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From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.puzzle
Subject: Xenia and New York  * ANSWER *
Message-ID: <1017@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 03:37:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.1017
Posted: Tue Aug 20 03:37:04 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 01:06:24 EDT
Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept
Lines: 22

I just realized that I never gave the answer to a puzzle I posted a few
weeks ago.  (Nobody else gave it a try, anyway.)  Sorry.
	The following is a restatement, not a quotation -- I don't have
it stored anywhere.  
	The question:  What do Xenia (Ohio) and New York (NY) have in common,
a world distinction not shared by any other U.S. city?  That is, there are a
number of cities in the world with this distinction, but the only two in
the U.S. are Xenia and New York.

	Answer: each is the largest city in the world for a given letter
of the alphabet.  There are problems with transliteration, etc, but in principleyou could come up with a list of 26: the largest city whose name (rendered
in our alphabet) begins with A, the largest for B, etc.  Only two out of
these 26 would be in the U.S., New York and Xenia.
	The puzzle was posed and answered a couple of years ago by Isaac
Asimov.  He attempted to give the whole list of 26, but I don't have that
available.  Undoubtedly some changes would be needed to update it, but
I'm sure New York has retained its place.  

-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar