WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel get ready for Memorial Day with a show about codes.
Last week's challenge
Think of a six-letter word beginning with V that means "assorted." If you add the word GATE somewhere in the middle of this word, you'll get a synonym of the original word. What are the words?
Answer: The words are VARIED and VARIEGATED.
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: CODES
On-air questions: On May 24, 1844, the message "What hath God wrought" was the first public telegram sent using the original version of Samuel Morse's code that he developed for the electric telegraph. It's time to get out your Orphan Annie decoder pin, because we have some questions about other famous codes.
1. What nine-letter word beginning with S is given to the system of coded communication via two flags held in different positions by the sender of the message?
2. A sculpture called Kryptos features a four-part coded message, the last part of which remains one of the most famous unsolved codes. Appropriately, this sculpture is located on the grounds of what government agency?
3. Commonly called the Hays Code, and in effect from 1930 to 1968, a set of guidelines named for its chief author William H. Hays governed the practices of what industry?
4. In June of 1974, the first product was scanned by using a UPC (Universal Product Code). It was a pack of what product produced by the Wrigley Company?
5. The first U.S. President to be given a Secret Service code name was Harry S Truman. What seven-letter word was used as his code name, which perhaps would have been more appropriate for Dwight Eisenhower?
Extra credit
1. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) assigns a three-letter code to many of the world's airports. To what city would you be traveling if the IATA code on your luggage tag was either ORY or CDG?
2. The phrase "code talkers," while used in various contexts, is most closely associated with the U.S. Marine Corps' recruitment of Native Americans during World War II to help transmit secret messages. What Native American language was used for this purpose?
This week's challenge
Think of a six-letter word starting with E associated with a famous codebreaking event in history. Change one letter to an R and rearrange the result to get another word associated with that event. What are the words?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. Semaphore
2. The CIA
3. The motion picture industry
4. Chewing gum
5. "General"
Extra credit
1. Paris (ORY is Orly Airport, and CDG is Charles de Gaulle Airport)
2. Navajo
