Oct 14, 2017
RAY: A friend of ours who runs, for lack of a better term, a small business in our fair city -- he's a loan shark actually -- came across this word some years ago and sent it to Tom, thinking it might be a good puzzler. Tom obviously lost it. But he also sent it to Alan Feldman, who recently sent it to me!
Here it is:
Give me a word with three, consecutive double letters. I'll give you a couple of words that almost qualify, but don't. For example, the word committee, c-o-m-m-i-t-t-e-e. It would be great except for the i that sneaks in there. Or Mississippi -- M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. If you could take out those i's it would work. But there is a word that has three consecutive pairs of letters and to the best of my knowledge this may be the only word. Of course there are probably 500 more but I can only think of one. What is the word?
RAY: And the word is --
TOM AND RAY: Bookkeeper.
RAY: Or bookkeep, or bookkeeping, B-O-O-K-K-E-E. Pretty good, eh?
TOM: Very, very good.
RAY: Someone sent in good deed. But that's not one word. And the Scrabble crowd sent us heelloop, hooffooted and veneerroom, but bookkeeper is our answer.
TOM: That's right and it's better than any of those stupid other words.
RAY: Yeah, and by the way, I mean, you can't go using the Internet to solve these puzzles. It's like sitting down and doing a crossword puzzle with a crossword puzzle dictionary sitting next to you.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: It's like you've given up on life, you might as well as start wearing sweatpants.
TOM: We're asking you to think!
