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Sunday Puzzle: Around the World in Nine Words

Sunday Puzzle
NPR
Sunday Puzzle

On-air challenge: Today's puzzle involves "consonyms," which are words that have the same consonants in the same order but with different vowels. Every answer is the name of a country.

Ex. MINGLE --> MONGOLIA
1. BELIEVE

2. SEWED ON

3. BELEAGUER

4. HINDERS

5. ERASES

6. ENCOURAGE

7. STERILE

8. USER NAME

9. BOATSWAIN


Last week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from the screenwriter and comedian Mike Reiss. Name something scary in two words. Five of the letters are vowels, which are all the same. And the consonants are all Roman numerals. What scary thing is this?

Challenge answer: VOODOO DOLL

Winner: John Stembel of Tucker, GA.

This week's challenge: This week's challenge is a spinoff of my on-air puzzle. Name two countries that have consonyms that are nationalities of other countries. In each case, the consonants in the name of the country are the same consonants in the same order as those in the nationality of another country. No extra consonants can appear in either name. The letter Y isn't used.

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to this week's challenge, submit it here by Thursday, March 16th at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you.

Produced by Lennon Sherburne contributed to this story

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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).