Saturday, July 12, 2008

A Puzzle A Day (#5)

Today's puzzle:

Name a 4-letter word meaning OFF, THIN, or BROKE.

Yesterday's answer: A 4-letter word that can follow HOME, END, or WORD is GAME. In addition to the scheduled activities at the con, people stay up until dawn playing after-hours games of all sorts, including many that have been created by NPL members. An alternate answer could be the 5-letter word GAMES, but plurals are considered less pure as puzzle bases if the non-plural form will work.

2 comments:

http://scott.blomqui.st said...

My answer for yesterday was "LESS", which didn't seem to have any convention tie-in whatsoever. But they _are_ all 11C words.

Roy Leban said...

@Scott: Interesting thought, but LESS doesn't strictly follow the rules. Since HOMELESS, ENDLESS, and WORDLESS are all single words, LESS isn't a *word* that follows the three given words, as is the case for the phrases HOME GAME, END GAME, and WORD GAME.

But, I now realize there is at least one alternate answer -- RUN, although WORD RUN is a pretty uncommon phrase.