I keep feeling like there's more to this.Q: Think of a familiar two-word phrase that means "a secret mission". Move the last letter of the first word to the start of the second word. The result will be two words that are synonyms. What are they?
Edit: My first thought was "covert operation", hence the hint about something missing.
A: COVERT OP --> COVER, TOP
Tough to clue…but here goes:
ReplyDeleteRemove the first letter of the resulting two words, add an article between them, and get a common three-word phrase.
Good one!
DeleteMakes me want to watch a Sylvester Stallone film, but not Rocky or Rambo.
DeletepjbIsYourWorstNightmare...Absolutely!
Remove two letters and rearrange to get something often used in a secret mission.
ReplyDeleteRearrange what Blaine feels is missing to get a description of the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteVery nice.
DeleteThe majority, not all members.
DeleteThat’s a good one!
DeleteTake a surname associated with Jan's comment, remove 3 letters, rearrange, and get the first word of the puzzle's answer.
DeleteRearrange the even letters of the phrase and you get a writer.
ReplyDeleteSimply simple.
ReplyDeleteStupid simple.
DeleteAbout the WESUN Challenge answer: Where is “Greeland”?
ReplyDeleteAbout the On-air challenge: “Celebrated actor with four Oscars” —> Catherine Epburn?
Got it. Will take me longer to clue.
ReplyDeleteRemove the first letter and the space. You get a verb.
DeleteNot too secret. ChatGPT even went a little beyond.
ReplyDeleteAlmost 900 correct answers last week.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if this one will exceed 2^11 correct answers.
DeleteImagining how much greater my disappointment would have been after four days of wasted effort, I'm grateful for ChatGPT.
ReplyDeleteRearrange the letters of the first word of the phrase to get a particular car, almost to a tee.
ReplyDeleteIs this merely a plug for the puzzle creator? Ho hum, for intrigue go back to last week's puzzle comments.
ReplyDeleteMusic Clue: Motown.
ReplyDeleteIt’s once again tough to clue this week’s puzzle without risk of being censored, so I’ll need to stop short of giving a hint (sorry!).
ReplyDeleteThat's life!
DeleteFour contiguous letters in the first word of the phrase are a color – no rearranging necessary.
ReplyDeleteChuck, oui!
DeleteObscure musical clue: Missing Persons
ReplyDeleteNO clue. But its been two weeks of not solving puzzles. Thanks for this one.
ReplyDeleteIt can be rearranged into 2 places.
ReplyDeleteCove, port
DeleteRemoving a different letter from the first word produces its antonym
ReplyDeleteWhich is why putting _that_ letter in front of the second word would ruin the mission.
DeleteClever, all!
DeleteCourtney, it certainly does!
ReplyDeleteReminds me of back when I used to enjoy my Baileys.
ReplyDeleteOK this one was wicked easy, but one of the on-air questions today mentioned a boxing champion. I will be amazed if anyone on this blog, including Will Shortz, can tell me what the other mention to Championship heavyweight boxing is in one of the other answers. This puzzle will be wicked hard to solve if you do not know already. And I am NOT a boxing fan. Blaine might know.
ReplyDeleteNot a boxing fan, either, but I'll take a shot. Let's see, we've got:
DeleteTeddy Roosevelt: Famous rough tough guy, nearly blinded in a sparring session with an Army officer while president, friends with John L. Sullivan while NY governor.
Neil Armstrong: Boxing legend Carl Froch claims Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was a hoax. And there's this.
Clint Eastwood: Besides Million Dollar Baby.
Shirley Temple: Okay, not exactly heavyweight.
Charlton Heston: Rocky Marciano met Moses in 1955.
Weird Al Yankovic: Can you spot him in this Drunk History episode on the Joe Louis v Max Schmeling fights?
So, I guess the answer is . . . all of them?
Nope. None of them. But those are all great guesses. My answer refers to to an actual Heavyweight Championship boxing match and the person involved.
DeleteOK, if none of those is right, it has to be Wyatt Earp, which was the example Will used. Earp was the referee of the Heavyweight Championship boxing match between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey, in 1896.
DeleteYes, Wyatt Earp was asked to referee the match at the last moment and he was not really acquainted properly with the new Marquess of Queensberry rules change re: hitting below the belt. The following day Sharkey and a few others met with Earp in his hotel room and showed evidence of having been hit below the belt. It is doubtful that Earp would have fixed the fight for several reasons, one of which is that his best friend, William Barclay (Bat) Masterson, had a lot of money betting on Fitzsimmons. Also Earp was known for being very honest, even when it might not serve him well. More fun than solving today's puzzle I bet?
DeleteRearrange the letters of the first word of the phrase to get something whose more complicated counterpart sounds more anxious.
ReplyDeleteAs Fred Astaire once said, if it doesn't look easy it is that we have not tried hard enough yet.
ReplyDeleteThat is very true. Another good example is watching Alex Honnold solo climbing Half Dome.
DeleteCOVERT OP, COVER, TOP
DeleteMy quoting Fred Astaire was an homage to his movie TOP HAT, a clue to the answer.
I just noticed that I never revealed last week's answer. Anyway, here it is just so y'all know I solved it:
ReplyDeleteGREENLAND; GREEN=TERRA, which also means LAND.
pjbBelievesBetterLateThanEver...EvenInPuzzles!
I'm thinking of the Woman Question.
ReplyDelete(that is, coverture!)
DeleteMusical clue: Fly, Eagles Fly
ReplyDeleteIngesting proper field nutrition makes quick work of secret missions.
ReplyDeleteAfter eating 'e-rations' covert operations becomes 'covert op.'
DeleteSpeaking of secret missions, I can recommend a recent book I just finished, "The Achilles trap : Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the origins of America's invasion of Iraq", by Steve Coll, a Pulitzer-winning journalist. No clue here.
ReplyDeleteI spent a couple days guarding the ballot drop box. Move some letters around and get an apt description of my role.
ReplyDeleteNice!
DeleteDitto!
DeleteCOVERT OP (Operation) → COVER = TOP
DeleteCOVERT OP >>> COVER TOP
ReplyDeleteSimply simple, that is all.
COVERT OP —> COVER, TOP
ReplyDeleteThis was pretty easy. The very first thing I thought of—almost instantly—was “covert,” and the remaining word came quickly after that. I suspect many others solved it in the same way.
“Remove the first letter of the resulting two words, add an article between them, and get a common three-word phrase.”
—> OVER THE TOP
“Take a surname associated with Jan's comment, remove 3 letters, rearrange, and get the first word of the puzzle's answer.
—> McCorvey (Norma McCorvey was the “Roe” of Roe v. Wade)
—> Corve —> COVER
COVER & TOP from covert op
ReplyDeleteMy Hint:
"Reminds me of back when I used to enjoy my Baileys."
Did you think I meant Baileys Irish Cream? No, I meant my old copy of Fit Or Fat by Covert Bailey.
Covert Op/Cover Top
ReplyDeleteCOVERT OP, minus O and V and rearranges to COPTER. Copters are commonly used for infiltration and exfiltration of covert ops teams.
COVERT OP -> COVER, TOP
ReplyDelete> Rearrange what Blaine feels is missing to get a description of the Supreme Court.
ERATION -> ANTI-ROE
COVERT OP — COVER, TOP
ReplyDeleteNot too secret. ChatGPT even went a little beyond.
Like Blaine's clue, mine alluded to the fact that the second word of the phrase would really read "operation." That's what ChatGPT gave me when prompted for an alternative to "secret mission." So, since ChatGPT came up with it right away, there wasn't much of a secret to it, and ChatGPT went a little beyond "op" to finish the word "operation."
Our quick-witted friend Laura Kozma (aka "Tortitude" or "Tortie") has created another of her "spe-shell" S-l-o-w But Sure Puzzles for your solving enjoyment this week on Puzzleria! Her latest "fabulously Aesopean cryptic tale" is titled “Five pop ‘icons’ in a eight-decade purse.” It spans the past 80 years of pop culture history, featuring five pop icons that that fans "flipped" over, plus a passel of pop singles.
ReplyDeleteYou shall see it soon, a bit later this afternoon.
Also on this week's menu:
~ a Schpuzzle of the Week titled “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly... or perhaps ‘Slopperly’?”
~ an Anagrammatical Hors d’Oeuvre titled "Shakespeare, Isolation & Cyclops!"
~ a Surnominal Slice titled "Baseball, bulls and “belletrism,”
~ an Orchestral Dessert titled "Pulling strings brings lulling winds," and
~ 13 Riffing Off Shortz And Weisz Entrees titled “An ‘Over-the-top’ Challenge” (including six riffs penned by our friend Nodd).
And so, we invite you to join us for some good-old-time slow-but-sure chelonian fun!
Lego"espeshellyReptilian
COVERT OP, COVER, TOP
ReplyDeleteMy quoting Fred Astaire was an homage to his movie TOP HAT, a clue to the answer.
Covert op (cover, top)
ReplyDeleteI wrote: "Rearrange the letters of the first word of the phrase to get a particular car, almost to a tee." Covert can be rearranged to Corvet. Add "te" to get Corvette.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I replied "That's life!" to Snipper's post. He was naming board games, and I assumed he was hinting at "Operation". "Life" is also a board game.
I thought you were hinting at the sports cars designed by Vector motors. My best guess at the tee part was that vectors in physics are often functions of time: v(t) for velocity, a(t) for acceleration, etc.
DeleteLancek, I think I like your explanation better, although physics is way above my pay grade.
DeleteMy hint was "Rearrange the letters of the first word of the phrase to get something whose more complicated counterpart sounds more anxious." COVERT can be rearranged to VECTOR, whose more complicated counterpart is a TENSOR, which indeed sounds more anxious.
ReplyDeletecovert op, cover top
ReplyDeleteLast Sunday I said, “Four contiguous letters in the first word of the phrase are a color – no rearranging necessary.” Vert means green in French and in English.
COVERT OP - COVER, TOP
ReplyDeleteI had given the clue, "Remove the first letter and the space. You get a verb." That is overtop.
COVERT OP >> COVER, TOP
ReplyDeleteMy very indirect musical clue of "Fly, Eagles Fly" referred to the Philadelphia Eagles. Philadelphia was the setting for the movie "Rocky". Rocky was the name of the flying squirrel in "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle", a movie starring Piper Perabo, who was also the lead of the TV series "Covert Affairs".
And the blog administrator let that slide?? 😂
DeleteI know, right? That was completely TMI!
DeleteCovert Op - Voter Cop
ReplyDeleteDonald Trump is not the first senile old fool to tilt at windmills. The name Don Quixote comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean Elon is Sancho Panza?
DeleteMore like Rocinante, Don Quixote's "skinny and clumsy horse"
DeleteOr perhaps Sancho Tesla.
DeleteAs Scarlett adeptly pointed out (thanks for recognizing and playing along!), I was indeed again hinting at board games, this week to get to Operation.
ReplyDeleteThis week's challenge comes from listener Greg Smith, of Roscoe, Ill. Think of a popular singer whose first and last names each have two syllables. Drop the second syllable from each name and you'll be left with the piece of a toy. What singer is this?
ReplyDelete
DeleteI have answer, but I am not happy with it.
Ugh, I haven't been familiar with popular music for 40 years.
DeleteSame, I have two answers, one better fitting, but they don't make sense or fit neatly. Surely it's something else...
DeleteI have the answer, but where did you find this? The link on https://www.npr.org/series/4473090/sunday-puzzle still points to last week's puzzle.
DeleteGoogle is your friend!
DeleteM5, the new puzzle often appears on the rundown for Weekend Edition Sunday befpre it appears on the puzzle page itself.
DeleteIs it by chance one in a quintet?
Delete(Maybe a nonet?)
DeleteOK, I found it on Google. Thank you jan and Splainit.
DeleteMuch too easy.
ReplyDelete
DeleteIf I'm right, it seems to me simplistic.
But at least it's straightforward. No funny phonetic interpretations needed.
Delete