Wednesday, January 16, 2013

One Too Many

Q:

Take the three original TV networks:  A B C, N B C and  C B S.  This gives you a pool of the letters A, B, C, N, and S.  Add the letter L to this pool and rearrange the result to name a well known movie, repeating letters where necessary.  Two of the three networks tried unsuccessfully to air a TV series based on this movie.  What movie is it?

Photo courtesy of 

A:

The image and title refer to a bogey.  

Casablanca

9 comments:

  1. CBS was the onlt network with the sense not to try.

    Time to watch inauguration highlights.

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  2. There's a connection to this week's Will Shortz NPR puzzle.

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  3. The key to success is putting the fundamentals into practice.

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  4. The key to my having solved this mid-week puzzle so quickly was the fact that our palette of letters includes only a single vowel.

    I've thought of only three Movie titles using only a single vowel: The first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, "Flight"; The Warren Beatty movie "Reds"; and the answer to this week's mid-week puzzle!

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    Replies
    1. I just now thought of a fourth: that delightful comedy with George Burns and John Denver, "Oh, God!"

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    2. Oops... The first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture was "Wings", not "Flight". Of course, it still uses only the letter I as its only vowel. Also, "Jezebel" (1938) is fifth example, "Gigi" (1958) is a sixth, "Hud" (1963) is a seventh, "Cocoon" (1985) is an eighth, and "Ghost" (1990) is a ninth, "Milk" (2008) is a tenth, and finally, "The Help" (2011) is an eleventh.

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    3. "Nuts" and "Tron" also come to mind. But we should probably think of multisyllable movies like "Gigli", "Star Wars", "Se7en", "Manhattan" and "Batman".

      And where would "THX 1138" and "8 1/2" fit in?

      Or the hybrid "Stalag 17"?

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