Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
March is Women's History Month!

It's ScuttleButton Time!

Ken Rudin collection

The fiscal cliff drama? Over. The Redskins' season? Kaput.

There's only one thing left. ScuttleButton.

ScuttleButton, of course, is that once-a-week waste of time exercise in which each Monday or Tuesday I put up a vertical display of buttons on this site. Your job is to simply take one word (or concept) per button, add 'em up, and, hopefully, you will arrive at a famous name or a familiar expression. (And seriously, by familiar, I mean it's something that more than one person on Earth would recognize.)

For years, a correct answer chosen at random would get his or her name posted in this column, an incredible honor in itself. Now the stakes are even higher. Thanks to the efforts of the folks at Talk of the Nation, that person also hears their name mentioned on the Wednesday show (by me) and receives a Political Junkie t-shirt in the bargain. Is this a great country or what?

You can't use the comments box at the bottom of the page for your answer. Send submission (plus your name and city/state — you won't win without that) to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

(Why do people keep forgetting to include their name and city/state?)

And, by adding your name to the Political Junkie mailing list, you will be among the first on your block to receive notice about the column and the puzzle. Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Or you can make sure to get an automatic RSS feed whenever a new Junkie post goes up by clicking here.

Good luck!

By the way, I always announce the winner on Wednesday's Junkie segment on TOTN. But with it now less than a week until the next show, your window for getting your answer in is smaller.

Here are the buttons used and the answer to the last puzzle:

picture button of a Boston Red Sox player with his arms raised — The famous shot of catcher Carlton Fisk, his body language urging the ball to stay fair, whose dramatic extra-innings home run against the Cincinnati Reds in the 1975 World Series forced a Game Seven.

Kill the Death Tax/Don't Wound It — Conservative button urging the end of the tax that's imposed on property before it is handed down to heirs.

Re-elect U.S. Senator Cliff Hansen — A Wyoming Republican, he won a second term in 1972.

So, when you combine Fisk + Kill + Cliff, you may just very well end up with ...

Fiscal Cliff. The end-of-the-year crisis brought about by Congress' inability to deal with important matters in time.

The winner, chosen completely at random, is ... Beth Riches of South Bend, Ind. Beth gets not only the coveted Political Junkie t-shirt — but the Official No Prize Button as well!

And don't forget to check out this week's Political Junkie column, which focuses on taking the political temperature of Speaker John Boehner, who has had a rocky couple of weeks. Plus: a look at all the new members of the 113th Congress. Click here to read the column.

Also: the previous column is a review of those in the political and media world who died in 2012. You can read that column here.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.