NPR Weekend Edition Puzzle
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and Will Shortz
2020-09-06
Last week's challenge from listener Joe Young, of St. Cloud, Minnesota: Name a famous person in history. The letters of the last name can be rearranged to name a popular game. And the letters in the first name can be rearranged to name an action in this game. Who is this famous person?
Will's answers are Marco Polo, pool and carom.
Lulu reported over 1500 correct responses. This week's on-air player was Tom Zmozynski of Aurora, Ohio, who listens to WCPN and fell into the answer as he was spieling offf names of board games and his wife mentioned "pool."
The theme of today's puzzle posted to the NPR site is "Next-to-Last." Each prompt is the next-to-last item in its category alphabetically. You name the only other thing in the category that comes after it alphabetically.
For the example given, "taste," the answer would be "touch" (sense).
Prompts (*A hint was given)
1. West Virginia
2.* Two
3.* Sleepy
4. Sotomayor
5.* Queens
5. Zambia
6.* Swans a-swimming
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Editor's notes:
No news items or upcoming events announced. Will blew off Tom's response "rook" to follow "Queens," apparently just because he had intended a different category. For the category "pinochle or euchre deck," "tens" should also have been a good response.
Puzzles, and contents of Weekend Edition/Sunday puzzle segment are copyrighted 2020, by Will Shortz and NPR. Reprinted here with permission.
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Mail:
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Correspondence this week:
Joe,
This week's puzzle is a repeat of one given on 2002-06-16 (from listener Sudipta Das of Calcutta, India) and 2005-04-03 (from Don Limpke). Perhaps you can mention this next weekend.
--
Richard Renner
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This week's challenge from listener Jeremy Crane of Madison, Wisconsin: Name a deity in ancient mythology. The first half of the name, phonetically, names a common object. The second half of the name, by spelling, names another object that is often put inside the first one. What is it?
Here is our current monthly puzzle transcription schedule :
1st Sunday Joe
Hints:
2. Single digit, think low
3. This dwarf would be problematic during a pandemic
5. Borough of New York
7. It's a bird, starts with T
How do I subscribe to this podcast?
1. West Virginia -- Wyoming
2.* Two -- Zero
3.* Sleepy -- Sneezy
4. Sotomayor -- Thomas
5.* Queens -- Staten Island
5. Zambia -- Zimbabwe
6.* Swans a-swimming -- turtledoves
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Panama City, Florida