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Word Puzzle

Frayed Knot Dec 21 2016 02:21 AM

Can you arrange these eight words in a particular order so that by reading them it will sound like a familiar expression? ACIDLY DUMB HISSED NESS ROUGHEN SHUN UDDER VENT There may be an actual prize (like, other than Crane Bucks) in it for you if you can.

seawolf17 Dec 21 2016 02:29 AM Re: Word Puzzle

ness hissed acidly dumb udder roughen vent shun. Necessity: the mother of invention. (Once I got "of invention" for "oughen vent shun," the rest fell together.)

Frayed Knot Dec 21 2016 04:49 AM Re: Word Puzzle

We're on the same track anyway. I ordered the words slightly differently and interpreted it as: NESS + ACIDY + HISSED + DUMB + UDDER + ROUGHEN + VENT + SHUN = Necessity is the mother of invention. I think having the "is the" (posing as 'Hissed' + the first half of dumb) in there makes it more how the saying usually goes. Phonetically it reads more or less as: ness + essidy + hiss + du + m[crossout]b[/crossout]udder + ruff + en + ven + shun All this comes via this past Sunday's special NY Times pull-out Puzzle section which included numerous types of puzzles (above and beyond their regular Sunday Magazine ones). In particular the one that had those eight words as a 'hidden message' was a monstrously super-sized -- 50 x 50 -- crossword puzzle. Standard daily Xwords are 15 x 15 and Sundays usually 21 x 21 so this was approx 11.1 and 5.7 times larger than those. The idea is that for those who are first able solve the puzzle (not real difficult but quite time-consuming with some 800 clues and answers) in order to find the eight hidden words, then figure out the hidden message from them, then can send that answer to the special NY Times crossword email to be entered into a drawing to win free home delivery of the paper for one year. So you (plus anyone else reading this but don't tell them cuz they's not as smart as you and me) can send that answer to crosswords@nytimes.com to be entered into the drawing. Of course by doing so you'll reduce MY chances of winning (from a few million to one down to a few million plus a few more to one) but I'm just a giving kind of guy.

cooby Dec 21 2016 12:39 PM Re: Word Puzzle

lol, I wonder what they'd do if I won home delivery

Frayed Knot Dec 21 2016 01:06 PM Re: Word Puzzle

cooby wrote: lol, I wonder what they'd do if I won home delivery They'd home deliver it. One can get HD of the NYT just about anywhere in this country.

Ceetar Dec 21 2016 01:29 PM Re: Word Puzzle

I would've bought that issue for the puzzle section if I'd known. Finally, something useful in a newspaper!

seawolf17 Dec 21 2016 04:09 PM Re: Word Puzzle

We're on the same track anyway. I ordered the words slightly differently and interpreted it as: NESS + ACIDY + HISSED + DUMB + UDDER + ROUGHEN + VENT + SHUN = Necessity is the mother of invention. I think having the "is the" (posing as 'Hissed' + the first half of dumb) in there makes it more how the saying usually goes. Phonetically it reads more or less as: ness + essidy + hiss + du + m[crossout]b[/crossout]udder + ruff + en + ven + shun All this comes via this past Sunday's special NY Times pull-out Puzzle section which included numerous types of puzzles (above and beyond their regular Sunday Magazine ones). In particular the one that had those eight words as a 'hidden message' was a monstrously super-sized -- 50 x 50 -- crossword puzzle. Standard daily Xwords are 15 x 15 and Sundays usually 21 x 21 so this was approx 11.1 and 5.7 times larger than those. The idea is that for those who are first able solve the puzzle (not real difficult but quite time-consuming with some 800 clues and answers) in order to find the eight hidden words, then figure out the hidden message from them, then can send that answer to the special NY Times crossword email to be entered into a drawing to win free home delivery of the paper for one year. So you (plus anyone else reading this but don't tell them cuz they's not as smart as you and me) can send that answer to crosswords@nytimes.com to be entered into the drawing. Of course by doing so you'll reduce MY chances of winning (from a few million to one down to a few million plus a few more to one) but I'm just a giving kind of guy. Shit. I hadn't gotten to that big puzzle yet; was saving it for last. Guess I'm working on that tonight. :)

Frayed Knot Dec 22 2016 03:41 AM Re: Word Puzzle

I maybe should have issued a *Spoiler Alert* before asking this for those who had the puzzle and were intending on doing it but hadn't yet gotten around to it - although all this really does is get you 8 answers in advance out of 800-some clues and not even where each goes so it's not a big deal really. I was originally going to post this for the purpose of crowd-sourcing the answer but then decided to make it into a mini brain teaser after figuring it out before I got around to asking. Like I said before, it's not a real tough puzzle, just a lot of acreage to cover and if nothing else this gets you a jump on entering the contest as I think all entries are due by sometime early next week.