Hi all—as I alluded to in early April, our publishing schedule will have some choppiness this summer for real-life reasons.1 Today is one of those days, as we take a break from our cycle of full-fledged newsletters and recaps. I expect that we’ll be back on Monday, May 22nd.
I’ve been reading and greatly enjoying The Haggard Hawks Book of Brainteasers,2 and so I will leave you with a short quiz inspired by one of its puzzles. This one won’t count for our Question #6 leaderboard, but if you still want to submit for fun, you can e-mail me or use the below button.
NAME the letter that is the 30th letter in the Icelandic alphabet and, while not a part of the modern English alphabet, was a letter in the Old English alphabet, as seen in the beginning of the following excerpt from Beowulf: “Þurh runstafas rihte gemearcod.” (Your answer should be a five-letter word.)
Let it all out and name the Tears for Fears song that charted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks in 1985, just a few months after “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was at #1 for two weeks.
According to one source, bohea, congou, souchong, singlo, and hyson were types of WHAT that were removed from the Dartmouth on December 16, 1773? (Your answer should be a plural word.)
“It takes a lot to make a [BLANK] / A pinch of salt and laughter too” were the opening words of a “theme song” for a surreal black comedy short that first aired on Adult Swim in 2014. WHAT word fills in the blank in that lyric?
WHAT do the answers in this newsletter have in common with one another?
If wordplay puzzles are your sort of thing, and you don’t want to use the link above to buy the book, the Haggard Hawks Twitter account has been sharing examples from the book: here’s one particularly devious puzzle. If you refuse to click on a link unless you get four puzzles, I’ve got good news for you: Here’s a tweet with four puzzles.
I should note that these real-life reasons are happy and joyous reasons.
This is yet another “thing I’m sharing because I like it.” I have no affiliation with Haggard Hawks and this is not a solicited advertisement.