Q: Take the name of a famous person in American politics (6,6). Hidden in this name reading from left to right, but not in consecutive letters, is the name of a well-known place that's very dry, in 4 letters. Remove these letters. The remaining 8 letters in order from left to right will name another well-known, very dry place. What politician is this?I referred to a list and one place showed up just after a very familiar place.
Edit: I was referring to a list of planets where Earth comes third and Mars comes next.
A: KAMALA HARRIS --> MARS, KALAHARI
Musical clue – The Ink Spots, sorta.
ReplyDeleteAnother good clue, Nodd.
DeleteThanks, Lorenzo.
DeleteAlways impressed with the speed and reliability of Blaine -- working from the Left Coast, where it's not even 6am yet! Thank you, Dear Leader!
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle sometimes posts at 3 a.m. I've given up trying to be that early. 🤪
ReplyDeleteWhere is it posted?
DeleteBlaine must mean on the NPR site itself...although as a fellow west-coaster, I've never seen any Puzzle posted there in the middle of the night!
DeleteBlaine, a name, not a place, just jumped out at me, too.
ReplyDeleteI think Will gave us a clue.
ReplyDeleteAlways good to find a watering hole.
ReplyDeleteAs Jan and Pam noted, Will kinda gave it away on-air with the chocolate BAR / planet question. "Watering hole" is slang for a BAR.
DeleteAnd of course with Mars being the answer to the first On-air challenge question!
DeletePretty sure I have it, but the eight-letter word feels like it's missing some additional descriptor.
ReplyDeleteIt’s also a brand of beef jerky, so we could leave it at that.
DeleteTake the first two syllables.............
ReplyDeleteExcellent!
DeleteRearrange the 4-letter dry place, and get a related word.
ReplyDeleteOh that's very nice, well done Dave Shukan.
ReplyDeleteHmmmmmm.
Oh ok: rearrange to get two deadly things.
Agreed. What an amazing and well conceived puzzle. I don't see how people come up with these observations!
DeleteIf only.
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DeleteFor a real trivial treat with a secco theme:
ReplyDeleteTake the name of the politician, from left to right: take out letters 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12. Leaving letters 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 11. Double letter 5. Re-arrange to spell a noun that qualifies as dry.
Cute, except you have too many letters there. (Too many occurrences of one of the letters, let's say.)
DeleteTake letters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, and anagram for something that can be dry.
DeleteOh, okay. Thanks. I'll post a second edition. Whadd'ya think?
DeleteI followed my own directions, and it works. Just double letter 5.
DeleteHuh.
DeleteI get too many of one letter.
I thought the answer was a six-letter word (your instructions make 7), but I guess you're going for a different word (but I don't see what it is).
I'm with Crito on this one.
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DeleteReplace the 5th letter of the longer answer with the intial letter of the shorter answer to pheoneticaly get an appetizer.
ReplyDeleteQuite a cute puzzle.
ReplyDeleteGot it. Working on a clue...
ReplyDeleteTake the municipality where the politician was born, and the first name of the politician. Remove letters that are common in both words, one for one (For example, if the words were WASHINGTON and TOWN, you would be left with ASHIGN or ASHING, because you remove only one N). Rearrange the remaining letters to get one who wanders.
DeleteKamala Harris was born in Oakland. Removing the letters and rearranging gets to NOMAD.
DeleteI cannot find that this politician has been to either place, but did take a trip close to one.
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DeleteSorry.
DeleteGreat Puzzle! Congrats!
ReplyDeleteYou might want to put on your glasses to solve this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteIt is not Herbert Hoover, but it is close.
ReplyDeleteThe first two answers in the on-air challenge were Mars and Hoover.
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ReplyDeleteThis made me think of the second dry place and the rest was easy.
DeleteThe politician's name also anagrams to two things only found in very wet places.
ReplyDeleteOne thing they share is a treaty, a tax and a trading center.
ReplyDeleteTerrific puzzle, Dave Shukan! I wouldn't change a thing.
ReplyDeleteThis took me far longer than it should have. I’ll just blame it on my body sending all available oxygen higher priority needs today.
ReplyDeleteThe politicians name can be rearranged to something you might see in a remake of Jaws.
Take letters 2,4,and 6 from the first name and letters 7,9, and 12 from the last name and it anagrams to another famously dry place (actually the first place I thought of when I heard the puzzle but with 6 rather than 8 letters it didn’t fit; it happens to be there anyway)
ReplyDeleteO62871 - John Prine
ReplyDeleteWhat a great day! A very nice puzzle plus a Blaine clue that I understand.
ReplyDeleteI didn't fully understand Blaine's clue at first, but once I did, I realized it was another masterpiece.
DeleteA masterpiece indeed! His clue reminds me of my Mother.
DeleteWhat makes Dave Shukan's NPR puzzle so elegant is its "no-rearrangement-of-letters-required" aspect. Very nice, Mr, Shukan!
ReplyDeleteOgleGenreWhitEvyn!
Yes, Lego, it really is rather amazing, the more I think about it!
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ReplyDeleteI have been holding off posting all day. I don't want to have my posts removed, so to be more specific, I pretty much solved it while still in bed, but not entirely. I began going down a rabbit hole at first, although I also quickly discovered the political person, but was not recognizing it as such. I also quickly discovered the shorter word, but could not connect it either. The Badlands did not seem to work, although I hoped it would. Maralago might not fit, although it is a hotbed, but perhaps not totally dry. Good puzzle, and correctly stated and presented this week. I now see that Will has not been informed as to his error last week. I thought he would have been.
ReplyDeleteDepends what dry means.
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DeleteThat slight bit of ambiguity, does dry refer to an aridity, banned alcoholic beverages, or something else, is what made this weeks challenge, in my opinion, elegant.
ReplyDeleteDave Shukan, I tip my hat to you.
Or perhaps you hit your tap? Anyway, with one you want it to flow, but not so much with the other. But please allow the Dry Gin to flow freely.
DeleteSorry for my typos..trying again..
DeleteThat slight bit of ambiguity, I.e., does dry refer being arid, banned alcoholic beverages, or something else, is what made this week’s challenge, in my opinion, elegant.
Dave Shukan, I tip my hat to you.
Both places actually have an abundance of water - it’s just a matter of getting to it.
ReplyDeleteIt took some perseverance, but I finally got it.
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ReplyDeleteThis puzzle is representative of the amazing creativity that our puzzle contributors often display. However, I found no precedent for a puzzle as elegant as this one (OK, maybe a few)! It's also interesting to have a 'political' themed puzzle following the longest government shutdown, though it reminds me that the opposite of progress is, of course, congress.
ReplyDeleteI concur with all the plaudits for Dave Shukan. One of my favorite puzzle authors for originality was whoever noticed that if you write ANTHER in a circle, every set of three consecutive letters forms a common word. I didn't record the author at the time; it might have been Will.
DeleteNo hints, but I'd also like to give kudos to Dave Shukan for his elegant puzzle.
ReplyDeleteYa'll be keeping Blaine mighty busy with the TMI posts. Who's an AI bot and who isn't?
ReplyDeleteNot an AI bot (though I've been blogadministered this week-- I feel the bar keeps shifting).
DeleteBut, on that subject, let me recommend a book I'm finishing up reading: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. Scary stuff.
JB
ReplyDeleteI finally got it. It was the first first one I thought of. But I got side tracked with another very dry place I found in the name
ReplyDeleteDecember 13, 1996
ReplyDeleteof all sad words of tongue or pen...
ReplyDelete(the next line of the poem is self-explanatory, given the politician in question)
DeleteKAMALA HARRIS; MARS, KALAHARI
ReplyDelete"You might want to put on your glasses to solve this puzzle." Especially if your glasses are so thick they look like coke bottles, as in the Coca-Cola bottle that dropped into the bushmen of the KALAHARI, in the delightful1980 film The Gods Must be Crazy.
"JB" refers to Joanna Bullard, a geomorphologist who passed away in late October. In her November 14, 2025, obituary, her extensive work in the KALAHARI is noted: "Jo’s early focus was on understanding the influence of wind regimes in shaping desert dune patterns, through studies in the Kalahari, Namib and Simpson deserts. Her analyses of variations in dune activity in the Kalahari, in particular, provided key insights into the response of dunes to climate change and variability."
Her full obituary is here:
https://www.geomorphology.org.uk/2025/11/14/professor-joanna-bullard-1969-2025/
Reading obits of someone who died at 56 is decidedly sad.
Kamala Harris>>Mars, Kalahari
ReplyDeleteKamala Harris rearranges to AI Shark Alarm, something that might be featured in a remake of Jaws.
KAMALA HARRIS (—> MARS, KALAHARI)
ReplyDeleteHint: “Rearrange the 4-letter dry place, and get a related word.”
MARS —> ARMS
KAMALA HARRIS >>> MARS & KALAHARI
ReplyDeleteI didn't even try to come up with a hint this week. Thanks to Blaine, I posted one anyway without realizing it.
"Depends what dry means." I then below posted something about adding a comma. That changed the meaning of my original post, but Blaine saw it as a hint. LOL, I love it! And this is not the first time I have unintentionally posted something that turned out to be TMI, but was not an intentional hint.
After I got the answer, I fed the puzzle, copy-and-paste verbatim, into ChatGPT. It came up with the solution directly without stupid answers.
ReplyDeleteI did the same
DeleteFellow and Female Friends and Blainesvillians: You are in for a treat this week on Puzzleria!
ReplyDelete“Tortie's Slow but Sure Puzzles,” recurring conundrums created by our friend "Tortitude," an amazingly talented and prolific puzzle-maker, is being featured on this week's edition.
Her "Slow But Espeshelly Sure Appetizer this time is a refreshing six-pack titled:
~ Classic Juvenile Lit I & II;
~ Melons, Mangoes in the Mail?
~ Two-Tool-Toodle-Loo!
~ Animation in an Anemone, and
~ Alpaca, Arabian, Bactrian, Guanaco... Vicuna!
We shall upload Puzzleria! very soon, but just a bit later this very afternoon.
Also on this week's menus:
* a Schpuzzle of the Week titled “Amateurs versus Prose?”
* a Two Creatures Great And Small Hors d’Oeuvre titled “Puzzley, fuzzy, but was he buzzy?”
* a “Putting A Price on A Puzzle” Slice titled “Hail Morpheus, King of Things Amorphous!”
* a Kick-In-The-Pants Dessert titled “Knives slice, forks stab, spoons stir!” and
* ten riffs of this week’s NPR puzzle titled “Kalamari Hari Kiri Arms Mars!” including six created by our riff-masterful friend Nodd.
As Aesop (and Tortitude) noted, “Slow but Sure wins the race (and perhaps solves tortuous puzzles)!”
LegoWhoIsBecomingIncreasinglyFableMinded
Kamala Harris (Mars, Kalahari)
ReplyDeleteMy clue(s): '062871 - John Prine.'
ReplyDeleteElon Musk was born on 06/28/71. John Prine wrote a song titled "Linda Goes to Mars."
My uninspired clue: rearrange to get two deadly things. Those things are: MALARIA and SHARK.
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ, Crito. An inspired clue, I'd say. First off, nice anagrams. And second, just as Mars is a deadly place and the Kalahari can be a deadly place, so too, as your clue states, are malaria and a shark deadly.
DeleteLegoWhoNotesThatLifeSaversUseJawsOfLifeWhileSharksUseTheirJawsOfDeath!
KAMALA HARRIS --> MARS, KALAHARI
ReplyDelete> Again, a hint in the on-air puzzle. [deleted]
1. Chocolate bar ... a planet?
> Several politicians have talked of going to the first one. Many should be sent there. [deleted]
One-way ticket only.
> The politician's name also anagrams to two things only found in very wet places.
SHARK, MALARIA (Anopheles mosquitoes breed in areas with standing water)
I learned the names of the 9 planets (before Pluto was demoted), starting with the closest one to the sun, with the following memory aid:
ReplyDeleteMy Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas
So when I wrote that Blaine's clue reminds me of my Mother, I was referring to the "M" (Mars) being next to "E" (Earth).
I thought it was just referring to "Mother Earth." But I like the mnemonic!
DeleteMother Earth works too! BTW, the mnemonic has been updated. "Nine Pizzas" has been replaced by "Nachos." 😄
DeleteMy hint, "The Ink Spots, sorta", referred to calamari, which sounds sorta like Kalahari.
ReplyDeleteKAMALA HARRIS, MARS, KALAHARI
ReplyDeleteI wrote as a hint "Terrific puzzle, Dave Shukan! I wouldn't change a thing."
That was my polite (yet bitter) callback to Kamala Harris' October 2024 appearance on "The View," where she was asked by Sunny Hostin if she would do anything different from Joe Biden if she were President, and she replied, essentially, that she couldn't think of anything she would do differently.
In one short sentence, Vice President Harris did her little part of advancing the death of American Democracy, put to bed at age 249. Alas.
My post included the words/phrases: "representative" and "no precedent" which would both describe Kamala Harris, as she represented California in the senate and did not become "president" (homophone).
ReplyDeleteMy hint, December 13, 1996, was the date Mars Attacks! was released
ReplyDeleteI wrote "One thing they share is a treaty, a tax and a trading center," referring to salt. Some astronomers believe that salt deposits on Mars are evidence that it once contained substantial amounts of water, while the Kalahari Desert has several massive salt pans within it. And FWIW when Dante encountered his ancestor Cacciaguida in the sphere of Mars in his Paradiso Cacciaguida warned Dante of his upcoming exile by telling him "You are to know the bitter taste of others' bread, how salt it is."
ReplyDeleteFor those who believe a spoonerism must be the switching of beginning consonants, and that a word beginning with a vowel will not work, consider this: early surge >>> surly urge.
ReplyDeleteEARLY SURGE >>> SURLY URGE
My hint "It took some perseverance, but I finally got it" was a reference to Perseverance, one of the Mars rovers.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw your post, my inclination was to take the opportunity to call it out as TMI, but a kinder spirit prevailed.
DeleteIncongruous wordplay
ReplyDeleteDinah Shore was the love of his life and he raptor in fur.
Dudley would like to be right as well as Do-Right, so he would playwright.
This week's challenge comes from Greg VanMechelen, of Berkeley, Calif. Name some equipment an equestrian might use. Remove the second, third and fourth letters, and reverse those that remain. The result will be some more equipment an equestrian might use. What things are these?
ReplyDeleteIf you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Wednesday, November 26 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
Got it!
DeleteNice puzzle Eco! Another sharp observation.
I'd better solve this, or my equestrian better half will never forgive me. Wait...I just got it! Nice one, Eco.
DeleteHey, same here Dr. K!
DeleteNow I have to think of a clue.
eco, not at all tacky! Enjoyed this solve.
Delete