Country Kitschin’ Quiz

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And we’re joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska. Hiya, Greg.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

Tell me about the puzzle hunt.

The puzzle hunt? The MIT Mystery Hunt?

The big one, right?

Yeah, that happens every—

People come from all around the country.

Hundreds of them.

They gather in this one place to decipher very crafty puzzles put together by last year’s winner, right?

The most complicated puzzles you can imagine over the course of 48 hours or more.

Overnight, right? Sometimes people don’t sleep.

Rarely do people sleep, although it’s kind of a catch-22 because if you stay up all night, your ability to solve puzzles lessens, diminishes considerably.

But someone on the team is up all night.

We have a team of about 25 people, and some people go to bed early and get up early.

Other people stay up all night.

How did your team do this year?

We did not win.

So you’re a loser.

Our goal is to not win.

Our goal is to not win.

Oh, it is?

Yes, because we’ve won in the past.

We’ve run it a number of times, and now we just want to have fun.

I see. If you win, then you…

You run it the next time.

Right, right, right. You shoulder too much responsibility next year.

I mean, you get to show off how much more clever you are than the people who ran it last time.

But you recently did win it a couple years ago.

A couple years ago, yeah.

So if you search for Mystery Hunt, MIT Mystery Hunt, you’ll go right to the MIT Mystery Hunt webpage.

But I understand that you have some mysteries for us.

I do. I have some puzzles, quizzes.

Puzzles? There’s no mystery to them.

Oh, there’s plenty of mystery.

This will be a chore then is what you’re telling me. No.

This week’s puzzle is called Country Kitchen.

Is that spelled with two Ks like we used to do in Kentucky?

It’s actually spelled, funny you should ask, it’s actually spelled K-I-T-S-C-H-I-N apostrophe.

Oh, kitchen.

Because nothing is kitschier than my bad puns.

Okay.

This is true.

And you can probably see what’s coming.

I’m going to give you a sentence with a blank in it, and you fill in the blank with the name of a country so that the sentence sounds like it makes sense.

Aha.

For example, what country name fits in the blank in this sentence?

We’ll take our time today because you’d hate to blank quiz as good as this one.

Russia.

Oh, excellent.

You’d hate to Russia quiz as good as this one.

I was thinking miss a pass up.

Is pass up a –

Yeah, pass up.

It’s a small Asian country.

I laugh in defense.

Bad puns.

That’s right.

You’d hate to rush a quiz as good as this one.

In fact, I think this quiz is so good that when we’re done, you’ll want to do Samoa.

Okay.

Okay.

And if we dare, we could invite our listeners to contribute their own country kitsch to the forum at waywordradio.org if we want more bad puns on the website.

All right.

You ready?

All right.

Yep.

Here we go.

After consuming so much at the all-you-can-eat buffet, I neither want to look at myself in the mirror, blank myself on the scale.

Nor weigh myself on the scale.

Yes, I neither want to look at myself in the mirror nor weigh myself on the scale.

Very good.

Norway, of course, is the country in question.

If global warming makes you blank, is not what you should be driving.

Get a Chevrolet Volt.

You know what a Chevrolet Volt is, right?

Sure.

Like an electric car, right?

It is very much like an electric.

Is it a hybrid or just strictly electric?

Strictly electric.

I want to say that their SUV is in there somewhere, but that doesn’t quite work.

Yeah, I was thinking that too.

Or gas guzzler or…

You’ve got a truck or something.

Martha said one of the words there.

Guzzler?

One of the things to think about in puzzles like this is that…

I have it.

Oh, you got it.

Yes.

Oh, no, wait.

Do I?

Oh, yes, I do.

I do.

Try it out.

If global warming makes you mad, a gas car is not what you should be driving.

Is not what you should be driving.

Mad a gas car.

That’s pretty clever.

Here’s one for you.

Donald Trump’s coiffure is so stiff, it’s hard to believe that his hair blank.

Is not a weasel?

Yeah, he’s not a weasel.

It’s a country in very South America.

Wait, one more time, please, Greg.

Donald Trump’s coiffure is so stiff, it’s hard to believe that his hair blank.

Israel.

Israel.

Oh.

Israel.

It’s hard to believe that his hair is real.

How about another one?

You can spot the guy what’s been lying in the sun face down.

Because he’s the one blank.

I’ll give it to you again.

You can spot the guy what’s been lying in the sun face down.

Because he’s the one blank.

Something red, right?

No?

I didn’t say burned, but…

He hasn’t been in the sun that long.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it was a lot.

Okay, then tan.

Boutan?

Yeah, a lot of tans.

A lot of tans out there in your country.

It doesn’t work.

Former Soviet Republic borders the Aral Sea, and its capital is Tashkent.

Tajikistan.

Not that one.

No, it’s not?

Kind of tan?

No.

He’s the one Uzbekistan.

Oh, Uzbekistan.

Right?

He’s been lost by his name.

That’s why you had to do the accent like this, so you could drop the H’s, right?

So we could drop the H’s, exactly.

There we go.

Very nice.

Oh, wow.

Craig.

I’ve got one more hard one I could send you off with.

Sure.

If you’d like.

Always.

Does a bear, when he’s claiming a new blank, the walls with his scent?

Cave?

Lair.

Cave.

Rub?

No.

Smear?

Where do bears find themselves?

In a cave.

Denmark?

Oh, cute.

There we go, Denmark.

Bear claiming a new den, mark the walls with his scent.

Oh, man, Greg, those were tough.

Well, I wanted to mark your walls with my scent.

You have marked.

Never mind.

This was super-duper fun.

Thank you so much for your puzzle, sir.

You are very welcome.

It’s my pleasure.

Yeah, thanks, Greg.

And if you’d like to talk with us about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words and how we use them, call us.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.