As Homer said about Denmark, "Third time's a charm."Q: Name an activity in the form of "blank and blank." Move the first letter of the second word to the start of the first word. The result will be two modes of transporting things. What is the activity and what are the modes of transport?
Sunday, April 27, 2025
NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 27, 2025): Getting Around
NPR Sunday Puzzle (Apr 27, 2025): Getting Around
45 comments:
For NPR puzzle posts, don't post the answer or any hints that could lead to the answer before the deadline (usually Thursday at 3pm ET). If you know the answer, submit it to NPR, but don't give it away here.
You may provide indirect hints to the answer to show you know it, but make sure they don't assist with solving. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the deadline. Thank you.
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ReplyDeleteThey prefer alternatives.
DeleteFWIW, these comments led me to the answer, so it maybe TMI?
Delete*may be
DeleteI did not think my hint per se qualified for removal.
DeleteBy itself, I would agree, Dr. K.
DeleteIndeed. It's the piling on that makes the pylon.
DeleteOops?
DeleteA gorgeous puzzle.
ReplyDeletePlay it again, Sam.
ReplyDeleteCan I cut and paste my clue from a prior use?
ReplyDeleteRearrange the first three letters from each of the three words in blank-and-blank. You get a two-word phrase for an utter jerk.
ReplyDeleteA repeat puzzle. I won’t give the exact date because then anyone can look it up. But I have a special fondness for this one. This was the one I got right and from which I got selected to play on air.
ReplyDeleteInteresting: Both time the puzzle was used previously, the winner's first name started with P.
DeleteThere's something else interesting about the previous airings too. Well, especially the more recent of the two previous ones.
DeleteDo tell. Because that was me.
DeleteOver 350 correct answers last week.
ReplyDeleteGood heavens, Dave from Rochester was fast. I didn't get one answer before he did.
ReplyDeleteI’m hard pressed to call this “an activity”. As an architect, something else comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteRearrange the "blank and blank" phrase to get three words that are all related to a category of activity that is included in that description.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of rearranging, I've found pictures of each form of transportation on top of the other. I once went canoeing with a friend who showed up with two canoes on top of her VW Beetle. I checked the Coast Guard data plates on the boats and confirmed that the whole assembly would work if you flipped it over.
ReplyDeleteSame here, could employ last time's clue, but that's a giveaway.
ReplyDeleteI like the way the puzzle was worded the second time—better than the first or third time, IMO.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't a puzzle this clever deserve to be more memorable?
ReplyDeleteAglaia
ReplyDeleteI have an alternate answer. It is not as elegant as the intended answer, but it meets the requirements of the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThere’s really no point in cluing this double re-run.
ReplyDeleteThe activity must be popular around this time of year.
ReplyDeleteAs we learned from Goethe's Faust, sometimes power is its own undoing.
ReplyDeleteSince this puzzle is a repeat, I will also repeat the clue I posted at the end of last week's thread. No motors
ReplyDeleteSince we now have stopped patting ourselves on the back for having solved this for a third time, I have a suggestion. Take a trip over to Lego's Puzzleria and take a try at solving the 3 puzzles he is running that I think are some of my favorites. I came up with them recently. One is a geography puzzle that should be quick and easy to solve; another is simply a rather odd thing about 2 world languages I noticed. The last one is a fun, language mystery.
ReplyDeleteWonder why we haven't heard from Legolambda yet!? 😉
DeleteIf NPR had any sense or respect for their audience they would hire Joe to replace this confused fool. He's long past his retirement. It's like those professional athletes that hang on for too long and become an embarrassing caricature of themselves. It's a few weeks away from being a real life SNL skit.
DeleteTo:
DeleteScarlett (above: Sun Apr 27, 12:47:00 PM PDT) &
rickster (below: Sun Apr 27, 01:23:00 PM PDT),
Since early in 2022, I have used Blaine's very helpful search engine (inserting key words from my puzzles) to ascertain whether the NPR candidates I was submitting to The Puzzlemaster had previously appeared on NPR. This reduced the volume of puzzles I submitted to Will by probably about 3-or-4%. (Some of those Seach Engine "hits" really hurt!)
LegoWhoThanks"GentlemanBlaine"ForStartingHisSearchEngine!
Spanky McFarland,
DeleteI do appreciated your kind sentiments. (Being compared in any way at all to Will Shortz is a compliment.)
But I respectfully disagree that he is in decline. He is making a remarkable recovery from his February 2024 stroke. Indeed, I believe the Puzzlemaster's mastery has not declined one iota. As for the occasional "repetition-of-puzzles snafus," that most likely falls on the shoulders of NPR staffers or volunteers. (Incidentally, Puzzleria! has often repeated puzzles over its 11-year-run.)
Will is a brilliant puzzle-creator, puzzle-editor and puzzle-evaluator... why require him to spend any time at all assuming the mundane duties of a puzzle-record-keeper?!
LegoWhoIsNotWickedSmartYetIsSmartEnoughToKnowThatHeFallsWaaayShortOfWill'sBrilliantMastery
NPR rerunning puzzles is a joke. Do the listeners who submit a formerly used puzzle know it's been used before? Is it too much to ask the puzzle editor of the New York Times to offer a unique puzzle? Doesn't he get multiple puzzle suggestions each week? We need an explanation.
ReplyDeleteTwo of my puzzles lego is now running over @ his blog are WS rejects. See if you can figure out why.
DeleteHonestly I believe Shortz is so addled that it's become a game to try to get a repeat selected and used. As the old saying goes, "You had one job...."
DeleteIf you anagram the first word of the activity and the second mode of transport, you get some things most people don't like being around (if you get my drift on the latter). I thought it was worth repeating.
ReplyDeleteBlaine: Duh! Which "Homer" (Simpson or Greek poet) does your clue refer to? Or perhaps TMI?
ReplyDeleteSome years ago Aristotle Onassis was house hunting in the Beverly Hills area, when he saw the mansion that had once belonged to Buster Keaton at the peak of his fame. Paparazzi trailing Onassis recorded just how impressed he was by the estate; when the LA Times ran the picture the next day the caption read:
Delete"Aristotle contemplating the home of Buster."
(For those not reading the papers in 1961, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle_with_a_Bust_of_Homer)
That last post was neither a response to JSP nor a clue. If I had to guess--and apparently I do--I'd say it was an allusion to Pope's line "even Homer nods," i.e. even the greatest among us make mistakes. Which would also be a comment, not a clue.
DeleteThat is amusing. It reminds me of probably at least 35 years ago when I was listening to our long time classical music station, KING-FM, one morning while still in the sack. Now this station has gone public and plays nothing at all but locally produced classical stuff and "Live From The Met" saturday mornings. No commercials; no news. But back then they read the news headlines as close to the hour as possible. That time after our host finished reading the last news item: "The Steinway piano factory in New York has been invaded by feral kittens who have been urinating and otherwise damaging their product." (Or something like that.) Right after he finished reading that line he added: "That's a switch. Cat playing in a piano house."
Deletebeware mischievous little birds!
ReplyDelete