No wonder I couldn’t figure out last week’s Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle: the solution, revealed this morning, required that you hear the names Aaron and Erin as soundalikes. For some people they are, just as marry, Mary, and merry are soundalikes. But not for everyone.
Will Shortz apologized this morning (with a slight laugh) to anyone for whom the names are not soundalikes. Does he test the Sunday puzzles on human subjects before using? Does anyone approve the puzzles for use? O whither respect for regional differences in pronunciation? O whither the gatekeepers?
A further complication that Elaine would like me to point out: solving the puzzle also required that you accept Aaron in reverse as yielding Nora. Uh, no.
And, I’ll add, solving the puzzle also required you to think — as Shortz does — that Aaron and Nora share a short e as a vowel sound. (That’s what he said.) Again, no — Nora ends in a schwa: ə.
[Can names be considered homophones? I have dodged that question while writing this post. I‘ve e-mailed NPR about this puzzle and am wondering if I’ll hear back.]
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Whither the gatekeepers?
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For that matter when were the last time those three names were common? Nora? 1930s as in Nick and Nora from “The Thin Man” by Dashiell Hammett?
The Social Security Administration data about the popularity of names has Nora rising from no. 367 in 2003 to no. 30 in 2020. Aaron was no. 63 in 2020, its lowest ranking since 1969. Erin was no. 520 in 2020, down from a high of no. 18 in 1983.
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