On-air challenge: This is a phonetic puzzle. If I asked you to say a letter of the alphabet before one of the gifts of the Three Wise Men to get a boy’s name, you’d put L before MYRRH to get ELMER. Now try these.
 

Say a letter of the alphabet before … to get …

1. … a decoration on a gift … a thin musical instrument
2. … a carpenter’s tool … a biblical patriarch
3. … a boundary of a field … a word meaning “prevention of a team from scoring”
4. … the sound a cat makes … part of a car that clears a windshield
5. … the opposite of war … a monocle, for example
6. … where a judge presides … a person who accompanies someone on a date
7. … a son of Adam and Eve … a word meaning “difficult to understand”
8. … a mean, mixed-breed dog … a card game
9. … a word meaning “having a raspy voice” … a fish that swims upright
10. … a seabird with a harsh call … a dog with floppy ears

Last week’s challenge: Last week’s challenge came from listener Curtis Guy, of Buffalo, N.Y. Name a certain breakfast cereal character. Remove the third, fifth, and sixth letters and read the result backward. You’ll get a word that describes this breakfast cereal character. What is it?
 
Challenge answer: Toucan Sam, Mascot

Winner: John Weaver of Tacoma, WA.

This week’s challenge: This week’s challenge comes from listener Joe Krozel, of Creve Coeur, MO. Think of a place in America. Two words, 10 letters altogether. The first five letters read the same forward and backward. The last five letters spell something found in the body. What place is this?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, October 10th, 2024 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.

If you enjoy sliced bananas with your cereal or drinking a banana smoothie, you might want to savor it while you can. Fresh bananas could be one of the first casualties of the dockworkers’ strike.

The strike, now in its third day, has halted traffic at ports along the east coast and the gulf coast which handle an estimated three-quarters of all banana imports.

That includes the port of Wilmington, Del., which is the number one gateway for bananas coming into the U.S.

Ships from Dole and Chiquita — two of the world’s biggest banana producers — ferry more than 1.5 million tons of bananas to Wilmington every year from Central and South America.

Many of those bananas are then trucked to M. Levin & Co. in Philadelphia — which has been trading bananas in the region for four generations.

“The bananas are on the water for about seven days,” says Tracie Levin, who helps to oversee daily operations at the firm. “They come through the ports here. We pick them up. We ripen them in the ripening rooms for a few days, and then they go out to their stores and that’s how they get to consumers in the area.”

M. Levin & Company typically handles about 35,000 cartons of bananas in its Philadelphia ripening rooms every week. The wholesaler supplies big box stores and corner markets as far west as Chicago.

courtesy M. Levin & Co.

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

courtesy M. Levin & Co.

That normally smooth and largely invisible process is one of many that have been interrupted by the dockworkers’ strike, which has halted shipments of everything from auto parts to wine.

Levin is hoping for a quick resolution.

“We want a fair deal for everyone, from the ports to the workers,” she says. “Our country relies very heavily on our ports so this is definitely going to have a ripple-down effect if it doesn’t come to an end soon.”

In the banana business for over a century

Of all the goods now treading water in shipping containers, few are more sensitive to the passage of time than fresh fruit. Auto parts and wine generally don’t spoil if they’re stuck in transit for a little while. But for bananas, the clock is ticking.

“These bananas do have a shelf life, even when they’re sitting in the refrigerated containers,” Levin says. “If they sit too long they will dry out. They will not ripen properly. It’s really important that they get unloaded before they end up sitting out there too long and just become trash.”

Tracie Levin’s great-grandfather began ripening bananas on Dock Street in Philadelphia in 1906. One of his original wagons is still on display in the company’s warehouse.

courtesy M. Levin & Co.

Advertisement

hide caption

toggle caption

courtesy M. Levin & Co.

Advertisement

It’s something Levin knows very well, since her family has been in the banana business for over a century.

“My great-grandfather in 1906 started ripening bananas on Dock Street in Philadelphia in the cellar,” she says.

In those early days, bananas arrived by the boatload still attached to giant stalks. Today the fruit comes in cardboard boxes, stacked in refrigerated shipping containers. Levin’s company handles about 35,000 of those 40-pound cartons every week, supplying big box stores and corner retailers as far west as Chicago.

Bananas are ripening in a warehouse in Kingston-upon-Thames, England, on February 1954.

Fox Photos/Getty Images/Hulton Archive

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Fox Photos/Getty Images/Hulton Archive

People may soon go bananas

Levin’s company stockpiled extra truckloads of green bananas before the strike, and they do have some ability to slow the ripening process — but only for so long.

The wholesaler has enough fruit on hand to last a week or so, but after that, look out.

“Our banana supply will be dwindling if the ships aren’t getting the fruit off,” Levin says. “The consumer may see a banana shortage at their local grocery stores very soon.”

For now, grocery shoppers might want to pick up a few extra bananas, just in case. But of course, those won’t stay fresh long either.