it fits very nicely.)
I get Rob's clue.
DeleteOh, gosh, thanks, Blaine - I was rechecking and rechecking and doubting....
DeleteI think I get Rob's clue, with a New Zealand accent.
DeleteDoes it help if you add a number?
DeleteDoesn't help, but does complete the hint.
DeleteThink of a breed of domestic pet; then eat breakfast. You'll be left with a word associated with the musician.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteRAGAMUFFIN - MUFFIN = RAGA
Deleteyoutube
ReplyDeleteSNL has featured many of one of these, but not so many of the other
ReplyDeleteI believe this holds true of Prairie Home Companion as well
DeleteI'll need my full brain for this puzzle, except I forgot where I hid it.
ReplyDeleteMy clue: Hidden Brain, the NPR Podcast hosted by Shankar Vedantam. "Shankar" leads you to the answers.
DeleteSolved that one swiftly.
ReplyDeleteI see (and like) what you did there.
DeleteAnd you were not the only one, Paul.
DeleteI think it was in junior high that I was taught that Jonathan was a satirist.
DeleteHere's Wikipedia's list of Taylor's Instrument(s):
Vocals/guitar/banjo/piano/ukulele
(so I think it qualifies as a red herring).
Right, so I have my answer, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the puzzler, but it's really suspect.
ReplyDeleteI'd tell you my solving method, but modesty forbids.
ReplyDelete(I, too, went Swiftian.)
DeleteJe suis heureuse!
ReplyDeleteIs "switch the order of the second and fourth letters" the same as "switch the letters?"
ReplyDeleteYes
DeleteAdd three letters and rearrange to find a type of medical specialist that I've often visited
ReplyDelete9% green, or 18% hazel...
ReplyDeleteLegoWhoIs27%DoneWithComposingRiffsOfThisPuzzleForThisFriday'sPuzzleria!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSTAT!
DeleteIt was Mark Russell, satirist.
DeleteBrings to mind a particular musician whose recordings have, oddly enough, never featured the instrument referenced this week.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to last week's puzzle there are 3 syllable last names of a famous musician and a famous author/writer that all 3 syllables rhyme. They are not the same last name, but one of them also fits perfectly with the category description. [I came up with this hint while still in bed hours ago and was too lazy to get up and post it.]
ReplyDeleteOh, that's a very nice spin-off.
DeleteIf I have the people you're thinking of, then both of them had packed houses and critical acclaim for shows on New York City stages.
I got quite a shock yesterday. I had to drive roughly a hundred miles south of where I live in Seattle to attend an annual get together of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Coleman Collectors Club. It is mostly attended by those of us who find and restore and perhaps resell old Coleman stoves and lanterns, such as the lantern my family used as I was attempting to grow up in the nineteen fifties. It is now 95 years old and works like the day it was born. I believe it was a still birth.
ReplyDeleteAs I was driving back home late in the afternoon I was glancing at my old GPS and got to thinking about how we are not allowed while driving to engage in hands on contact with our digital devises such as cell phones and GPS, etc. As I looked back down I noticed the leather driving gloves I was wearing and realized I was breaking the law. Now I will have to stop using my driving gloves. These gloves are obviously digital and I am unable to use them hands off.
The first part of one of the words reminds me of the last name of a famous musician.
ReplyDeleteSatirist is like Satie, as in Erik Satie.
DeleteWhen it rains it pours.
ReplyDeleteI am eagerly looking forward to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game between Iowa and LSU. But considering how poorly my brackets fared this year, my wife suggested that in the future I might as well go out and consult with our horses.
ReplyDeleteRussian milblogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed today in an accidental natural gas explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg that was triggered by a spark when he hit the sidewalk after falling from an upper story window.
ReplyDeleteHere is (the free version of) Chat GPT's answer:
ReplyDeleteThe eight-letter word for a certain musician is "Saxophonist."
If we switch the order of the second and fourth letters, we get the word "Sonnets," which is a word for a certain type of writer.
I guess you can't count on that.
DeleteYes, I 've found Chat GPT to be terrible at this sort of puzzle. When I've simplified the problem and just asked it to list 8-letter musicians, e.g., it would fairly reliably list the first two correctly, but go completely random after that. It was totally unable to provide me with any insight into this apparent attention deficit disorder.
DeleteWhich is nice, for now. I fear it's not long, though, before AI will be outperforming us all at puzzle-solving, WS will have to find a new gig, and we will have to find something else to idle our time away on.
DeleteSomething interesting happened to me the first time I read Nodd's excellent comment, above:
Delete"Which is nice, for now. I fear it's not long, though, before AI will be outperforming us all at puzzle-solving, WS will have to find a new gig, and we will have to find something else to idle our time away on."
I read "AI" not as an abbreviated form of Artificial Intelligence (which is exactly what Nodd intended) nor as "a three-toed sloth" ("ai") written in ALL CAPS (which is not at all what Nodd intended).
No, instead I read "AI" as the masculine first name "Al," which happens to be the handle of an occasional commenter here on Blaine's Blog. Al also so happens to be an amazingly brilliant puzzle solver! Within a two-month span back in 2014, Al (and pretty much nobody else!) solved two of the most controversial yet deviously clever puzzles (IMHO) that Will Shortz has ever presented to us:
The Upside-down Digital Clock puzzle, and
The "TWO W'S The Wolf Of Wall Street" puzzle
So, when I read Nodd's "I fear it's not long, though, before AI will be outperforming us all at puzzle-solving..." I thought to mysef, "For the past decade, for Chrissakes, Al has been outperforming us all at puzzle-solving!"
LegoWhoSuggestsThatAl'sIntelligenceIsNotAtAllArtificialButIsRatherTheRealThing
Just tried Bard, Google's version of an AI chatbot. It makes the same kind of stupid mistakes as ChatGPT, but it might be better at following an explanation of why the right answer to the riddle is correct. Neither will be playing puzzle on the air with Will Shortz any time soon.
DeleteWas he the dude with the travelling mini-circus? Puzzler extraordinaire, unequalled, OOTW? I heard he may have joined Elton's farewell tour?
DeleteFor a moment I too thought Nodd was referring to me.
DeleteI've fooled a lot of people over the years into thinking I'm smarter than I actually am. I guess that is a form of Artificial Intelligence.
Lego, maybe when you read the post you were thinking of your puzzle last week in which COLN became COIN by changing the L to lower case.
DeleteThanks for chiming in Al. But, please, do not fool yourself into thinking that you are not as smart as you actually am!
DeleteNice connection, Nodd. I had not made it, even though that puzzle ran, as you noted, just last week on Puzzleria!
It read:
Take four consecutive letters of a well-known surname. Write three of them in uppercase and one of them in lowercase. The result appears to be someplace you might see the person with this surname. What is the surname? Where might you see this person?
LegoWhoSuggestsThatWeAllStartDottingOurUppercase"I's!...PerhapsThereIsSomeWayToInvertAnExclamationMark?
Also have not read, "Weird Al fan" for a time. Fellow Washingtonian.
DeleteTrue, Plantsmith. I too have not lately noticed the excellent and insightful comments made on Blaine's Blog by Enya_and_Weird_Al_Fan Hope he is okay.
DeleteLegoWhoIsAnEnya_and_Weird_Al_FanFan!
Old puzzlers never die- they just de-solve.
DeleteMy wife, who is usually so reasonable, says this puzzle is bogus. She says the term for a musician doesn't exist (she's wrong), and that one needn't be a writer to be labeled with the term for a writer (she's right; cf. a recent death, e.g.).
ReplyDeleteOne synonym for writer is wordsmith, which would seem to cover anyone who would be labeled with that term.
Deletejan, I agree with your wife, on point 2. Nodd, I disagree. One need not use words to be this second term.
DeleteE.g.?
DeleteThursday.
DeleteI don't want to reveal too much before Thursday but suffice it to say one can be this person using other media besides the written word. More on Thursday.
DeleteAgreed, but in that sense, the same is true of being a musician.
DeleteIndeed.
DeleteAnyway, I get your point, and agree the puzzle is inaccurate if it is meant to imply the person must always be a writer.
DeleteThe puzzle description does not say it must be a writer, so I don't understand why we are discussing it.
DeleteSee above -- the issue was whether the puzzle was
Deletebogus for implicitly assuming it must be a writer.
Right, but...
DeleteHow is that implicit?
If a puzzle clued "lion tamer" by asking for a term for a circus performer, would that be incorrect since lion tamers don't have to be circus performers?
I guess if the category were very specific when the desired answer was much more general, it would be misleading -- if the clue were "Ancient Greek writer", for example, looking for "poet".
I do not see how you may have come to that conclusion. The word DRIVER may refer to someone who drives a car, but it does not have to be a car he drives, it could be a Zamboni.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteCrito, I agree with you. I didn't read it to mean the person had to be a writer, but I think one could read it that way.
DeleteWell pick me up off the floor! The answer just popped into my head, no technology required. Take That AI!!
ReplyDeleteSome years ago I met someone who was a world renowned player of this musical instrument at a large get-together. This musician pulled up that night in an old '67 Camaro and loved to impress everyone by doing donuts with it.
ReplyDeleteI’m trying to picture that instrument in a’67 Camaro. That’d be a snug fit. Even more snug if the musician was eating donuts instead of doing them
DeleteCurtis - Good one!
DeleteI was good naturedly satirizing Ravi Shankar's life style. The last thing I would picture him doing would be driving around in a 60's era muscle car, doing donuts for the excitement of it. (But, who knows! )
A simple poser. It resisted my thinking about it, but was solved by a list.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit cut up that it took me so long, but I got the answer before it made me cry
ReplyDeleteI submitted my answer to NPR and got an almost immediate confirmation email from Will himself that said, "Thanks TomR for consistently submitting correct answers week after week. It's people like you that make the world a better place." No lie!
ReplyDeleteI am LaughingOutLoud at TomR's comment. Tom is a creative, imaginative and playful guy. He writes plays! Fiction is one of Tom's fortes. He has twice allowed me to display his "playfulness" on Puzzleria! (See Entree #8 and Entree #9.
DeleteLegoWhoWishesToThankTomRForOccasionallySubmittingCreativePuzzlesToPuzzleria!...ForIt'sPeopleLikeHimThatMakeMyBlogABetterPlace...NoLie...No,Really!...NoLie!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteLego - thanks for the flatters, but I don't actually write playS, with an S at the end. I am working on one musical, from which Google has decided to grab an image from the web site (the rainbow skull tattoo image) and now it's my avatar. Hmmm. Could be worse I suppose. And the comment that made you laugh is kind of an inside joke, that only a few will get.
DeleteAssuming I have the right answer, there are certain parts of New Jersey where this will be more likely to be solved.
ReplyDeleteDo you find something funny about the word tromboner?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteNot compared to a loophonium.
DeleteI realized today that half of tambourine is urine.
DeleteIn any case, there is something stinky and rare happening in NYC today. Do you know what it is?
You might want to avoid the area of Centre St. and Hogan Pl. if urine town today.
DeleteThe rare, stinky thing that happened is a corpse flower bloomed at the New York Botanical Garden.
DeleteI saw or smelled one of these at the Seattle Volunteer park garden conservatory. I won't need to do it again. Every 100 years or so? Kind of like road kill.
DeleteThe one at NYBG is already starting to shrivel up.
DeleteI have been to Brooklyn Botanical several times when my son lived near Benson-Hurst-but never go NYBG. In the Bronx close to the zoo right? Maybe next trip.
DeleteYeah, the zoo and the garden are both just west of the Bronx River Parkway, the zoo just south of Fordham Road, the gardens just north. Both must-sees.
DeleteNice geological formations in the gardens. I remember school field trips, seeing striations on a roche moutonnée showing the direction of glacial movements. One trip was just around this time of year; I remember Ellen Zindler bringing a ham on matzoh sandwich in her lunch bag.
Thanks Jan.
DeleteHaven't been able to solve this week. I got excited thinking it was electric/eclectic but that doesn't work...
ReplyDeleteI'm picturing George Harrison reading the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
DeleteThis week the show I always listen to featured an interview in which the interviewee is referred to as one of the two things. Coincidentally, the interviewee is possibly the world's most famous example of the other thing. Something tells me you can figure out who this is.
ReplyDeleteI just now solved today's WORDLE in ONE.
ReplyDeleteThat is amazing!
DeleteActually there is nothing amazing or strange about solving WORDLE in one, especially when you use the same starting word each day. I have been expecting this to happen for some time now.
DeleteI got today's Jewdle (Jewish Wordle); it was a Hebrew word that I had never heard before.
DeleteSo are you going to change your starting word now? :)
DeleteDobie, That is mind-bageling!
DeleteJayB, I see no reason to change it.
Wordle 654 2/6
Delete🟨⬛🟩⬛🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
What was my starting word?
The word was "Shanda" (which is actually Yiddish, not Hebrew) which means "scandal". Some people pronounce the word SHAWN-DA, so Shonda Rhimes could conceivably have named the show "Scandal" after herself.
DeleteMy understanding of Yiddish is that it is basically Germanic in origin. Therefor it would be pronounced shonda. I never heard of this word before.
DeleteMy father, whose first language was Yiddish, always pronounced it shonda. (My paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who emigrated in the early 1900's.)
DeleteMy starting word for Wordle 654 was OUTER.
Deletehttps://crossword-dictionary.com/word/o-t-r
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTrump's next April court date in N.Y. is on rape allegations
ReplyDeleteOn April 25, a jury trial in one of two civil cases brought against Trump by author E. Jean Carroll is set to get underway in New York.
I am reminded of Goldfinger and P.G. And, no, I don't mean parental guidance.
Ironically, in Fleming's novel, PG is a lesbian due, we find out, to her having been raped as a child. This is vaguely hinted at when she tells 007, "You can turn off the charm, I'm immune." Of course, she undergoes a complete transformation and ends up falling for 007 by the end of the book, and the film.
ReplyDeleteSATIRIST, SITARIST
ReplyDeleteYoutube contains part of the name of one of SATIRIST Jonathan Swift's work A Tale of a Tub.
And, of course, SATIRISTS include artists, political cartoonists, etc. who may not use the written word.
ReplyDeleteOur featured puzzles on Puzzleria! this week were penned by our friend Bobby Jacobs, whose Puzzle Fun by Bobby Jacobs has become a much anticipated part of our blog. His Bobby Jacobs (& Bobby Jones) Appetizer, titled “A hole-in-one-hit-wonder,” includes two puzzles titled Dressed to the “nines” (or “eighteens”) and What a diva believes.
We upload Puzzleria! early on Friday morning, jist after Midnight PDT.
Also on on menus:
* a Schpuzzle of the Week titled "Fashionable warfare!" about a ubiquitous word lately very much in vogue,
* an Indiana To New York Hors d’Oeuvre titled "Crosswords and cross worship,"
* a Filleting Loaves And Fishes Slice titled “Duad” minus roughly 42.5% equals “Triplicate!”
* a “Vogueswagen” Dessert titled "Making a model into a make," and
* eleven riff-offs of this week's NPR puzzle titled "Shankar & Swift, Strayer & Shaw."
That's 17 puzzles!
Stop by!
LegoWelcomeMatting
ReplyDeleteSitarist & satirist
My Hint:
"This one hit a chord with me." A chord is a musical term and I sometimes use satire.
AND
"Similar to last week's puzzle there are 3 syllable last names of a famous musician and a famous author/writer that all 3 syllables rhyme. They are not the same last name, but one of them also fits perfectly with the category description. [I came up with this hint while still in bed hours ago and was too lazy to get up and post it.]"
VLADIMIR HOROWITZ & and ANDY BOROWITZ
SITARIST, SATIRIST
ReplyDeleteAs I heard the puzzle, I immediately thought it was going to be violinist and novelist, but then quickly realized that does not fit the pattern of the actual puzzle at all. Minutes later, the correct answer came to me. I got it by working backwards from 8-letter words that describe writers.
"Rearrange the letters into a two word phrase that could describe many famous people." IS ARTIST
I did the same except my first word was FLAUTIST, which is usually mispronounced ass flutist.
DeleteI found this:
DeleteFlutist is the older spelling.
Flutist is preferred in American English.
Flautist is preferred in British English.
SDB:I thought you were using your psychic powers to solve.
DeleteNatasha: As I have told you before, I am not psychic and I am not a medium.
DeleteSkydiveboy: I thought you mentioned an assassination you knew about psychically. JFK.
DeleteSITARIST, SATIRIST
ReplyDeleteHint #1: “I didn’t make much original progress on the puzzle until I concentrated on my areas of expertise.”
Having had a comment removed last week and trying to avoid a similar fate this week, I thought any allusions to Jonathan Swift would be TMI (so I was surprised that some Swiftian comments remained on the blog). Instead, I initially opted for something obscure related to satire (one of my supposed areas of professional expertise), an echo of the title of John Dryden’s essay “Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire.”
I didn’t think that anyone, except perhaps Dr. Awkward, would get the hint and that Blaine would allow it to remain.
And so it did.
So then I did risk a Swiftian hint.
Hint #2: “…my wife suggested that in the future I might as well go out and consult with our horses.” At the end of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, aka Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver, driven to “Antipathy against human Kind” as a result of his adventures (particularly in Book IV), withdraws from human interaction and for “at least four Hours every Day” talks to his horses.
Ha, I think we are indeed simpatico! And I was also slightly surprised that my clue didn't get the kibosh. So do you work mostly in the eighteenth century?
DeleteYes, a colleague! I’m retired now, but among other things I specialized in satire, everything and everyone from Petronius to Pynchon.
DeleteExcellent! I work in the 19th century, as my avatar might indicate. Bracing now for the traditional holiday influx of grading...
DeleteSitarist/Satirist
ReplyDeleteI first listened to Ravi Shankar, the Indian musician who brought the sitar to the attention of Western audiences, in 1967 while he was teaching at The City College of New York (during my junior year.)
Re Blaine’s clue: As I am, “Follicle challenged,” I don’t desire the services of a hairstylist.
“A certain musician” →
ReplyDeleteSITARIST, one who plays the SITAR (Ravi Shankar).
“A certain writer” → SATIRIST, one who writes SATIRE.
I wrote, “Take either of the words. If a letter repeats, remove all instances of that letter. You are left with a subject of recent headlines.” That’s AR, Arkansas, in the headlines for recent tornadoes.
ReplyDeleteOr AR, as in AR-15, all too much in the news...
ReplyDeleteThat's what I thought Rob meant.
DeleteSorry, that's what I thought too.
DeleteSo did I. I noted that you could use part of Clark's Sunday morning clue (4) to precede Rob's answer and get the reverse of another clue: IV+AR.
Deletesatirist, sitarist
ReplyDeleteLast Sunday I said, “I like kohlrabi – do you?” Rabi was intended to call Ravi to mind, Ravi Shankar possibly having been the world’s greatest Sitarist. I was thinking about using Ravioli, but thought that would be TMI for sure :)
SITARIST, SATIRIST
ReplyDelete> I thought of an example of the writer pretty quickly.
Swift.
> If you asked people to name an example of the musician, I'd guess pretty close to 100% would give the same name.
I know, the usual oppositional people here would probably name George Harrison, but everyone else would say Ravi Shankar. (And someone would probably ask, wasn't he the head of the teachers' union back in the day?)
> Russian milblogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed today in an accidental natural gas explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg that was triggered by a spark when he hit the sidewalk after falling from an upper story window.
Anyone can be a satirist.
> My wife, who is usually so reasonable, says this puzzle is bogus. She says the term for a musician doesn't exist (she's wrong), and that one needn't be a writer to be labeled with the term for a writer (she's right; cf. a recent death, e.g.).
Mark Russell was a satirist, but was not known as a writer. So is Banksy.
I just remembered how much I miss Mark Russell on PBS. ("The three things Congress fears most are the AARP, the AARP and the AARP.")
DeleteI too got sitarist and satirist. My comment, "Je suis heureuse," or "I am happy" in French could be stated with a synonym of "heureuse": "Je suis ravie." Ravi(e) is obviously a reference to one of the most well-known sitarists, Ravi Shankar.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Harrison was both.
ReplyDeletesitarist, satirist
ReplyDeleteMy comment was: "Well pick me up off the floor! The answer just popped into my head, no technology required. Take That AI!!" Pick Me Up Off the Floor is the title of an album by Ravi Shankar's daughter, Norah Jones.
ReplyDeleteWhat do a person who sometimes takes care of small children and a tiny version of an Indian string
ReplyDeleteinstrument have in common?
Baby sitar?
DeleteOf course! Now you know why I had to wait 3 days to post it here. I coined it on the 3rd when I turned 78. If I can find a stamp I will send your pin.
DeleteSOMEONE needs to explain to me ?WHY? the puzzle wasn't worded....'certain TYPE OF musician' (and not 'certain musician'). And obviously, certain type of writer vs. certain writer.
ReplyDeleteAs it was given, the wording seems needlessly confusing.
ps.- does 'being an agent of the State' (per Elon Musk) possibly be at fault?
Octavius, indeed, and had the wording included "type of" the last sentence of the puzzle would not have been needed.
DeleteWhy? Because Will Shortz.
DeleteSITARIST & SATIRIST
ReplyDeleteSITARIST, SATIRIST.
ReplyDeleteMy clue Right, so I have my answer, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the puzzler, but it's really suspect. repeated the initials RS twice, since Ravi Shankar is pretty much the only Sitarist anyone knows.
And I used the word sympathetic, since a SITAR is one of the few instruments with sympathetic strings.
My clue:
ReplyDelete"Brings to mind a particular musician whose recordings have, oddly enough, never featured the instrument referenced this week."
A review of the personnel on the albums of Norah Jones, daughter of famed sitarist Ravi Shankar, reveals no sitarists.
When I wrote "Assuming I have the right answer, there are certain parts of New Jersey where this will be more likely to be solved," I was thinking of the large concentration of people from India in and around Edison Twp., Middlesex County, NJ. I figured that if I had been more specific, it would have been TMI (at least for people who know the regional demographics of NJ).
ReplyDeleteAnd you weren't trying to curry favor?
DeleteNo, just keeping Mumbai virtue of having been vaccinated against word play, that is, having gotten a Punjab.
DeleteWell, heeng in there.
DeleteThis week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from Joseph Young, of St. Cloud, Minn., who conducts the blog "Puzzleria." Name some things you might grow in a garden. Move the middle letter to the beginning. Phonetically the result sounds like part of the human body and an article of clothing that covers it. What words are these?
ReplyDeleteCongrats once again, Lego!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGot it. Waiting for Blaine. Nice one, Lego!
ReplyDeleteIn another language, the name of the item grown in the garden, also ends (phonetically) in a covering for the body part.
ReplyDeleteMy clue: Add two letters and rearrange to get a word for certain musicians.
ReplyDeleteGU+SITARIST = GUITARISTS