April Foolery

The concept of 'april fool's jokes' on the internet is particularly annoying, in a medium where most of the information out there is dubious, false or mistaken already. This apparently worrying story is an april fool's joke, actually part of an elaborate ARG (alternate reality game) to promote a new NineInchNails album. Or is it? Are the claims that it is false actually the joke? It's all very irritating.

So instead, I refer you to the austere and somewhat humourless world of NPR, whose weekly 'puzzler' goes as follows:

Take the names of two U.S. States, mix them all together, then rearrange the letters to form the names of two other U.S. States. What states are these?

Ooh, seems tricky. Except... there's one particular trivial solution. Is that what was meant? Is this seemingly difficult puzzle also part of some april fool conspiracy? Oh, I give up. I'm going back to bed until I can actually trust anything I read again (which is never).