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There's a car that exists. If you take off the first and last letter it's still a word. If you take off the first and last letter again it's still a word. If you take off the first and last letter again it's still a word. What is the car?

Teri
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5 Answers5

68

The answer is

The Mitsubishi Eclipse:

 ECLIPSE
  CLIPS
   LIP
    I
Rubio
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Using a list of US models and a list of classic cars, a python script, and a big list of words from SCOWL I get 6 answers including the one already given, but some rely on words consisting of a single consonant so are pushing it, while others, although the words appear in SCOWL, don't really appear to have English definitions (or only as names):

avenger venge eng n

classic lassi ass s

eclipse clips lip i

atalanta talant alan la

trident riden ide d

variant arian ria i (the Variant was a 70s VW)

The last is the only one I consider a true additional answer.

Definitions of the non-obvious words:

Venge archaic: avenge

Eng the same as engma (IPA ŋ)

Lassi an Indian drink

Talant: I'm not sure what it's doing in SCOWL, it appears only as Welsh, French and a proper noun.

Alan is no better

Riden An obsolete preterit plural of ride (n).

Ide a fish, common in cryptic crosswords

Arian Relating to the doctrine, taught by Arius, that Christ the Son was not consubstantial with God the Father.

D, N and S could be deuterium, nitrogen and sulphur, or the names of the letters.

Note that I excluded anything with digits or spaces in. Here's the script if anyone wants a play (but you might have to lose some of the set-formatting depending on your words file). I also piped it through sort and uniq:

import re
words = set(open("words.txt").read().split())
words = set([w.split("/")[0] for w in words])
with open('cars2.txt','r') as f:
    for line in f:
        line =line[:-1].lower()
        if re.match('^[a-z]{7,}$',line):
            a,b,c=line[1:-1],line[2:-2],line[3:-3]
            if line in words and a in words and b in words and c in words:
                print line, a,b,c
Chris H
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    Very smart way to find the answers! – Melkor Jan 19 '17 at 17:03
  • @Melkor I'd done something similar recently, looking for words containing a group of letters for a project name, so the code and big word list were (much) easier than finding the lists of car names. – Chris H Jan 19 '17 at 17:28
  • Thanks for the answer, I never knew about SCOWL but it seems really useful... – Melkor Jan 19 '17 at 17:39
  • @Melkor I'm not the only one to use it here – Chris H Jan 19 '17 at 17:52
  • what's "n", "s", and "d"? I've never seen these words before – Cruncher Jan 19 '17 at 18:33
  • @Cruncher that's why I'm not too happy with those sets and only propose variant (even though I don't know who made it) as a new answer. SCOWL has those 3 single letters as words, and I make some guesses as to why in my second spoiler. – Chris H Jan 19 '17 at 18:55
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    @ChrisH Lol, I skimmed it several times looking for reference to n, s, and d and it looked to me like you ignored it, which is why I commented. I see it now though :) – Cruncher Jan 19 '17 at 18:57
  • @Cruncher back on the desktop I can see why it's a little buried – Chris H Jan 20 '17 at 09:09
  • an IDE in the context of programming is also known as an "integrated design environment". – user64742 Jan 21 '17 at 03:25
  • @TheGreatDuck I've only heard it spelt out as an initialism (and it's the sort of thing that does come up in conversation where I work). So even if acronyms were OK here I wouldn't count IDE. How do you pronounce it? – Chris H Jan 21 '17 at 08:02
  • @ChrisH what do you mean by "pronounce"? It's an acronym. You don't pronounce it... – user64742 Jan 21 '17 at 08:06
  • @TheGreatDuck you've just defined an initialism (first example Google gives me is BBC). An acronym is normally pronounced as a word (e.g. NATO, LASER - the latter is normally treated as a normal word). IDE spelt out is no more a word than BBC. But if it sounded like eyed it could be treated as one word if it was sufficiently well known – Chris H Jan 21 '17 at 08:36
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An alternative solution to the other posted, even though I think the existing one is "better"...

A Mclaren

Clare is a county in the Republic of Ireland, as well as the name of other places, and is also a forename (yes, a proper name hence the "better" comment above).
Lar is the common gibbon, as well as a place name in both India and Iran.
A is the indefinite article.

Jonathan Allan
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Note: I'm new to this site and I looked on Meta for a post regarding loopholes and did not find anything regarding this. If this is considered 'not funny,' please let me know.

An alternative answer (but probably not the originally intended one) could also be

Fiat 500, or any other car with only numbers is its model name, because there are no letters to remove. As the question is tagged 'wordplay', I thought it might be relevant.

Arc676
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    But isn't 500 a bit too short to remove the outer characters three times? – M Oehm Jan 19 '17 at 09:17
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    @MOehm The joke would be that you can remove as many as you want, because there are no "letters". Again, this might be considered unfunny, but I didn't find this under the standard loopholes. Maybe I missed it? – Arc676 Jan 19 '17 at 09:19
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    @Arc676 Some people might consider it breaking the second loophole. That loophole essentially is applying lateral thinking to a puzzle that doesn't have that tag. – Nzall Jan 19 '17 at 15:51
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    500 not a word? – Destructible Lemon Jan 20 '17 at 08:16
  • @DestructibleWatermelon Fair point, but (and I'm really stretching things here) the New Oxford American Dictionary definition for "word" doesn't specify that it has to consist of letters. But I do agree that it's validity as a word is debatable. – Arc676 Jan 20 '17 at 08:31
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    500 is a number, five hundred is two words – Destructible Lemon Jan 20 '17 at 08:43
  • @DestructibleWatermelon Feel free to downvote as you see fit. I'll let the overall vote count reflect its validity. – Arc676 Jan 20 '17 at 09:56
1

The answer is:

The Mitsubishi Eclipse.

This is how:

Eclipse
Clips
Lip
I

Rubio
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garvm
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    That's great. Why does this answer look very familiar? (this answer has already been given.) Welcome to Puzzling SE, you may want to look around and read other answers to make sure you don't post a duplicate answer. – Rubio Jan 19 '17 at 00:15