On-air challenge: Today's puzzle involves "consonyms," which are words that have the same consonants in the same order but with different vowels. Every answer is the name of a country.
Ex. MINGLE --> MONGOLIA
1. BELIEVE
2. SEWED ON
3. BELEAGUER
4. HINDERS
5. ERASES
6. ENCOURAGE
7. STERILE
8. USER NAME
9. BOATSWAIN
Last week's challenge: This week's challenge comes from the screenwriter and comedian Mike Reiss. Name something scary in two words. Five of the letters are vowels, which are all the same. And the consonants are all Roman numerals. What scary thing is this?
Challenge answer: VOODOO DOLL
Winner: John Stembel of Tucker, GA.
This week's challenge: This week's challenge is a spinoff of my on-air puzzle. Name two countries that have consonyms that are nationalities of other countries. In each case, the consonants in the name of the country are the same consonants in the same order as those in the nationality of another country. No extra consonants can appear in either name. The letter Y isn't used.
If you know the answer to this week's challenge, submit it here by Thursday, March 16th at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you.
Produced by Lennon Sherburne contributed to this story
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.