NPR Sunday Puzzler Not-Quite-But-Mighta-Coulda-Woulda-Been (UPDATED!)

My NPR Weekend Edition - Sunday Puzzler Experience! (Almost)

I didn't want to jinx the process, and bragging about it would have done just that.  One needs to be discreet when on the verge of making a HUGE national splash! It's like when you're one card away from a royal flush... maintain that poker face!

And so, I told no one about my amazing, incredible, divinely-inspired performance in response to last Sunday's NPR Puzzler.  Believe me, keeping quiet was so much more difficult than solving the puzzler almost instantaneously.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

As many of you may know, on Sunday mornings NPR's Weekend Edition - Sunday program (with host Liane Hansen), Puzzlemaster Will Shortz makes a regular appearance to announce the solution to the previous week's puzzle, and to present the new Puzzler Challenge.  You may also know of Will Shortz through his role as editor of the New York Times Crossword section, as well as numerous puzzle books (crossword, sudoku, etc.) that he has published.

I woke up early last Sunday, mostly because I only seem to sleep in fractured increments of a couple hours these days.  Eventually I wake up and, if it's after 5 a.m., I stop trying to sleep and just get up! My radio is seemingly always tuned to the local NPR station, mostly because I left all of my electronic devices with digital tuning back at "the house" whence I recently/once lived.  [Manual "dial" tuning was one of the greatest protections radio broadcasters had in the old days.  If your audience managed to find you, odds were that they wouldn't risk losing you by changing the setting on the Rube Goldberg inspired string-and-pulley tuning mechanism.  Of course, leaving said mechanism in one position for extended weeks and months only exacerbates the risk of moving it.  Sort of a self-reinforcing, mechanically-induced behavioral modification, if you will.]

So, where was I?  Oh yes, the Puzzler.  As I listen to the news and other features while sipping my coffee and eating my granola/yogurt combo, I hear the introduction of Will Shortz.  I stop everything else and listen as he offers the solution to last week's Puzzler.  I hadn't tried to solve that one, but the solution seemed reasonable.  The winner of each week's contest is randomly selected from the usually thousands of correct responses that are emailed in each week.  That winner is then invited to participate in an "on-the-air" puzzler,  This is where it gets interesting, because as we all know, it's one thing to perform well on quizzes when in a familiar, low-stress situation.  It's something else entirely when doing so in real time on a national radio broadcast!

Many of these winning contestants perform remarkably well when they are asked to perform odd mental gymnastics under pressure.  Others... not so much.  The good news is that Liane Hansen-- who is like everyone's favorite teacher from grade school--will try to help out with hints when things are tough.  The on-air puzzler went smoothly, with last week's winner comporting himself well.  I felt a warm fuzzy wave of relief sweep over the entire NPR audience in that moment.

Then came the new Puzzler for this week.  My ears perked up as I strained to listen carefully.  (Ears do actually "perk" abit, it's just really really hard to see...)  Here it is, direct from the NPR website:

___________________________________________________________
Next Week's Puzzler Challenge

From listener Louis Sergeant of Portland, Ore.: Name a country somewhere in the world. Insert a "Z." The result can be broken up into 3 consecutive words. The first word is a popular brand name. The second word is something this product uses, and the third word is the kind of product it is.

What's the country?
___________________________________________________________

And there it was.  The new puzzler, every bit as non-sequiter-ish as ever, because they always are.  But somehow, someway, something caused the words to pop into my head instantly!  Divine inspiration?  I know not.  But it happened just this way.  Perhaps the explanation is simply that I had opened myself to the possibility of just knowing without knowing that I know, y'know?  This from having recently reread the wonderful book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.   (For more on this phenomenon, please read the book.  You won't regret it.  You'll even come to understand why those Pepsi-Coke taste tests at the mall aren't going to tell you much about how likely you are to enjoy a bottle of either.)

SPOILER ALERT!! Now, at this point, I need to issue a spoiler alert.  If you are a fan of the Puzzler, and don't wish to have your experience diminished by a premature disclosure of the solution, you should SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH! [Note: To read the full paragraph, highlight the entire section below (the area between the two blue dotted lines) and the hidden font will be revealed... yeah, like magic... I know!]

................. ***Since the puzzler solution has been read on air, I've changed the "hidden" font to one that is slightly visible.  Highlighting it will make it more legible, as before.***

When Will Shortz read the Puzzler over the air, it was as though my thoughts instantly converged on these words:gas, car... that's it, just those words.  But from there it's a short step to thinking of the only country in the world (that I'm aware of, at least) that has those words in the name.  Now, I should also mention that I was, until recently, the proud owner of a little red Mazda pick-up that I purchased new in 1990 for the royal sum of $10,900.  It served me well through 18 years and several cross-country relocations, and I loved that little red truck. (It still lives, as I gave it to my nephew who is very handy with older vehicles, having restored it to much of it's former glory... but I digress from my earlier digression.)  And so, Mazda, less the "Z", is

Mada + gas + car or Madagascar = ANSWER!!

And, well, there is was!
.................

Within about 5 seconds of hearing the Puzzler, I knew the answer!  I jumped onto the internet--fortunately my neighbors were up early and the wi-fi was working--and I submitted my answer.  Boom! It's gotta be some kind of record!  Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the weekly winner is selected at random from all of the correct entries, so being first doesn't guarantee anything.  (Or being nearly first: who's to say that divine inspiration only strikes in one place at any given time?  And I don't live on the east coast...)

I spent the next several days in great anticipation, sure that my phone would be ringing at 3 p.m. Thursday (as noted in the autoreply email message that I received to acknowledge my submission.)  Surely they would simply be blown away by the speed and implicit mental acumen that I'd exhibited with my prompt response!

A good case of self-delusion requires some basic, unreasonable belief on which to then center your thinking for an unnecessarily extended timeframe.  I had found mine!

["Seemingly" unrelated news insert: Yesterday, I received a strange email notice from my phone company telling me that the amount due on my bill for the month was a figure that didn't make any sense.  Of course, none of their bills over the past 5 months had made any sense, which is why I am now sometimes using my neighbor's WiFi.  This will become relevant a little further along in the story.]

Alas, my phone didn't ring all afternoon.  No NPR, no offers for an extended warranty on my car... nothing.  I guess I hadn't rocked NPR's world after all.  *Sigh*

Then, that night at about 8 p.m., I tried to make a call.  Oddly, my phone line was dead.  I checked the connections to the wall, and they seemed fine.  Then I noticed that one of the connections had pulled out of the surge protector that I run everything through.  It must have come loose when I was checking to see if my phone company had reinstated my DSL service. (I was thinking that might explain the change in amount due on my bill.  They hadn't.)  But... but wait!  NPR only had my landline phone number!  That's all that I'd given them. 

My cellphone had been on and charged, so if anyone really needed me, they could have reached me, so that's a good thing.  NPR couldn't reach me.  And now I'll never know... perhaps divine intervention giveth... and taketh away?  At least I still have my delusion about what might have been, and they can't take that away!  *Heavy sigh*