A Puzzle to Celebrate the Release of Bad Girl

Okay, I admit it. I've been harboring a secret.

I have a crush on Will Shortz.

Who is Will Shortz?

According to Wikipedia, "he is the only person known to hold a college degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles, after designing his own degree program" at Indiana University.

Will founded the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 1978. That tournament was the subject of the 2006 documentary, Wordplay . I blogged about that film and Will Shortz last July here.

For the past twenty years, Will has been the puzzlemaster on NPR's Weekend Edition. For fourteen of those twenty years, Will has also been the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times.

Will and I meet twice a weekend. The first time, he offers up a weekly puzzle on NPR. The second time, he publishes the devilish New York Times Sunday crossword.

To celebrate the release of Bad Girl tomorrow (and my infatuation with this man), I'm going to offer an autographed copy of the novel to the first ten people who solve this week's NPR puzzle and email me with the answer I came up with (there may be another answer, but I'm going with mine).

Here are the rules:

The contest begins with the publication of this post and ends at midnight (CST) on Wednesday. DO NOT ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS AREA! Email me at mayareynoldswriter@sbcglobal.net with your answer and a mailing address. The first ten people who email me with the answer will receive an autographed copy of Bad Girl.

Here's the puzzle:

You can make a lot of different words out of the word CHARADES. I'm looking for the two words that can be made, which together use up all the letters in CHARADES and which are synonyms of each other.

Good luck.