Welcome back, Puzzlers. Let's continue our winning streak with the latest Sunday Puzzle from NPR:
This week's challenge comes from listener Sandy Weisz, of Chicago. Name a famous woman in American history with a three-part name. Change one letter in her first name to a double letter. The resulting first and second parts of her name form the first and last names of a famous athlete. And the last part of the woman's name is a major rival of that athlete. Who are these people?
I'll preface this by saying that I've already solved it just by doing a little brainstorming, but I'm going to apply my usual systematic approach and try to get the solution that way, too. It's good practice. I'm not going to spoil it here, so you can try to brainstorm for it or implement your own approach.
Okay, let's break this down. There's some real cagey language in this puzzle. Why does it refer to a "three-part name"? Is that different from "three names"? Is it not just a first, middle and last name? Is there some kind of hyphenation or honorific or nickname involved? We don't really know what that means, so we'll have to be flexible in what possibilities we allow for.
"Change one letter in her first name to a double letter." I guess we have to assume "first name" here means "first of three parts of her name." The change part of this isn't quite clear, either. Do we just double an existing letter, e.g., Ana --> Anna and Lily --> Lilly? It's worth noting that after glancing through a list of girl's names, there aren't a lot of first names amenable to this transformation. The other way to interpret this clue is that the letter is replaced with a different doubled letter, e.g., Ava --> Anna or Jody --> Jonny. Again, since we don't know, I think it's best if we allow for either interpretation.
"The resulting first and second parts of her name form the first and last names of a famous athlete." Again, we'll assume this is the first and second parts of the three part name. Is this a man or woman? We don't know.
"And the last part of the woman's name is a major rival of that athlete." This is the least concerning part--the last name remains a last name.
What do we need here?
- W: a list of women from American history; each must have a name that can be represented in three parts;
- A: a list of famous athletes;
- fx_double_letter: a function to iterate through the letters in each first name and double OR replace AND double, returning a list of the resulting "names";
