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This Changes Everything!

By: Will Shortz // June 10, 2012
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On-Air Challenge: Given a sentence, change one letter in one word to make a new word which completely reverses the meaning of the sentence. For example, given "The singer is not coming on stage." Changing the "T" in not to a "W" in the word "not" makes the sentence, "The singer is now coming on stage."

Last Week's Challenge From Listener Eli Blake of Joseph City, Ariz.: Take the names of two state capitals. Change one letter in each one, resulting in a phrase naming someone you will see soon on TV. Who is it? (Hint: You don't really have to know anything about TV to solve this puzzle.)

Answer: "Olympic Diver" can be formed from Olympia, the capital of Washington state, and Dover, the capital of Delaware.

Winner: Douglas Gilzow of Washington, D.C.

Next Week's Challenge: Name something to sit on. Divide the letters of this exactly in half. Move the second half to the front, without changing the order of any letters. The result will name some things seen on computers. What are they?

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 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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