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March 13, 2009
According to the Boston Globe, how many bags (paper + plastic) do grocery stores give out in one year in Massachusetts? (The population is 6.3 million.) You win if you come within an order of magnitude. You don’t, however, win anything.
The answer is in the first comment.
February 4, 2009
In a conversation with Gene Koo, a mishearing turned into a pun minus one term. I twittered a request for people to fill in the following blank:
Turning _____ into filesharers.
Unfortunately, I added that the blank should rhyme with “plows” instead of “swords” because I made a mistake. Here are some of the tweets I received:
fanf: the copyright lobby want to shove swords into filesharers
cfigallo: Beating hoarders into filesharers
digiphile: “Beating Boards into filesharers”?
davidgammel: How about ‘Beating Cabinet Appointees into Tax Filers’?
winemad: hordes?
dhmspector: “Lawyers” … obviously.
You are encouraged to best the Twitterers.
January 6, 2009
Einstein’s brain has its own Wikipedia entry. There is in fact a Wikipedia category for articles about famous body parts. Without referring to that page, what body parts of which individuals do you think deserve their own Wikipedia entries?
December 25, 2008
You win this type of quiz, invented by my friend Paul English, if you come within an order of magnitude of the right answer.
1. In Boston, the going rate for a dental crown seems to be $1,200-$1,600. That’s just for the crown, not for the labor. What is the dentist’s markup on the crown? That is, how much does the dentist pay the lab for it?
2. How much does the New York Times pay the creator of one of their daily crossword puzzles?
The answers are in the first comment. So is the prize for winning, i.e., nothing but the answer.
November 20, 2008
Monty Python has announced that it’s making all many of its works available for free on YouTube. Yay!
What is the best Python-referencing headline for a post announcing this? “A hovercraft full of reels”? “Not pining for the fee(ords)”? “Wring out your dead”?
October 12, 2008
Computers make crossword puzzles slightly easier, but they make acrostics do-able.
Paper-based acrostics are as much fun as re-sorting pied type. Plus, since most of the fun of an acrostic is seeing sense emerge from mere letters, like ships resolving out of fog, solving them electronically removes the penalty for wrong intuitions. And, for me, and I guess for most who indulge in the occasional acrostic, the fun part is watching your brain see words that your reason entirely missed. It feels as if an alien is speaking through you, although the alien is really just the history of your species’ evolution.
Acrostics already pose arbitrary degrees of difficulty on their creators: The quotation has to be broken into words, the first letters of which spell out the author’s name and the book’s title. Today’s NY Times acrostic (which they charge for) sets itself an additional challenge: Most of the definitions have some maritime theme, so presumably the quotation will, too.
Now, back to the puzzle!
September 28, 2008
Here’s a contest idea from my brother Andy. Submit your entries as comments. Prize: Nothing at all.
Top Ten Reasons Sarah Palin Cancels the VP Debate
Suspicious Russian tourists spotted across the Bering strait in Dezhnevo
Wrasslin’ a bear
Learns Tina Fey will be watching
When taken on tour of White House by McCain handlers, is “inadvertently” locked in Cheney’s man-sized safe
Schedule for memorizing state capitals thrown off by need for new schedule to memorize states
Speechless after finally looking up what “MILF” stands for
On deadline to finish her book, “Namin’ Your Baby the Alaskan Way”
Not yet confident how to work in those hilarious hair-plug zingers
No matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t get Kissinger’s moral stank off of her
Stuck in traffic on the Bridge to Nowhere
September 6, 2008
When I was in Norway last week, in a shopping arcade in Kristiansand there was a bakery selling sandwich bagels. The bagels seemed to have categorized as such simply because they were tori made out of bread: ovoids eight inches in diameter and about as high as the edge of a pizza crust. Was this the least bagel-like bagel on the planet?
This is something only the wisdom of the crowds can answer. If you’ve come across a national, regional, or industrial version of a bagel that is less bagel-like, let me know. Otherwise, the laurel will remain on Kristiansand’s brow. (It’s a lovely city. I just wouldn’t go there for the bagels.)
July 19, 2008
We often buy “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” despite its awful name and soul-withering chemical composition. Even the product’s faux-entertaining site refers to it as a “nutritious blend of oils.” Mmm. But, I like it, so shut up.
In fact, we just bought the “light” version of it, which is therefore some sort of simulacrum of the original. I can’t figure out whether its name should therefore be:
1. “I Can’t Believe I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”
2. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Not Butter”
or
3. _______________________ (fill in the blank)
July 15, 2008
Before paper, what did the wings of moths look like?
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