Is there room for one more trivia-questions thread?
I’ve prepared eight lists (labeled A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,A6,A7,A8) of U.S. cities based on well-defined criteria. Your mission is to identify the criteria.
I hope others will post unrelated list puzzles; we can work on them in parallel. The next submission could be list B, then C and so on. (I’m not worried about what comes after Z. If there are even 5 submissions this thread will have exceeded expectation!)
Of the eight lists I prepared I think A1 and A8 may be most difficult to guess, so I’ll start with just these. Ask me yes/no questions if you wish.
List A1. This is actually a long ordered list, but when the same city fits into consecutive slots I deleted all but one instance. (This same comment applies to all eight lists.)
Charleston, SC
New Orleans, LA
San Francisco, CA
St. Louis, MO
Los Angeles, CA
Houston, TX
San Antonio, TX
List A8. This is actually a long ordered list, but when the same city fits into consecutive slots I’ve deleted all but one instance. (Don’t read special significance into the List labels A1, A8 etc…)
Providing more lists should ease the puzzle since the lists are closely related.
List A2. This is actually a long ordered list, but when the same city fits into consecutive slots I deleted all but one instance. Criterion related to that of List A1 (and both criteria depend on the same arbitrary integer.)
Charleston, SC
New Orleans, LA
St. Louis, MO
San Francisco, CA
St. Louis, MO
Los Angeles, CA
San Jose, CA
Los Angeles, CA
List A7. This is actually a long ordered list, but when the same city fits into consecutive slots I deleted all but one instance. Criterion related to that of List A8.
The lists were all derived ultimately from one very very long list that everyone’s heard of (or rather 24 versions of that list).
Each ordered list had 24 large-population cities before I pruned away consecutive same cities. (A more informative version of List A8 without the deletions is shown below.)
Lists A1, A2, A3, A4 form a plausible “obvious” quartet. I’ve posted A1, A2; am reluctant to post A3, A4 as they might be too helpful.
Lists A5, A6, A7, A8, and then A9, A10, A11… form a natural sequence. I’ve posted A8 and A7 but A6 and especially A5 might be too helpful. I may post A9 or even A10 but they might be too tedious and not helpful enough.
More informative version of List A8. With the deletions restored it is an ordered list of 24 cities.
Charleston, SC
Boston, MA
Boston
Boston
Boston
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia
Baltimore, MD
St. Louis, MO
Chicago, IL
Brooklyn, NY
St. Louis, MO
St. Louis
Detroit, MI
Detroit
Detroit
Los Angeles, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia
Philadelphia
Houston, TX
Houston
Houston
Houston
Help, help! Somebody post a List B for us to guess about in parallel with Lists A. Don’t make me feel like a lonely sadist!
This is NOT the answer to your puzzling list, but I’ll Spoiler-protect it anyway.
WILLIAM shatner and
PATRICK stewart were the early actors who played Captain commanding USS Enterprise.
JONathan frakes played W. Riker who once skippered the Enterprise and was eventually promoted to Captain.
But after those first three, the coincidences peter out.
(Though Stephen COLLINs portrayed Captain Will Decker on the Enterprise.)
NO! (A hint would be nice.) I intend to be somewhat sadistically stingy with clues and hints for my lists, so I want you to do the same.
I peeked at pjd’s spoiler, but it didn’t help me. Assuming these are people, I’m afraid I just don’t know them. The only Jodie I’ve heard of is Jodie Foster and I don’t know any Collin at all.
Googling Ncuti quickly brought the solution to light. I don’t feel bad to fail: I knew about exactly zero to do with Hocto Word and probably zero of the 14 people.
(In fact, given my ignorance I’ll consider it a moral victory to come up with the loosely related series: William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, …)
