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Rearrange The Letters In These Names To Solve This Puzzle

NPR

On-air challenge: Every answer this week is an anagram of a six-letter girl's name. I'll give you the name and a synonym of its anagram. You tell me the anagram.

For example: GLENDA Hang loosely --> DANGLE.

Last week's challenge: Take the word EASY: Its first three letters — E, A and S — are the 5th, 1st, and 19th letters, respectively, in the alphabet. If you add 5 + 1 + 19, you get 25, which is the value of the alphabetical position of Y, the last letter of EASY. Can you think of a common five-letter word that works in the opposite way — in which the value of the alphabetical positions of its last four letters add up to the value of the alphabetical position of its first letter?

Answers: Zebra, Maced, Whack, Table.

Winner: Kevin Mack of Columbus, Ohio.

Next week's challenge from listener Peter Collins of Ann Arbor, Mich.: Name something in eight letters that's usually bought in pairs. Change the second letter to the letter two spaces later in the alphabet, and you'll get a new word that names something else that's usually bought in pairs. Both words are plurals. 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, April 14, at 3 p.m. ET.

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

Corrected: April 9, 2016 at 8:00 PM AKDT
In the audio version of this story, as in a previous Web version, we incorrectly list "waned" as one possible answer to last week's challenge. And in an earlier version of the audio of this story, Beethoven's 7th Symphony was incorrectly identified as being in the key of A minor. As many listeners noted in comments, it is Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major.
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).