Brain Teaser
Stefanie linked to this week’s NPR Sunday Puzzle, which is this:
Name a well-known city in the United States, two words, 10 letters altogether. Add the letter A at the front, add the city’s two-letter state postal abbreviation at the end, the resulting 13-letter chain will be palindromic, that is, it will read backward and forward the same. What city is this?
It took me a couple minutes of doodling on the back of an envelope to get it. This will be a tricky one for non-USians!
17 responses
Got it in the shower. Consequently, my shower was about three minutes longer than normal, but it was worth it for the sense of accomplishment.
filling up space so people who done want clues/spoilers can avoid them…….
la la la
ok here we go
well, the state abbreviation must end in a to make this palindromic, right? which leaves CA, GA, LA, MA, PA, VA or WA
but i’m still not getting it. duh.
The other tip to make it palindromic is that the city name needs to start with the same letter as the state abbreviation. See if that hint helps!
got it! or got i something that works. it’s not exactly a “well known city” in my opinion – the only reason i’ve heard of it is because there’s a bar that we used to drink at in singapore that is named after this city. but maybe the rest of us-ians would disagree. i’m not really a very good native.
I’m pretty sure one of the characters on MASH was from this city, or something like that. As I explained to the Snook, it’s well-known simply because it’s fun to say and it ends up in a lot of jokes. 🙂
Got it pretty quickly, but that’s because I live in the state. I don’t think of it as well known, but there is a famous produce item that takes its name from the city (but again, we eat a lot of them because they’re relatively local; not sure if they’re distributed much beyond my region).
Is that an onion? I had a weird feeling there was a vegetable with that name, and that’s what popped into my head. (I spent the summer of 1994 working in a grocery store produce section.)
Is this city well known? Because I worked it out by looking at lists of cities in the relevant states, and I had never heard of that city in my life!
I didn’t think anyone outside the US would know it. It’s mostly known there because it’s funny to say. It’s the kind of place Bugs Bunny might mention visiting, along with Albuquerque.
Lake Titicaca?
Keokuk?
Cucamonga?
Seattle?
EXACTLY! That type of thing. 🙂
Got it !
Los Amomaso, Louisiana, ’bout 20 clicks out of Lafayette on the way to Baton Rouge.
(There is an Australian town that almost fits this puzzle as well – similar name). I go back to work now.
WHAT? That’s not the answer everyone else got. Did you deliberately look for something else that fit? That’s pretty neat!
HA! You faker!
🙂
Yes, a sweet onion, like a Vilalia (funny; also named after a town in a _A state…). I think there was a Real World cast member from the city in question; again, I just remember because at the time she was called a local.
There must be a lot of fun discoveries working in a produce section for a short time. I love looking at the produce in international markets and wondering what various things taste like. One of my big regrets is not sampling a durian when I was in Singapore.