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The sad thing about this week's ScuttleButton puzzle is that Edward Snowden has already revealed the answer.

ScuttleButton, of course, is that once-a-week waste of time exercise in which each Tuesday or Wednesday 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 — seven or eight days after the puzzle first goes up. So you should try and get your answer in as soon as possible. But logistically, you have about a week to submit your guess.

Here are the buttons used and the answer to last week's puzzle.

Re-elect Nixon in '72 — President Nixon carried 49 states against Democratic challenger George McGovern.

Member/Kennedy for President Club — Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.

Senator D Huddleston — Not sure, but this could be from the Kentucky Democrat who served from 1973-84.

Praise Allah — The Islam prayer (officially, "Praise be to Allah").

picture button of the Three Stooges' Mo Howard — I soitenly had to include this one.

So, when you combine Re + Member + D + Allah + Mo, you may just very well end up with ...

Remember the Alamo! The famous expression travelers use when looking for a car rental at the airport.

The winner, chosen completely at random, is Jackie Kennedy of Paducah, Ky. Yes, that Jackie Kennedy. She gets not only the coveted Political Junkie t-shirt — but the Official No Prize Button as well!

NPR Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep recently traveled to Damascus for a series of reports on the ongoing war in Syria. He sent this postcard from the road.

Dear Salt:

On my first day in Damascus, I went walking in the ancient bazaar — narrow stone-paved streets surrounding a great stone mosque. The mosque is so old, it used to be a church during the Roman Empire, and before it was a church, it was a pagan temple. The bazaar is surely as old as the mosque, for Damascus is a historic city of trade.

My colleague Nishant Dahiya directed me toward an incredible aroma he'd detected at the door of a spice shop. I bent down and sniffed the gray stuff. It was oregano. It filled a bag about the size of a five-gallon gas can. The smell was strong but not hot, rich but sharp. The shopkeeper, noting my appreciation, grabbed a scoop and put a little on my hand to taste.

Some days later, we were exceedingly hungry while driving on a highway outside Homs. Our driver, Neda, pulled over at a roadside stand. "They have za'atar," she said. Nishant knew exactly what she meant. I'd never heard the word.

Three men lounged on plastic chairs at the stand, which was right by the highway median, in a clearing in the bushes. One worked a black baking oven. I never found out what the other two did. A glass case held several of the round, flat Middle Eastern flatbreads called khubs. Some were smeared with cheese; some with a paprika sauce; and some with za'atar. I chose the latter two, and the man shoved them into the hot coal oven with a paddle — the way an Italian cook might insert a pizza.

The paddle was one of only two special utensils the cook used. The other utensil was a common tree saw, with an orange handle, absolutely identical to the one in my storage closet at home. I presume he used the saw to hack down roadside trees to feed the fire.

When the bread emerged, I smelled an incredible aroma that I knew I had experienced somewhere before. After a moment, the image came to me: Damascus, the bazaar, the great bag of oregano just a few days ago.

"It has other ingredients, too," said Nishant. "Sesame seeds crushed into it." He said it's eaten all over the Middle East.

I immediately wanted to write you about this, Salt, but Nishant discouraged me. He said za'atar is far too common to be interesting. He reacted as if I had proposed to ask you the story behind ketchup. And this made me wonder: what is the story of ketchup?

But I digress. Over the hours that followed, it became apparent that Nishant might just be right. It seemed that I was the only person around who did not know from za'atar. Completely by chance, I heard from a friend in Pakistan who loves it. Then the subject came up over dinner in Damascus, and a friend informed us that when she was growing up, she was urged at school exam time to "Eat your za'atar!" Apparently, some people think it's brain food.

Anyway, the roadside serving of za'atar on bread was an astonishingly simple food, simple enough to love it. The za'atar was just spread over the hot bread like butter on toast. That was it. I'd eat it again. While I wait to encounter it again, Salt, here's what I want to know: Where does za'atar come from? How long has it been around? What, besides oregano, is in it?

And is it brain food?

— Steve

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For the last five years, graduation day has been as much a time for apprehension as for celebration.

Even now, with the Great Recession over, many recent graduates are still struggling to turn their high school and college diplomas into tickets for a better life. The unemployment rate for Americans under age 25 remains more than double the overall rate of 7.5 percent.

But experts are predicting this year's graduates — whether from high school, community college or a four-year college — should have better career launches than at any time since 2008. Companies expect to hire about 2.1 percent more college graduates from the Class of 2013, and will offer a higher overall starting salary of $44,928 — up 5.3 percent over last year, according to the spring survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

If you woke up this morning thinking, "I really need to hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer say the words 'noisily unwrapping her Twizzlers,'" have I got good news for you.

Margot Adler had a story on today's Morning Edition about Broadway audiences and whether they're getting ruder, given recent incidents involving the aforementioned Twizzlers, rude texting, talking, and other interruptions. She went to the TKTS line (where you wait for discount Broadway tickets) and asked some of the folks what they thought.

Some offered the usual explanations — say, that we're all used to sitting in our living rooms watching alone, and we don't remember what it's like to use our polite-company manners anymore. One speculated that as theater has gotten more casual (less dressy, drinks allowed), people's behavior has lost its polite formality.

Jan Simpson, the writer of one blog about Broadway, actually calls herself "old-fashioned" for wanting people to sit quietly while watching a show, which I can tell you caused the writer of one blog about popular culture to clutch her metaphorical pearls in horror at the thought that there's something modern about being a disruptive buffoon. Adler acknowledges that in fact, "in Shakespeare's time, they threw food on the stage." Of course, in Shakespeare's time, they died of various things we've cured, so let's not embrace that too eagerly.

What emerges is partly a generational issue setting younger audiences who want to tweet about the show while it's happening (mon dieu!) against older, perhaps more experienced audiences who take a less consumer-oriented and more art-patron-oriented approach to attendance. But surely, a person of any age is capable of doing without Twitter for a couple of hours. I can do without Twitter for a couple of hours, for example, and I've been known to tweet about people clipping their nails on the Metro.

It's a good thing, indeed, to avoid taking theater and making it a cloistered place for elites only (not that ticket prices don't get you a good part of the way there). But it's also a good thing to avoid giving free passes out of Rudeness Jail for everyone who simply prefers not to iron anything except cargo shorts.

Okay, okay, I don't really care if you wear cargo shorts. But the pockets should not be stuffed with things that beep, smoke, smell like garlic, or tempt you to whisper.

Deal?