Perth: Solution

Rearrange the columns to read:

LISTEN TO WEEKEND EDITION WITH LIANE HANSEN. REPLACE KN WITH H IN ONE RHYMING PAIR AND SOLVE. REPLACE THE LAST TWO LETTERS IN THE ANSWER WITH X TO FORM ANOTHER WORD.

Weekend Edition is an NPR program that airs on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The Sunday program is hosted by Liane Hansen and airs in Boston on WBUR (90.9 FM) at 8:00. One regular segment on the program features 'puzzle master' Will Shortz (the New York Times crossword puzzle editor), which always airs about 40 minutes into the show. One piece of his segment involves posing word puzzles to a listener who submitted a correct answer to the previous week's 'challenge puzzle'. The piece went something like this (answers to clues are inline):

"I'm going to give you 2 rhyming words. You give a 3rd word that can follow each of mine to complete a compound word or familiar 2-word phrase. For example, if I said "Wish" and "Fish," you'd say BONE (as in Wishbone and fishbone)."

  1. Early, Whirly: BIRD
  2. Pool, School: ROOM
  3. Band, Grand: STAND
  4. Fair, Stair: WAY
  5. Knot, Pot: HOLE
  6. View, Dew: POINT
  7. Cue, Screw: BALL
  8. Jack, Crack: POT
  9. [a triple] Dead, Head, Bread: LINE

Replacing the "kn" in "knot" with 'h' gives the pair "hot, pot" with answer "head". Replacing the last two letters of "head" with 'x' gives the final puzzle answer of HEX.


Author's notes:

  1. I am acquainted (as are some others in Acme) with Will Shortz through the National Puzzlers' League (NPL). He is VERY nice.
  2. An interesting coincidence was pointed out by an Ygology member (thanks, Squonk) - the NPL nom (see note below) for the composers of the challenge puzzle given in the broadcast is HEX.
  3. Note: Almost all NPL members have pseudonyms, referred to as "noms". In the case of HEX, it's actually a pair of people - Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, who compose the Boston Globe Sunday crossword that appears every other week and the Atlantic Monthly puzzle. In fact we pointed hunters to a web site which is a guide by them to solving cryptic crosswords.