NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 25, 2026): Famous Living Singer

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 25, 2026): Famous Living Singer

Q: Name a famous living singer whose first and last names together have four syllables. The second and fourth syllables phonetically sound like things a dog walker would likely carry. What singer is this?

A very timely puzzle.

Edit: The singer's birthday is January 25, 1981.

A: ALICIA KEYS --> LEASH, KEYS
We're not going to quibble over syllabification of Alicia as A‑leesh‑a versus A‑lee‑sha, are we?

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 18, 2026): Very Tiny, Very Large

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 18, 2026): Very Tiny, Very Large

Q: Think of a word that means "very small." Move the first syllable to the end, separated by a space, and you'll get a two-word phrase naming something that is very large. What words are these?

Change the last letter of the word to an "i" and rearrange to get a word meaning "enterprising".

Edit: Changing the "c" to an "i" you can rearrange to get "ambitious". I was also reminded of Star Trek IV where the Enterprise landed in San Francisco, and Chekov was looking for a "nuclear wessel" in Alameda.

A: SUBATOMIC --> ATOMIC SUB
Possible alternate answer: "subnuclear" and "nuclear sub"

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 11, 2026): Famous Duos

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 11, 2026): Famous Duos

Q: Think of a well-known couple whose names are often said in the order of _____ & _____. Seven letters in the names in total. Combine those two names, change an E to an S, and rearrange the result to name another famous duo who are widely known as _____ & _____. Who are these couples?

If you take the last name of one of them, you can rearrange those letters to name another half of a famous duo.

Edit: (Sam) MOORE anagrams to ROMEO.

A: ADAM & EVE --> SAM & DAVE

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 4, 2026): Equation of the Year

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jan 4, 2026): Equation of the Year

Q: This week's challenge is a numerical one. Take the nine digits -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 - 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago. Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. Will knows of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.

I'm a little annoyed that the example doesn't follow the order of operations and instead must be performed left to right. It would have to be (1 + 23) ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 - 8 + 9 to work correctly in most calculators.

I have one expression that works either way, three expressions that work left to right and one that only works using the standard order of operations. I have a feeling that Ed Pegg Jr. provided the two that work using the standard order of operations.

My only hint is 390,625.

Edit: To "brute force" this, you could take the digits 1 to 9. Then you have 5 choices of symbol (nothing, or one of the basic operators) to put in the 8 spaces between each digit. That results in 5^8 or 390,625 strings that would need to be evaluated. I submitted the first answer below because it has all the multiplication first so going left to right is the same as following the standard order of operations.

Note: The two answers following PEMDAS order are the ones that Ed Pegg Jr. provided in his Wolfram Community post which makes me think the PEMDAS answers are what were originally given to Will. I've contacted Will to see if that's the case and if Will introduced the non-standard "left to right" example and wording. I'll let you know if I hear back.

A: 12 x 34 x 5 - 6 - 7 + 8 - 9 = 2026 | PEMDAS or L to R
(1 + 2) x 3 x 4 x 56 - 7 + 8 + 9 = 2026 | L to R
(1 x 2 + 34) x 56 - 7 + 8 + 9 = 2026 | L to R
(12 - 3) x 4 x 56 - 7 + 8 + 9 = 2026 | L to R
1 + 2 + 345 x 6 - 7 x 8 + 9 = 2026 | PEMDAS

Note: As suspected, the intended solutions followed PEMDAS without parentheses and the whole "left to right" example was a confusing red herring introduced by Will