February 24: Reader's Digest

I went on a google rabbit hole search yesterday looking for the perfect final Jeo-Party question. It's been getting harder and harder to come up with challenging and interesting questions, worthy of breaking out the teams into their own zoom rooms to discuss. A lot of my questions have either been too easy, with some people getting the answer right away, or not worthy of discussion because you either know it or you know. The last two weeks I decided to use Puzzlers from NPR's Car Talk, which are way more suited for discussion and problem solving together as a team. 

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Two weeks ago:

Category: Great Pyramids of Egypt

Question: In his youth, a man decides to take a trip to visit the great pyramids of Egypt. He is deeply moved by the trip, and years later he decides to take his son, who has never been away from home, to see the pyramids. Here's the catch. The man made his trip to the pyramids in 1995, but his son made his trip to see them in 1969. How is this possible?

Answer: The dates are in BC (BCE). The father took his trip in 1995 BC. And 26 years later in 1969 BC, he and his son went. Pretty good, huh? (Special thanks to NPR's Car Talk for this puzzler!)

Last week:

Category: Perfect Words Puzzler

Question: Here's a list of words. (The order does not matter.) What do they have in common? 

Carbon, Mars, Four, Seventh, September, Saturn, Fifth  

Answer: Each word has the number of letters that actually denotes its place on a list. For example, carbon has six letters and it is the sixth element in the periodic chart. Mars is the fourth planet in the solar system and has four letters. Four is the fourth number and has four letters. Seventh has seven letters and fifth has five. September, the ninth month, has nine letters. Saturn, is six letters and is the sixth planet.

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I loved both of these questions so much, and they definitely both sparked discussion amongst the teams. And after a little prodding and a few hints, both teams eventually got to the correct answer each week. So I read through a bunch more of Car Talk's puzzlers for this week's final Jeo question, but could not find any that I thought would work. 

Then I decided to search for other word puzzles via google and re-discovered Reader's Digest. When I was a kid, I remember my dad liked Reader's Digest, and I used to enjoy reading the jokes in it. Apparently, the magazine was founded almost 100 years ago (in 1922) as a "general-interest family magazine" with inspiring stories, hilarious jokes, and advice. On their website you can also find word puzzles, and I found a delightful one to use for this week's final jeo-party. 

The category is called "Odd Word Out", which is reminiscent of one of our favorite "Says You" categories, Old Man Out. The question: Which one of these words doesn’t belong with the rest? 

TIN
MINIM
MILITIA
SIEVE
LINEN
EVE
AVOID

I'll give you a day to think about the answer and I'll add it to my blog tomorrow. I gave the puzzle to my husband and he was able to solve it all by himself within a matter of minutes, with only one additional hint. It was delightful to see him figuring it out and to have him get the correct answer; I was so proud of him. Hopefully my friends will enjoy the puzzle tonight as well. 

With delight,

♥Jamie