Q: Think of a familiar three-word phrase in the form '___ and ___'. If you remove the 'and' and put the second word in front of the first word, you get a compound word naming a place of power. Hint: The compound word has nine letters. What is the three-word phrase, and what place of power is this?I'm going to have to lie back on the sofa and ponder this puzzle.
A: Room and Board --> Boardroom
Q: Think of a nine-letter word naming a venue for certain sports. Three letters in the word are repeated. Remove all the repetitions, and the remaining six letters can be rearranged to name a piece of sports equipment. What are these two words?I might have to pray to a Norse god for assistance on this.
A: Racetrack (remove the duplicated letters r,a,c and rearrange) --> Racket
Q: Name a unit of length in the plural form. Rearrange the letters to spell two units of mass, also in the plural form. What units are these?Don't worry. My memory may not be the best, but I wasn't going to forget to post the puzzle. On that note, I was thinking of a couple award-winning hints, but they were too obvious. Instead, I'll just point out that technically the puzzle should have asked for units of mass, not weight. I've made the correction above.
A: Angstroms --> Grams and Tons
Q: Assign every letter of the alphabet a numerical value: A=1, B=2, C=3 and so forth. Think of a classic work of literature that has eight letters in its title. When the letters are given a numerical value, they add up to 35. What's the title? Clue: The title has two words.Clue: 12,672
A: ADAM BEDE, the first novel by George Eliot
Q: Take the word 'calm' and flip the letters A and L to get 'clam.' Take the last name of a film director known for using profanity, and flip two pairs of letters in place to get a word used as a substitute for profanity. Who's the director, and what's the word?Have I ever used profanity? I plead the fifth.
A: Quentin TARANTINO (swap AN and NO) --> "What in TARNATION!"
Q: Take the phrase 'consumer protection laws,' and rearrange the letters to name a person in broadcasting and an issue of public debate. Hints: The name of the person in broadcasting has five letters in the first name and five letters in the last name. For the issue of public debate, it's a familiar two-word phrase with seven letters in the first word and five letters in the second. What name and phrase are these?If NPR keeps posting the puzzle this early we'll have to stop calling it the Sunday puzzle! Are you following what I'm saying? Are you clear? Cool.
A: SCOTT SIMON, NUCLEAR POWER
Q: Think of a five-letter girl's name that ends in a 'J' sound. Change that to a 'CH' sound to get a common five-letter boy's name. What names are these?Not to be a pest but didn't we have a puzzle recently involving names? If you thought Marsha and Martha were less common girl's names, what about the names this week? I was going to clump together a clue or two from last week, but I think I'll refrain.
A: Midge and Mitch
Q: Think of a two-word phrase that means a time long ago. Move the third, fourth and fifth letters to the end of the phrase, without rearranging those three letters, to get a new two-word phrase that means the beginning. What phrases are these?One less than Osama's and one less than Les Essarts.
A: STONE AGE --> STAGE ONE
Q: Take a common girl's name that's six letters long. Change the fourth letter to the next letter in the alphabet to get another common girl's name. What names are these?I had to laugh when I figured out the intended answer. But it reminded me I needed to pick up some candy at the convenience store.
A: MARSHA --> MARTHA
Q: Spell a part of the human body. Change one of the letters to an E, and rearrange the result to name another part of the human body. What body parts are these? Clue: Both parts of the body are things you can see.Within a minute I came up with 3 valid pairs of body parts. I have a fourth pair that is questionable, but still could work.
A: NECK (C to E) --> KNEE
ARM (M to E) --> EAR
HAND (N to E) --> HEAD
Note: Will also accepted CALF (L to E) --> FACE