NPR Puzzle 07/26/09 -- You Need an Ess to Spell Essay

Let's travel out of state to solve today's puzzle:

Name a well-known U.S. city in six letters. Drop the first and fourth letters so the remaining four letters, in order, will name another well-known U.S. city. What cities are these?

Hint: The two cities are in adjoining states.

I was in the car with the dog when I heard the puzzle segment this morning. I quickly discovered why I'm not the fastest solver of the weekly puzzle, even when given sufficient time (in this case, approximately 20 minutes on I-81 coming back from the kennel where Mimi boarded during our vacation). Even while I was supposed to be thinking of 6- and 4-letter cities, I was actually trying to think of what I was going to do for this week's value added puzzle.

As it happened, I got home and found that Henry (still visiting us; he leaves this afternoon to go back to his day job ) and Ross had solved it. They used the same method I'd been using (think of the 4-letter city first...) but had not had the distraction of thinking how to craft some value-added puzzle to chime in with Will's A+ puzzle.

In Will's on-air puzzle, he'd asked the player to fill in two blanks in each sentence; the word to fill the first blank would be a single syllable, the second answer was the first word plus a long A sound, phonetically. Risk/risque, etc.

Here's what I'm going to try: Same puzzle, only with a long E sound instead of the long A. Let's see how I do, okay?

The golfer nearly hit a _________ on his way to making a ________ .

The liquor store doesn't ______ that they don't _________ . . .

. . . that __________ of _____________ .

You should take care of that _________ and not drink any more __________ .

They are saying a ________ at the little church on the ________ .

The boxing fans were _________ there to see __________ .

Please _______ that tray down near the __________ .

The platoon needed a certain _______ of transport for its ________ .

There was a little _________ on the costume of the __________ dancer.

The owner of the theater was pleased to see that there wasn't a ________ on the new _______ .

It's just like __________ not to _________ when there's a deadline.

It's no longer cool or _______ to be a __________ .

This type of ______ is particularly fond of eating that type of __________ .

You don't need brute ________ to __________ how this puzzle will end.