I solved a puzzle a few months ago that involved Urdu. The clue was something like "language akin to Hindi".

I was sure about the answer; back in the day, my boyfriend used to run around with the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation crowd in India. He told me Urdu and Hindi are supposed to be almost identical languages, and the primary difference is that Hindi is written in Devanagari script and is mainly used by Hindus, while Urdu is written in Arabic script and is mainly used by Muslim Indians. That, and some words are different.

So I considered this a "gimme" and confidently wrote in URDU, just as I would've written VERA for "aloe ____" or _O_TH for a 5-letter "bridge position". Later on, I began to have some doubts, as some of the other answers didn't seem to fit, but to make a long story short, URDU was indeed the correct answer.
a fellow classmate | 12.30.07 - 8:59 pm | #

I didn't know that about Hindi and Urdu, E. Thanks for the info!

And yeah, bridge involves __ST and _O_TH. I'm adding those to my mental list of answers you can't complete right away, like E__DE (evade or elude).
Orange | Homepage | 12.31.07 - 9:37 am | #