Sunday, June 28, 2026

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jun 28, 2026): Going Places

NPR Sunday Puzzle (Jun 28, 2026): Going Places
Q: Think of a U.S. city with a two-word name. Add a letter to the first word, without rearranging letters, to name a country. Then, without adding a letter, rearrange the letters of the second word to name another country. What places are these?
Add the letter D to the city and rearrange to get a former sports team in the same state.

Edit: The California Golden Seals were an NHL team in Oakland from 1967 to 1976.
A: LOS ANGELES --> LAOS, SENEGAL

105 comments:

  1. Rearrange the two countries to name a rock band and an online magazine.

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  2. Remove the first and last letters of the city. Rearrange. You get something often mentioned in the news these days.

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  3. Over 1700 correct entries last week

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    1. It was pretty easy. With this puzzle, I immediately thought the letter should be added to the START, in first PLACE.

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  4. This one can be unlocked in a couple of ways (at least).

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    1. Yes, I started with a reasonable guess at the first country and worked backwards.

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    2. Unlocked in a couple of ways . with a couple of keys?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH_fsqhNhmQ

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  5. I have a musical clue, but I think Blaine might consider it TMI.

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  6. Here’s a similar challenge: Think of a well-known U.S. city with a two-word name. Add a letter to EACH of the two words without rearranging letters. Then read the first forward and the second backward to name two countries.

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    1. Yeah, this is city I tried first.

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    2. Pretty close to the actual answer, in more ways than one.

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    3. For some reason, I'm thinking of artificial intelligence.

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    4. Los Alamos, Laos, Somalia.

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  7. Ok, a musical clue: a Philadelphia R&B group.

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  8. When you add a letter. Is the country just the first word of the city, or still the two words?

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  9. Question: I may be splitting hairs, but the clue is "add" a letter, not "insert" a letter. Is that important?

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    1. I think that's a fair question, Scarlett. I have an answer, but it required me to insert a letter into the first word of the U.S. city. Isn't "inserting" a way of "rearranging," which the puzzle directions said not to do?

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    2. Thanks Wolfgang, and I agree. After I went through all the countries, deleting their last letters, nothing worked. So I decided to do the insert process and I quickly got the answer.

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    3. If it won't be regarded as TMI, then I will say yes, you will need to insert the letter.
      pjbAlsoHadToConsiderTwoDifferentSetsOfTwo-Word[US]CitiesBeforeArrivingAtTheAnswer(MostOfTheCitiesAreInTheSameState,ButNotAllOfThem)

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    4. Instead of risking the dreaded TMI removal you could just advise us to do as the postman does.

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  10. Not a clue, but my wife just pointed out that Narcissus died as a result of a reflecting pool.

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    1. Sorry; I didn’t realize the Ks were a paradox. I once knew a PhD married to a PhD who invited her students to call her either Mrs. or Dr., explaining that she had worked just as long to get the first title as to get the second.

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    2. Full disclosure, this is the other half and I am NOT Dr K. I dropped out of the PhD program to become a famous writer more decades ago than I can remember. Now I just hang out with horses and try to avoid straining my brain too much--which is why my first question to the actual Dr K on Sunday mornings is "Did you solve the puzzle? What's the answer?"

      Mrs or Ms or just Zoe K.

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  11. I’m reminded of my friend, Cliff Crag, of the Department of Redundancy Department.

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  12. It’s taking me longer to think of a non-TMI clue than it took to solve the puzzle.

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    1. Rearrange the letters in the city name to describe a mathematical problem.

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  13. Change one letter of the second country and rearrange to get a bird.

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  14. Just mentioning how I started to solve this one is probably TMI.

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  15. My congratulations to Rawson Sheinberg for creating an almost perfect Will-Shortz-type puzzle. Of the 3 parts of the answer, I suggest answering them 2, 1, 3.

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  16. Replies
    1. When somebody dies, it is a loss, which sounds like Los. When they go to Heaven, they become an angel, which is in Angeles.

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  17. I JUST FOUND OUT THAT TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!

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  18. Is there no Billy Joel related reference this week? Hmmm…..

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  19. Even though this is a shithole puzzle I enjoyed it because I solved it while still in bed without any lists.

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  20. Replies
    1. As I said before, historically speaking you're not far off.

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  21. To SDB: perhaps you should have stayed in bed.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I've felt that way myself ever since November 2016.

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  22. That was a clever puzzle. I had to run through the list of countries couple of times, and rearrange my expectations.

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  23. One country is playing in the World Cup, the other is not.

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  24. I've been to the city, but to neither of the countries!

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  25. Rearrange the letters of the state in which the city is found to get two things associated with The Wizard of Oz.

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    1. Hmm... one of them with a degree of separation, perhaps?

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    2. One of those words is also related to one of the countries.

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    3. Paul, assuming I understand your question, it could be. Although Scrabble dictionary says it's acceptable without the separation. At least that's the word on the street, after I dropped my Scrabble tiles on the road. 😄

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    4. I assume the words that you were trying to anagram California into were Africa, Lion. There is a Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Africa is a song by Toto, who was in The Wizard of Oz. Africa is related to Senegal because Senegal is in Africa. Also, Lion is a song by Toto, and lions are native to many countries in Africa, including Senegal. Therefore, there are a lot of connections here.

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    5. I was thinking connecting Oz to Africa requires an intermediary step, which could be supplied by 'lion', but I think Toto is more fun.

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    6. I thought Lion and Africa might have been what Scarlett was getting at----until I looked a bit harder at possible anagrams and found Oilcan and Fair. The Tin Man needed to use an oilcan to free up his joints and the last scene in Oz is at a Fair, where Dorothy and Toto board the balloon which takes them home.

      Scarlett, which was it?

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    7. Sorry I'm a little late to the reveal party. Me and hubby just came from seeing a real movie at a real movie theater "Disclosure Day". I don't remember the last movie we went to.... that's how often we go. It was worth the $12.00 senior ticket, and more! Anyway, full "disclosure" on my clue. I must say that while Africa and Lion are impressive, I was going for Oilcan and Fair.

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    8. ... So when Paul made his comment about separation, I thought he was talking about the word "oilcan."

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  26. Nice clue Blaine - I approve!

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  27. Knowing another kind of puzzle might help with this.

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  28. Los Angeles >>> Laos & Senegal

    My Hint:
    "Even though this is a shithole puzzle I enjoyed it because I solved it while still in bed without any lists."

    I only referred to it as a shithole puzzle because our Fuhrer called out Senegal as being one of the "shithole countries."

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  29. LOS ANGELES, LAOS, SENEGAL

    “a musical clue: a Philadelphia R&B group”
    —> the Delfonics, “La-La Means I Love You” —> Los Angeles (aka “La-La Land”)

    It’s been three consecutive weeks that I’ve arrived at the solution “backwards,” in this case by correctly guessing the first country.

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  30. I wrote, “Remove the first and last letters of the city. Rearrange. You get something often mentioned in the news these days.” That’s GASOLINE.

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    1. You mean GASOLENE? My answer to this one was GOAL SEEN, as in the World Cup.

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    2. Yes, gasoline; the spell checker converted it from the less common gasolene. But what a good answer you came up with.

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  31. Los Angeles>>>Laos and Senegal
    As a long time baseball fan I've often marveled at references to, "The Los Angeles Angels," which if my meagre knowledge of Spanish is up to anything translates as, "The The Angels Angels," a moniker truly worthy of the Department of Redundancy Department.

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    1. Hey Superzee - that was actually a Final Jeopardy clue several years ago! (“When translated, the full name of this Major League baseball team gets you a double redundancy.”)

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    2. Cool, I must have missed that episode...

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    3. That reminds me of back when the puzzle answer was The La Brea Tar Pits, and I pointed out that it translated to The The Tar Tar Pits.

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    4. When we visited Ireland 30 years ago my son sported a La Brea Tar Pits sweatshirt. Which is how we learned that "La Brea"--pronounced "law braw"-- is a greeting in Irish. Irish-speakers in the west of Ireland often mocked their countrymen from Dublin, whose Irish was limited to the little they learned in school, by calling them law braws."

      My father was fond of these redundancies: the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe and Torpenhow in the UK, to name two.

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    5. Or one of my other bêtes noires, "from whence."

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    6. Let us not forget these pearls of language gems:
      ATM Machine,
      PIN Number,
      PDF Format,
      HIV Virus, and
      LCD Display
      Each of which repeats the last word of its initial initialisms

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    7. We need a preventATive solution to this problem. Perhaps we could get it done today by 5 pm this afternoon.

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  32. LOS ANGELES, LAOS, SENEGAL

    > 7777, more or less.

    Distance, in miles, between national capitals.

    > Just mentioning how I started to solve this one is probably TMI.

    I started with a list of US cities by population. Didn't have to look far. The answer was the second one on the list.

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  33. LOS ANGELES >>> LAOS, SENEGAL

    "Will has lost the plot."

    On top of this being a super easy puzzle, my 11th grade student from Senegal would ask about complicated literature, "Where is the plot? I have lost the plot."

    Me, too, Student S. Me.too.

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  34. My post - “Is there no Billy Joel related reference this week? Hmmm…..” - Take Billy’s song “Los Angelenos” and remove “no” and you get Los Angeles.

    Also - I wrote “Nice clue Blaine - I approve!” to give my “seal” of approval to his post.

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    1. Also, in "My Life," Billy Joel sings "now he gives them a standup routine in LA."

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  35. LOS ANGELES, LAOS, SENEGAL

    I gave Wim Wenders as a film clue because one of his most famous films was 1987's Wings of Desire, where ANGELS descend on Berlin and walk the streets.

    And Los Angeles is the CITY OF ANGELS.

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  36. LOS ANGELES, LAOS, SENEGAL
    Once I found LAOS in the "world countries list", I started to look up all the cities that begin with LAS, not LOS. Once I thought about it starting with LOS, Los Angeles was the first city to come to mind, and I immediately noticed ANGELES could be rearranged to spell SENEGAL.
    pjbAlsoJustNoticedThat"TrivialPursuit"HasComeOnInPlaceOf "Scrabble"ThisEvening,ForSomeUnknownReason(TooBad!)

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  37. Clark a pseudonym referred to "nits," which I read as a pun on "louse/Laos." Which I responded to by saying "historically speaking you're not far off" because Los Angeles was notorious throughout the 19th Century, starting with Richard Henry Dana's account from the 1840s, as overrun by fleas. Fleas aren't lice, but they're both miniature pests.

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    1. I thought I was the only one left who has read Two Years Before The Mast.

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  38. Is anyone else surprised by some of the ads with young women on this page?

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  39. This week's online challenge comes from Henri Picciotto and Joshua Kosman, who will be at the 186th convention of the National Puzzler League, in Bloomington, Ind., that Shortz will be attending. Name two words that are opposites. They share a single letter. Remove that shared letter from each word, put a hyphen between the two starting words and you'll get a term you sometimes see in food ads. What are the two words? Submit your answer here, and you could win a chance to play next Sunday's on-air puzzle.

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  40. It seems like it's supposed to read "remaining words". I solved pretty quickly using that interpretation.

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  41. The original words can also describe food.

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  42. I don't know why I'm not receiving the NPR Up First Weekend newsletter that includes the Sunday Puzzle. I've checked the box at the bottom of the Submission Form that says "Sign me up for the Up First Weekend newsletter. I want a round up of the week's top stories and discoveries" several times, but no newsletter appears. It's not in my spam folder. Any ideas?

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    1. Try this link : https://www.npr.org/newsletter/news?utm_id=3631284

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    2. Yeah, I've tried that, too. Nothing from NPR shows up, even in my spam folder.

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  43. The original words describe my experiences with the NPR puzzles

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  44. Insert a letter into one of the original words to get another pair of food related opposites.

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  45. I was surprised how easy this turned out to be.

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  46. Reminds me of a famous quote from Hemingway.

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