Sunday Puzzle: A Piece Of Cake

On-air challenge: Every answer is a word or name in which the second syllable sounds like the letter "K." The syllable is always accented, and there's at least one syllable after it.

Example: Flowering tree that grows in warm climates --> ACACIA

1. Time off from work when you travel somewhere

2. Mount Etna or Mount St. Helens

3. 17-year locust

4. Distracting from real life, as fantasy novels

5. A place

6. One's profession

7. Irish dramatist Seán

8. National park along the coast of Maine

9. Kind of map projection

10. Dirty tricks, sleight of hand

11. Lacking the skill to do something

12. Occurring naturally on a 24-hour cycle

Last week's challenge: Name a country. Remove its last letter. The remaining letters can be rearranged to spell a word that means "country" in that country's main language. What country is it?

Challenge answer: SPAIN --> PAIS (which means "country" in Spanish)

Winner: Ryan Saunders of Washington, D.C.

This week's challenge: Think of a word for a deceitful person. Move the middle letter to the end and you'll get another word for a deceitful person. What words are these?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you by Thursday, April 18 at 3 p.m. ET. [Copyright 2019 NPR]