PITTSBURGH PUZZLE Last week's Pittsburgh Puzzle Parry-In-A-Pen Match was over before the sleepy BE staff even puttered into the office on their company Vespas. Will Milford cracked the code just hours after the puzzle was released early Wednesday morning. We received hundreds of entries before the Friday deadline and by then more than three-dozen individuals had solved the puzzle on their own. Several dozen others solved the puzzle after receiving a subtle clue. For those who missed it, here was the puzzle: JG43, RH46, ET56, LC58, SD59, DM97, AJ98, JL03 And here is the answer: Judy Garland, 1943, Girl Crazy
- - - - We'd like to acknowledge the first ten people after Will who answered the puzzle correctly. They are, in order: Philip Hall
Many entrants were tripped up by Angelina Jolie, who also starred in Girl, Interrupted. However, that film was released in 1999, not 1998. Several suggested the letters and numbers represented the names of chromosomes and, now that we think about it, we're not sure they don't. The most common incorrect guesses surmised that the numbers indicated not years in which the actresses made a film beginning with the letters "GI," but rather years in which those actresses were divorced. After a hasty check we were surprised to learn this correlation holds true (or nearly does) for half of these women. It's both a strange coincidence and a sad comment on 20th century Hollywood marriage. We received many valiant, unsuccessful (and frequently half-finished) stabs at a solution, but our favorite this week came from Anthony Vitigliano: I think it has something to do with Australian cricket players, their first and middle initials and the year they were born… in reverse. Examples: RH Sams born 1964 <— reverse = RH46
Presumably, Anthony is still working on that.
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