Sunday Puzzle: O-OO

Will Shortz

Source: media.npr.org

PUZZLE 081626

This week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a famous movie villain. Insert one letter to get the brand name of a household product. Then change one letter of the product to get the last name of another famous movie villain. Who are the characters and what is the product?

Let’s take a look at the clues and see if we can solve the puzzle. We have 10 sentences with two blanks each. The word that goes in the first blank has an O somewhere in it. Double the O and you’ll get a new word that goes in the second blank to complete the sentence.

1. Road Runner opened a store of Acme products in the Looney Tunes cartoon.

2. For his next blockbuster set in Africa, will director James wood film in wooden?

3. While on vacation in the West, we saw a flock of birds soar over the Hoover Dam.

4. Having a stubbed toe was sort of a bad excuse for playing hooky from school.

5. In a Wild West movie set, a nail gun is an unlikely business next to a gun.

6. Among the workers of workers at the poultry farm, one man had to see that every chicken was well cared for.

7. The chef will grill the steak in gravy to give it a rich texture.

8. The Russian novelist Nikolai gogol has become so popular, he gets almost a million hits on the Internet.

9. On the bus in Glasgow, I asked a passenger to pass over.

10. The losing candidate for mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, is calling for a recount.

Last week’s challenge

Last week’s challenge comes from Steve Baggish, of Arlington, Mass. Using only the letters of FACES NORTH, repeating them as often as you wish, you can spell a familiar expression in seven words (4,3,3,6,3,3,5). What expression is it?

Answer: Can’t see the forest for the trees.

Nori Aquino of Sacramento, California

This week’s challenge

This week’s challenge is a great opportunity to test your skills and have fun at the same time. Think of a famous movie villain and insert one letter to get the brand name of a household product. Then change one letter of the product to get the last name of another famous movie villain. Who are the characters and what is the product?

Instructions

1. Title: Create an engaging, click-worthy, and SEO-friendly title in English.

2. Content: Rewrite the body text in natural, flowing English. It MUST be a highly detailed, comprehensive, and in-depth article (at least 5-7 paragraphs, minimum 450-600 words) that covers all key points, quotes, statistics, and sub-topics from the original article.

3. Excerpt: Write a short, complete summary (1-2 natural, grammatically complete sentences) of the article.

4. Tags: Extract 3-5 relevant keywords/tags for the article.

5. Category: Classify this article into exactly ONE of these categories: latest-news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, events, soccer, health, finance-crypto, gaming-esports, travel, strange-viral, mutual-fund.

6. Image Prompt: Write a detailed descriptive English prompt (1-2 sentences) for an AI image generator to create a high-quality, professional featured image for this article.

7. Video Script: Create a detailed short-video script structure for TikTok Beta / YouTube Shorts.