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A Puzzle With A Northern Focus, Eh?

On-air challenge: Today's puzzle involves wordplay on some well-known Canadian place names. Example:

The name of which Canadian province is an anagram of "oration"?

Last week's challenge: The seven words in the following sentence have something very unusual in common — something that almost no other words in the English language share. What is it?

"Ira saw three emigrants restock large wands."

Answer: Each of the words is an anagram of a word in "The Star-Spangled Banner" (air, was, there, streaming, rockets, glare, dawn's).

Winner: Daniel Zimmerman of Austin, Texas.

Next week's challenge: The challenge comes from listener Adam Cohen. Name an occupation starting with the letter B. Remove the second, third and fourth letters. The remaining letters in order will name something you might experience in the presence of someone who has this occupation. What is it?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

NPR's Puzzlemaster Will Shortz has appeared on Weekend Edition Sunday since the program's start in 1987. He's also the crossword editor of The New York Times, the former editor of Games magazine, and the founder and director of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (since 1978).