Q: Name a famous English author. Change the first letter of the last name to an S. Then move the first, second, and final letters of that last name in front of the first name. The resulting string of letters reading from left to right will name a major American city. What city is it?[redacted]
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.
Blaine, is that true? (It's likely that it's a tricky hint that I don't understand.)
ReplyDeleteI got the answer at breakfast. (I'm on EDT.)
It's actually a super TMI hint that gave me the answer before I put any thought into the puzzle.
DeleteAfter reading your comment I reread his clue and it became tmi for me too!
DeleteIt's not Frank Sinatra.
ReplyDeleteNo, and it's not William Shakespeare.
DeleteNot Hugh Lofting, either.
DeleteI have a name and city that work. They are either right, or fodder for a new puzzle.
ReplyDeletei’ve always said I’m good at solving puzzles but not so good at constructing them. That said and inspired by Bobby Jacobs’ recent sports puzzle, I came up with a musical one I submitted to Will, who liked it but not quite enough. So, for those on the blog who might be interested, here it is:
ReplyDeleteTake the title of a Beatles song, remove the first letter, rearrange what remains, and get the name of another musical artist.
Hints and clues are of course welcome, but please refrain from revealing the answer before Thursday at 3.
Heh, I almost immediately got what I assume is an unintended answer. Well, actually, it doesn't quite fit your conditions. It's kind of a 'waste case'. A permutation that isn't a derangement...
DeleteGot another one that works but probably not intended, because I get only the first name of the artist.
DeleteGot me thinking: What if Doris Day's parents had named her Esther?
DeleteAha! Now I have what I'm pretty confident is the one Dr K intended.
DeleteOkay, my clue is: not James Brown, and not Van Halen, so don't bother with those.
Got it, with a lucky early guess. Taking longer to come up with a non-TMI clue.
ReplyDeleteA story in the news sometime in the past month reminded me of the city, even though the news story was far away from the city.
DeleteRearrange the last seven letters of the author’s name. You get a company that used to make something having to do with the unrearranged last five letters of the author’s name.
ReplyDeleteInteresting coincidence, I'm reading a book about that company right now!
DeleteThis is another nifty puzzle from Simpsons writer Mike Riess. Remarkable, since he just writes puzzles on the side!
ReplyDeleteHow do you know that Mike Reiss isn't a Puzzle-Writing Supervillain, who authors the Simpsons on the side, as a pet project?
DeleteOn re-examination, I think the puzzle poorly stated, but, I understand Blaine's comment. More on Thursday.
ReplyDeleteDang! I understand Blaine’s clue and it gets deleted.
DeleteI don't want to offer a hint I'll have to walk back.
ReplyDeleteIf you change the 1st and 3rd letters of the author's last name to I and L, then you can rearrange to get a related word.
ReplyDeleteWell, being a resident of Philadelphia, I can tell you, this name is not unknown. Not just because this person is also a cousin of the writer.
ReplyDeleteI can’t find today’s recording or puzzle anyplace but here today.
ReplyDeleteHad to test out a few different hypotheses before I got it.
ReplyDeleteMiddlemarch? Middle Mom?
ReplyDeleteAh! Finally got it. As we all know, George Eliot's real name was Eve Thportr. From that we get Shreveport. Nailed it. Gotta love those wild Welsh names.
DeleteIs an advanced degree required to solve this puzzle?
ReplyDeletea degree of temperature might be relevant
DeleteBart Simpson, appropriately.
ReplyDeleteA clarifying question: the second step of this puzzle is to move the “first, second, and last letters of the last name,.” Is the “first” letter the original one or the S that the first letter gets changed to in the first step of the puzzle?
ReplyDeleteMy solution involved moving the S.
DeleteChange first letter to an S, then move that S along with the second and last letter to front of the series of letters to spell the city
ReplyDeleteThen I have an answer that works, but I'm not sure if it's kosher according to the rules
DeleteAgreed!
DeleteAs soon as I was sure of the answer I rejected all other possibilities.
ReplyDeleteNever read anything by the FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHOR, but I have been to the FAMOUS CITY and even saw a related piece of artwork in Paris, once.
ReplyDeleteAfter I posted the puzzle at the end of last week's blog I returned back to bed thinking it might be difficult to solve, but with just a bit of logical thinking I got the answer quickly. It would be TMI to say how I solved it though. So I will pass on hinting again this week.
ReplyDeletefirst time i ever had to do a captcha to submit my answer to npr, odd
ReplyDeleteThe intended answer was one of my first guesses. I would have posted sooner, but my keyboard died last night. Had to buy a new one today. Couldn’t even log on to my PC without it. Anyway, decent puzzle. And lends itself to solving backwards, too.
ReplyDeleteBackwards worked for me.
DeleteLikewise.
DeleteGMTA.
DeleteDoes that stand for: Great Mimes Talk Alike?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteIt's not Dr. Seuss.
ReplyDeleteSomething's not right about this puzzle.
ReplyDeletenice
Deleteterrific!
ReplyDeleteThe "orgy dome" was blown away by heavy winds at the Burning Man. I guess it wasn't designed too well. We have something a lot more stable here in Philly.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a t-shirt with a quote from the author and a map of a country as food.
ReplyDeleteHi Friends. I suppose the group has discussed this before, but are we sending our answers to NPR via the new link below the puzzle? I don't get an automatic email reply that way. If I send my answer the old way, I get a reply.
ReplyDeleteI have used both. I never get a reply from the newer form. Last week I received a reply when I used the original form, but I again used it yesterday and still no reply has come.
ReplyDeleteA relative of the author was the subject of a puzzle here a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is that I solved this puzzle after breakfast
ReplyDeleteTry ChatGPT, although I got it without.
ReplyDeleteHuh, that's interesting!
DeleteWhen I tried, ChatGPT eventually came to the conclusion that the author is Toni Morrison and the city is San Antonio, because it thought Sontoni was close enough to San Antonio.
What impressed me was that it now seems to be able to carry out the letter-by-letter operations, which used to be well beyond its capabilities.
It should know where Toni Morrison came from.
DeleteI tried ChatGPT after getting the answer myself. It confirmed the right answer. My friend Eileen tried ChatGPT and was told the answers were CHARLES DICKENS and CHICAGO.
ReplyDeleteI tried ChatGPT on Sunday after I solved the puzzle. It got the answer immediately. Perhaps the puzzles should be checked on ChatGPT before using them.
DeleteWith the drought here it has been a bad year for tomatoes.
DeleteDouble the author's name, and you get a coffeehouse in the same city.
ReplyDeleteI have a collection of word pairs that one might call “phonetic anagrams”. Instead of rearranging the letters of the words, one reorders the sounds of the words. For example, consider the pair “cancel and “slacken”.
ReplyDeleteI’m wondering how to make good puzzles out of them, in part because I don’t know how hard to make them, especially since I’m always impressed by the speed with which posters to this blog seem to get the answers of the NPR puzzle. For example, “Consider a state of being common to all humans and most animals. Rearrange the sounds of that word to describe people who should never be in that state when they are on duty.”
Is that too hard? Too easy? Feel free to post the answer if you have it. If nobody gets it, I’ll come up with an easier clue. I’d also be interested in people’s reaction to phonetic anagrams as a puzzle genre.
I think I have it. Not quite a piece of cake, but the two words could make a slice, people. The problem with phonetic anagrams would be the difficulty in defining them. Getting from "cancel" to "slacken" by rearranging sounds is a bit of a stretch. Will might be reticent.
Delete