Sunday, April 14, 2024

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 14, 2024): America Online

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 14, 2024): America Online
Q: Think of a popular online service. Change the first letter to a Y and rearrange the result to get what this service provides. What is it?
Yes! Will is back! If you add 4 letters to the service and rearrange, you get a color.

Edit: If you add RIIL and rearrange, you get VERMILION
A: VENMO --> MONEY

97 comments:

  1. Yes, the Puzzlemmmmaster! is back! :)

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    2. Something made me look up the Swedish word for what this service provides.

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  2. Over 1400 correct entries last week.

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  3. Without changing any letters, the online service can be rearranged to get what is common to find online these days.

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  4. Great to hear Will's voice again!

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  5. Replies
    1. Yeah, and there are a couple of other services that start with Y, where you could do the same trick.

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  6. Well, I know where I go to find mangy rats.
    And if there were such a thing as flexity, I bet I could watch a movie about it.

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  7. This is hardly a puzzle if I could solve it so quickly without getting out of bed.

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  8. As I mentioned at the end of last week's blog, I think I've got an answer, but I don't see it as the answer.

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    1. While hunting for the answer, I did come up with an answer that is technically correct, and meets the criteria of the puzzle. However, it is certainly NOT the intended answer, as NPR would likely never have the answer be a British slang term that is probably rated R. I wonder if that's what you found.

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    2. Google can become gooley, a British slang term for testicles! #NSFNPR

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  10. Having changed its first letter to a Y, reverse the syllables of the online service. The result is also a thing this service might provide.

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  11. Replies
    1. Maybe I'll add that it's a musical clue.

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  12. Got it! One clue in particular led me right to it.

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  13. Great to have WS back on the air. Shout out to GP for taking the reins so seemlessly.

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  14. Truth Social is a prime source for touchy liars.

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  15. Apparently I am making this too difficult.

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  16. I wonder who will tape the puzzle segment with Will and Ayesha on Friday.

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  17. Anagram the service to get something you do not want to take.

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    1. Yeah, that item might bite us in the backside

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  18. It took me a while to come up with the correct service. It turns out that I do not use it, but instead use a competitive service to accomplish the same thing.

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    1. Shift one letter of the service name to be one letter earlier in the alphabet, and rearrange to get something we probably all have in our house.

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    3. Not sure if you saw it, but on Sunday, I posted: “Or don't rearrange, and you get a city in the Netherlands.” That, of course, would have been Venlo. But then I got a vague sense that it might narrow things down too much and, out of an overabundance of caution, I deleted the post.

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    4. Wolfgang, I did not see your post in time, and yeah, that sounds like a safe move to delete that. I use Zelle, but not Venmo. So, when I was thinking of services, I started going through everything I've been using, and of course, did not have Venmo. I eventually got it by thinking about what "services" there could be with a Y, and realized MONEY was a likely answer. From there, I brute forced it, trying letter combinations of what could have a letter replaced to get to MONEY, and pretty quickly landed on VENMO.

      Replace the M in VENMO with an L, and rearrange to get NOVEL.

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  19. Replies
    1. BTW, I found a good alternative to the intended answer. I'll share on Thursday.

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  20. The thing that the service provides can cause stress.

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    1. It can be stressful to not have enough money. It is also stressful to pay taxes, so this was an appropriate puzzle for Tax Day.

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  21. I don't know about you but I go to Instagram as my only source for syntagma

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  22. Me too, but I spell it Syntragma.

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    1. oops i totally forgot the r, bummer all that time in greece, wasted

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    1. Musical clue: how about one with a connection to the eclipse?

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    2. Ahhh.
      My musical clue is very closely related to yours.

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  24. If only the answer could be how it sounds I have an interesting phonetic for EBAY. I know its wrong , so I'll keep trying

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  25. Welcome back, Will! Too bad I don't have an answer for this one. I've had bad luck with these things lately under Mr. Pliska's watch. You'd think I could've at least solved Mr. Baggish's puzzle last week, but no.
    pjbIsMerelyUnhappyWithTheDegreeOfDifficultyInThesePuzzles,NotWithAnyoneInvolved(SoNoOffenseIntended)

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    2. Sorry,, I meant to be helpful.

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    3. That's okay, Musinglink. I never saw it before it was removed anyway.
      pjbWould'veHadTheBestBirthdayPresentIfHeHadSeenIt

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  26. Easy puzzle for a change…..my clue: Washington DC.

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  27. If I have the correct service, a deli sandwich comes to mind. So does a past president...God help us!

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  28. Last week's was the first I hadn't solved in ages - WAY too hard! I've never heard of a plowshare (is that like a timeshare for farmers, or something?), never read the Bible, and no online sources listed a plowshare as a nine-letter tool.

    I'm happy to have solved this week's, though. I was stumped for a bit, but finally got it. Oddly enough, I just used the service seven days ago. Prior to that, I don't think I'd used it in seven months!

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    1. My family isn't religious. I'm also not a big fan of reading, in general.

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    2. I’m not religious either, but I’m familiar enough with major religions enough to know the tool and the related sayings

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    3. VENMO > MONEY

      The last three words of my post are "in seven months". The answer is quite literally "in" seVEN MOnths.

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  29. Interestingly, there is a connection with this week's puzzle and another very well known Bible verse.

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  30. An anagram of the service gives me a chill!

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  31. If I have the right answer, one can add four letters to the thing the service provides and rearrange to get a second thing provided by the first thing

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  32. It's Tuesday night, none of the 35 or so online services I've tried seem to really work, and I can't think of too many things that an online service could provide that contain a Y. I'm not too optimistic this week, though I do have a silly-ish answer that kind of works and that I can submit if (when?) I find nothing better.

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    1. Scratch that. I asked my wife about a particular category of online services, figuring that she was more familiar with it. She listed several elements, some that hadn't made my list. I then explained the required condition and she immediately recognized the answer in that set.

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  33. Well, I sent in 2 answers, probably each is wrong

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    1. I sent in that "popular" online service: RECRUITS which promotes SECURITY...

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    2. I also sent in that "popular" online service: PICTURES which also promotes SECURITY...

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  34. I think "online" service can be misleading. I would use another word, but I don't want to say too much.

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  35. Does the color Blaine references reflect NPR management's mood this week ?

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  36. This week's edition of Puzzleria! features five creative, excellent puzzles created by a gifted and valued contributor to Puzzleria!
    We upload Puzzleria! before Midnight PDT Thursday night/Friday morn.
    Also on this week's menu are:
    * a Schpuzzle of the Week titled "Games people & musicians play,"
    * a Spy-Spoof Hors d’Oeuvre titled "Lowbrow flicks, highbrow lit,"
    * a Scandalous Puzzle Slice titled “ROTting” a rotten criminal,"
    * a Spoonable Dessert titled “Rhyme and Punishment,” and
    * eleven riffs of this week's NPR challenge titled “On-line service...15 Love,” including six created by our friend Nodd whose "Nodd ready for prime time" is featured regularly on P!
    That's twenty plenty-wonderful puzzles.

    LegoWhoWishesWillShortzAFullRecoveryAndAllTheBest

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  37. VENMO, MONEY


    "I wonder who will tape the puzzle segment with Will and Ayesha on Friday." Friday in French is vendredi.

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  38. I wrote, “Anagram the service to get something you do not want to take.” VENOM.

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  39. VENMO — MONEY

    My clues:

    Something made me look up the Swedish word for what this service provides.
    An oblique reference to one of the greatest hits by the Swedish group ABBA, Money, Money, Money.

    Add the letter to the name of the service that is alphabetically five places down from the last letter. Rearrange, and you get what I might love for everyone to see someday.
    The letter five places down from the o in Venmo is t. Rearrange to get “Me on TV”—which I would love for everyone to see someday. (For the right reasons, that is!)

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    1. A "popular" online service: VENMO which promotes MONEY...

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  40. VENMO -> MONEY

    > ☠️

    VENMO is an anagram of VENOM, i.e., poison. (Yeah, I know the skull-and-crossbones was replaced by "Mr. Yuck", but who instantly recognizes that emoji?)

    Also, those crossbones resemble the letter X. X, formerly Twitter, is owned by Elon Musk, who started PayPal (originally called "X.com"), which owns VENMO.

    > Musical clue: how about one with a connection to the eclipse?

    Pink Floyd's "MONEY" was on their album, "The Dark Side of the Moon", where we were.

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    1. I also gave a clue to that song: "Independence Day". Which is 7/4, the time signature of "Money". (Musinglink actually put that time signature in a comment but Blaine removed it as TMI.)

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  41. Venmo, money. I think someone had an April 15th (tax day) clue that led me to it.

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  42. GPS —> SPY

    Based on most of the clues and hints here, I don’t think this is Will’s intended answer, but I liked it, so I sent it in. At first, I was playing with PINTEREST —> SITE ENTRY, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t Will’s intended answer either.

    Nice work, Blainevillians!

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  43. VENMO"
    (Replace "V" with "Y", rearrange, for
    "what service provides")=

    ,MONEY

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  44. Imho, color NPR management "vermilion" this week. Helpful hint: remember the legacy of Robin MacNeil, and strive to live up to it.

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  45. Venmo --> yenmo --> money

    Last Sunday I said, “The king.” As the Mother Goose poem goes, “The king was in his counting-house counting out his _money_.”

    I also said I’d found a pretty good alternative. A popular dating site is Hinge. When you convert Hinge as the puzzle requires you get “eying.” It’s what people do there, why they go there, what they get there. It’s what Hinge (and all the dating sites) provide.

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  46. VENMO; MONEY. "Without changing any letters, the online service can be rearranged to get what is common to find online these days." VENOM

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  47. The movie, Cabaret has a song, Money that repeats itself over and over, but I thought it might be TMI.

    Lyrics:
    Money makes the world go around
    The world go around
    The world go around
    Money makes the world go around
    It makes the world go 'round.
    A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
    A buck or a yen
    A buck or a pound.
    Is all that makes the world go around
    That clinking, clanking sound
    Can make the world go 'round
    Money money money money
    Money money money money
    Money money money...

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  48. My clues: “Easy puzzle for a change”…..”change” = money. And then “Washington DC” = our nation’s capital = which is what money is!!! Right?

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  49. This week's challenge comes from listener Jim Vespe, of Mamaroneck, N.Y. Think of a a major American corporation of the past (two words, 15 letters altogether). Change the last three letters in the second word the resulting phrase will name something that will occur later this year. What is it?

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    1. (It looks like something's missing in that statement of the puzzle.)

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    2. I think what's missing is just a sentence break. Like this:

      Change the last three letters in the second word. The resulting phrase will name something that will occur later this year.

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  50. Easy solve. Literally the first upcoming item I thought of.

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