Jan 13, 2009 One Word Wonder Puzzle

7th! w00t! My first top-10 ever, I think.

Easy peasy! Fun!

rockin' good night for points ! Fun one Philana !

Southerners are at a disadvantage with this puzzle since all words have an extra syllable.

Pretty neat.
__________

When you put the 2 words "The" and "IRS" together it spells "Theirs."

had to go find the answer to the second half of #1. never heard of the place. now I know. :)

there are NO one syllable state capitals.... sorry

[7] Apparently the Francophobic residents of a certain northern midwest state disagree.

[7] Yes there is. The "common" pronunciation of that name is not how the state capital is pronounced.

That is not the way that city is pronounced, but there was only 1 other choice and this is the only one that worked.

It's my capital and yes, that is how we pronounce it.

[10]That IS the way it is pronounced. If you don't believe me, try Google or Wikipedia or any dictionary.

[10] I have a lot of relatives, including my Dad, who were born and raised in that state. That IS how it's pronounced. One syllable.

If the residents of a town called "Franklin" want to pronounce it "Jefferson City" then "Jefferson City" is the correct pronunciation of their town that's spelled "Franklin". It might be odd, but it's correct.

Now let's start talking about how "Illinois" doesn't have an "S" sound in it...

Love the straight-ahead logic of these puzzles. Great puzzle again!

I'd have done this much faster if I actually READ step 2 instead of assuming I knew what it wanted me to do.

Fun puzzle.

[8] Franco-phobic is right....considering the town was named after a french fur trader! I guess the citizens didn't like to be associated with Napoleon and re-pronounced it.
At least Des Moines and Baton Rouge didn't change their pronunciations!

[14] Illinois doesn't bother me as much, since it is/was an indian (native american) word and they didn't have a written language.

[12]We all know that wikipedia is the font of all human knowledge. If it's on wikipedia, then it must be true.

Somebody ought to edit the article to say, "featured in a Tanga puzzle and the source of a minor controversy."

Pee-err? Boy-zee? Say-lem...

Sorry, when I went to school back when we learned how to pronounce things, none of them had one syllable. They still don't.

A group of residents deciding to pronounce a city name in a specific way are just going to have to deal with it being pronounced the way it is spelled ("correctly") by EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD!!!!

Puzzle fail.

I like these puzzles and find the minor conflicts amusing. By the way Madrid and Nevada Iowa pronounce their names distinctly different than the norme to be unique. Mad rid and Nev ae da (best I can do to explain how they say them :))

i guess i should be happy i learned something new, and won't be embarrassed by my "mispronunciation" when in Rome.

the more you frickin know

"The Boise all wanted to pronounce things right but they ended up getting Peer pressured into the wrong pronunciation".

:P

I think the misleading pronunciations actually add a neat "gotcha" element to the puzzle.

The local residents of a community have every right to determine how to pronounce the name of that community. I spent a couple years living in Aloha, Oregon. No one called it "uh-LOW-ha"; it was "uh-LOW-uh." Just the way it worked. (Oh, and it's always fun to hear the non-locals trying to talk about the Willamette and Tualatin rivers...not to mention just talking about the state—which is not OR-ee-gone nor OR-ee-gun. :)

The single syllable is THE Jeopardy pronunciation so there you go.

Imagine the fun for someone outside of the US.
Pass.
No disrespect Philana but would it kill you to think outside your borders?
k1w1

[25] I'm Canadian and had little difficulty with this one. Then again, I am close enough to the US to know that they often mangle French-origin names.

[17] I'm not sure they do get Baton Rouge correct. From what I remember of the pronunciation, the "rouge" is pretty close to the French, but the "Baton" part isn't.

This puzzle has FAIL written all over it.

[12] Here is your dictionary.com lookup.

Pierre   /pɪər for 1; piˈɛər or, Fr., pyɛr for 2/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [peer for 1; pee-air or, Fr., pyer for 2] Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun 1. a city in and the capital of South Dakota, in the central part, on the Missouri River. 11,973.
2. a male given name, form of Peter.

Looks like you can pronounce it either way.

FAIL

[27] [28] If I'm reading that dictionary entry correctly, it's saying that there's one way to pronounce it (and that's with one syllable) when you're talking about the city.

But say that I'm reading the entry incorrectly, and you're right in your conclusion that you can pronounce it either way. How does that make the puzzle a FAIL, as you put it? After all, there's only one state capital that can be pronounced with one syllable, so there's no confusion as to which word is indicated for this puzzle.

It's not a failed puzzle; it's a very good one. Also straight-forward. I got here a little late, solved it 15 minutes after the puzzle posted, and there were 97 others who beat me to the punch. Clearly more than a couple of people know the correct pronunciation, and Philana shouldn't be criticized because several people weren't paying attention in school when they were taught the state capitals.

I'm not sure I understand the flak- Wikipedia has a list of the US state capitals, and it took me under five minutes to find and try the two that looked most likely to be pronounced with one syllable.

(And, no, I didn't try the correct one first... :-) )

Using the proper pronunciation makes me feel redneck. I never knew that. Between that and misreading the third step it took me far too long to get this one.

Different, but good.

[28] Look again at that dictionary entry you cited. It clearly says that usage 1 (the capital of SD) is pronounced only one way -- as a single syllable that sounds like "peer".

Wow ... if there were slugs in this comment thread, they'd be covered in salt. FWIW ... good, fair puzzle.

[26] I live in Baton Rouge, and I think you're right. I'm assuming the proper French pronunciation would be like a twirling baton (buh tahn)? Everyone pronounces it bat on here. Rouge is pronounce ruje though.

man, i just solved this because i thought step 3 meant cross out every letter except the 2 you just exchanged in step 2 starting with the second letter instead of every alternate letter. so i kept getting imp.

Kind of tough for all of the non-residents of that city. Guess the other 300 million of us just have to solve puzzles according to the local pronunciation. 13,786 people can't be wrong.