Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sphinx.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar 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