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Try:
awk -F\* '{cur=$1; gsub(/[^[:alnum:]]/, "", cur); if (!a[tolower(cur)]++) print}'
or the same a abit shorter:
awk -F\* '{s=$1; gsub(/[^[:alnum:]]/,x,s)} !a[tolower(s)]++'

Is * the only non alphanumeric character in the input file as that makes it easy...but is that really the case as your original post had others...so if you define it clearly a better awk solution can...

$
$ cat f42
"Heh, heh. Those darn ninjas. They're _____."*wacky
The "canebrake", "timber" & "pygmy" are types of what?*rattlesnakes
Science : The second space shuttle was named ------*challenger...

awk '{s=tolower($0);gsub("[^a-z]","",s);x[s]=$0} END {for(i in x) print x[i]}' file