Sunday, August 22, 2010

Sunday Puzzle

I'm thinking about making this a weekly feature—ripping off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.

I've been a riddle and word game enthusiast my entire life, and I look forward to the puzzle every week. Where else do spoonerisms come up with such delightful frequency?! I have to imagine many of the folks stumbling upon this blog are my fellow word-nerds. If you're one of them but you're not an NPR nerd as well (or if your Sunday mornings are dedicated to church or brunch or sleeping in) I want to get your priorities straightened out, and get you hooked. Starting today.

Mustachioed enigmatologist 
extraordinaire, Will Shortz 
Each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon if you want a chance to play on the air).

Without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

From Sandy Weisz: Take a country whose name contains a symbol for a chemical element, and change it to a different chemical element to get another country. For example, if Aruba were an independent country, you could take the "AR," which is the chemical symbol for argon, and change it to "C," which is the chemical symbol for carbon, to come up with Cuba. There are two answers to this puzzle, and both must be found.

Awesome! I love you, Big Willy Shortz! I'm all over this like a rash.

Now, if you're a stickler like me, you won't cheat by consulting a map or the periodic table, at least not until after you're sure you've solved it.

If you'd like to see the original puzzle posting, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer, click here. And if you consider yourself a word-nerd but you've never seen Wordplay, click here, for the love of Shortz.

1 comment:

  1. Sandy, the creator of this week's SUnday Puzzle, got in touch via the comments on my Monday post with a tip. Click here to check it out.

    ReplyDelete