Can you find a meaningful, non-weird English sentence that contains the two consecutive words “an apples” without capitalizing “apple” or adding an apostrophe? Hint: It involves a cliché.

The answer is in the firstthird comment. [Tags: puzzles]

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Here is a particularly grim puzzle question: How many people are killed in traffic accidents per day in India? Your aim is to get within an order of magnitude of the answer. (Source)

The answer is in the first comment to this post. [Tags: quiz puzzle statistics india]

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I’ve long been amused by words that mean their opposite. E.g., “cleave” can mean to cling to or to cut apart. And “dust” can mean to remove dust or, as when dusting for fingerprints, to deposit dust.

Yesterday, an odd almost-example of one occurred to me.

Imagine a mob intent on no good has formed. It’s going to loot and pillage. But a preacher gets their attention. They stop mobbing and start listening. The preacher delivers the greatest anti-violence sermon ever. Afterwards, the crowd reformed.

Yeah, it’s too contextual to make it onto the list of auto-contradictory words (AKA autoantonyms). But I thought I’d mention it. [Tags: autoantonyms wordplay]

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Julian Bond wonders how many people are flying in airplanes at any one time. You win if you guess the answer within one order of magnitude. Julian’s guess is one million. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer… [Tag: OrderOfMagnitudeQuiz]

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According to The Boston Globe, how many times a year does the average downtown Boston parking meter require repair? You win if you get within an order of magnitude of the answer.

The answer is in the first comment to this post. [Tag: OrderOfMagnitudeQuiz]

6 Comments »