This is a “Let’s figure out how this statement might be true” puzzle. I have an answer in mind (which you probably won’t like), but I’m more interested in the ones y’all come up with:

For the sort of run-of-the-mill yogurt — no fruit on the bottom — you buy in your average American supermarket, I believe it is true that the further you go down in the container, the more fattening it becomes.

Why might that be true? More important, in how many different ways can we take that putative fact to make it true?

[Tags: puzzle yogurt ]

3 Comments »

While watching our local squirrel digging up the flowerpots on our porch, thinking about how much easier it would be for both of us if the stupid thing would just evolve a bigger brain, I got to thinking about how unpleasant the bigger-brain mutation would be if it didn’t come with a simultaneous bigger-skull mutation. But having both of those mutations occur at the same time seems to multiply the improbability, doesn’t it?

So, how’s it happen? Are the two sizes controlled by the same gene? Do skulls form around brains so brains don’t rattle around in them? Does it really take multiplicative random mutations? Or what?

[Tags: puzzles evolution natural_selection genes dna ]

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I’ve once again made it into the list of winners at the Daily Show’s anagram contest. The headline to be anagrammed was: Gay Rights Groups Celebrate Victories in Marriage Push

My answer was: Man hitches goat? Girl buggers strap? I praise every curio!

But I actually preferred Dharam’s: I say great, but priggish Vermont preacher: “Sacreligious!”

Dharam is consistently excellent at this.

[Tags: anagrams puzzles daily_show ]

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I’m on the Daily Show site!

No, I haven’t been exposed as the pompous evil little man that I am. Not yet, anyway. The site runs an anagram contest, and mine was one of three the selected this week. The headline you had to anagram was:

Envoys to Afghanistan and Iraq Are Named

Mine was:

On the QT, Iran damns any gain of area saved.

I have to admit that the first pick (by Dharam) is better than mine:

Q: Are any afraid to have an assignment nod

On the other hand, I think there’s a steep fall-off in quality with #3:

God in Heaven! Idea man farts, annoys Qatar.

This week’s headline is:

An outpouring of anger from lawmakers at AIG hearing

I just submitted:

A gain? A mean Frank urges room: Torture, flog, whip again

Eh.

[Tags: anagrams daily_show ]

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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.

[Tags: puzzles bags environment ]

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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.

[Tags: puzzles filesharing doep ]

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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?

[Tags: wikipedia body_parts ]

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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.

[Tags: quiz dentist crossword ]

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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”?

[Tags: monty_python doep puzzle ]

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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!

[Tags: puzzles acrostics ]

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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

[Tags: politics sarah_palin debates humor ]

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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.)

[Tags: puzzle bagels norway crowd-sourcing ]

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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)

[Tags: puzzle ]

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Before paper, what did the wings of moths look like?

[Tags: puzzle ]

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Do barefoot cultures have a word for stubbing their toes?

[Tags: puzzle ]

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To be a Most Annoying Nitpick, a comment has to be obvious, predictable, and unimportant.

For example:

“You know, in space an explosion wouldn’t make any noise.”

Runners up include:

“Jeesh. Dinosaurs were dead for hundreds of millions of years before humans came along.”

“Computer viruses are operating-system specific, so one of ours couldn’t infect an alien computer.”

“In the original comic book, he couldn’t fly, just jump.”

In fact, I’d be willing to consider any nitpick that begins with the phrase “In the original comic book” as a candidate for the Most Annoying.

[Tags: doep puzzle cliches nitpicks ]

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Since there are no (?) instances when we are encouraged to scratch ourselves for health reasons (exception: to dislodge bugs from our various pelted patches?), why did natural selection favor near-hairless mammals who scratch themselves inappropriately?

Bonus question: Since it’s well known that we cannot tickle ourselves, why does scratching ourselves feel so darn good? Ahhhh….. [Tags: doep puzzle]

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Why do some economically well off cultures have good food and others do not? Wouldn’t making good food — by which I mean delicious food that you love to eat — be a prime directive of every land? They’ve had thousands of years to work on getting some great recipes down. After all, there are poor cultures that have great food. So, why do entire cultures screw up this most basic of human pleasures?

EXTRA CREDIT question: Last night I gave a talk and afterwards was taken to dinner (thank you very much for the food and conversation) at an Italian restaurant at which every dish had at least twelve ingredients: Rare roasted veal stuffed with striped bass crusted in romano crumbs roasted with fennel basted in onion pate fried in the oil of squid grown in olive oil and fed striped bass found inside the gullets of ocean-farmed veal. Question: Is this the sign of a chef who is insecure or imaginative? Creative or bored? (The right answer is probably the right answer to most questions: It depends.) [Tags: food cooking chefs puzzle doep]

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To win this quiz (and receive absolutely nothing), your answers have to be within an order of magnitude.

According to an article in today’s Boston Globe: 1) How many Dunkin Donut stores are there? 2) How many donuts do they serve per year? 3) How many pounds of fat do they use for frying up those donuts? (It’s transfatty oil at this point.)

The answers are in the first comment. [Tags: quiz donuts ]

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How much money do you think is in a typical fully-stocked ATM?

Not that I’m contemplating anything. Just wondering. Also, Any ideas about how to put a false bottom into a duffel bag? Just curious. [Tags: doep puzzle atm]

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During a speech a couple of weeks ago, I characterized the crawl on the bottom of CNN as “news delivered at 4 mph.” I made up the speed, but it seemed like a reasonable approximation, since it seems to go at about walking speed.

This morning I was watching a news channel on the little TV in our bedroom: It took about four seconds to go across a screen about 15″ wide. If I were watching it on, say, a 60″ wide TV, it would have taken four seconds to cover four times the distance and thus would be traveling four times as fast. If it were a 4 mile wide screen, it’d be travelling at a mile per second.

So, how fast does a news crawl (if a news crawl could crawl news)? And why doesn’t it look faster on a big set?

I know it’s so elementary that it’s embarrassing, but I’m sick, ok? Slightly feverish. Really. [Tags: doep puzzle]

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Here’s a question I try to answer in the latest issue of my (free) newsletter: If too much information is noise, what’s too much meaning?

In fact, here’s the table of contents of that issue. (Note: The answer I come up with is not good enough to count as a spoiler.)

 

March 9, 2007 The abundance of meaning: If too much information is noise, what’s too much meaning? The abundance of worthiness and the new relevancy: When there’s an abundance of worthwhile pages on just about any topic, search engines need to evolve.  Book stuff: (1) Why finishing a book sucks, (2) the new book’s site, and (3) the book’s word cloud Why do movies suck?: We don’t make that many movies, we invest heavily in them, and yet most of the comedies aren’t funny, the suspensers aren’t suspenseful, the action ones are incoherently edited. Why is that? Cool Tool: The O’Reilly Hacks series What I’m playing: Dreamfall and Devastation Troopers Bogus Contest: Suggest a Daily Open-Ended Puzzle

[Tags: doep puzzle everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Why do shampoo bottles tells us to wash our hair twice? The stuff we use to clean whitewall tires (well, those of us who clean whitewalls, which definitely seems like a losing proposition) doesn’t tell us to lather, rinse and repeat. Is our hair really that dirty? Or — perish the thought — is this just a way of getting us to use up the shampoo twice as quickly?

Science? Marketing? Just good hygiene? [Tags: doep puzzle]

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In tonight’s State of the Union address, there are some words and phrases that are bound to appear — “prevail,” “work together,” and “that our military leaders have requested” — and we could play Bingo with them, or take a shot of tequila every time they show up.

Instead, let’s play Negative Bingo in which you are given a card with phrases on it (or perhaps you should be allowed to purchase words the way you can buy search terms at Google) and you lose points for every one that does show up. (Caution: Don’t take a shot every time one of your words is not used.)

For example, here are some terms unlikely to show up in the mouth of the Great Decider tonight:

“Victory parade” “As I was reading in the Koran recently…”

“Abu Ghraib” “Raise taxes” and “to pay for” in the same sentence

“The right of women to…” “Osama Bin Laden”

“Maimed” “Thanks to Al Gore…”

Any admission of error expressed in the active voice

The terms have to have some likelihood of showing up, so you don’t get credit for Bush not using the phrases “prolapsed anus” or “I’m sorry.” In fact, different terms should be worth different amounts. A negative words market perhaps?

Anyway, what words would you put on your negative bingo card?

---

No need to believe me on this—much less to care—but I think I was one of the inventors of the sort of phrase-bingo people play at speeches like this. In the early 1990s, when I was at Interleaf, I created phrase bingo cards for a company meeting. I even wrote a Lisp script to generate them, which for me was like programming the lunar lander. I thought it was a new idea then, although I’m sure its eventual success was due to someone else inventing it earlier or afterwards. Anyone know the history of this epiphenomenon? [Tags: does politics bush humor bingo]

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WikiLeaks is a Wikipedia-style wiki for people to place leaked documents, untraceably. According to the FAQ, “It combines the protection and anonymity of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface.” “Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide: the scrutiny of a worldwide community of informed wiki editors.”

It’s ambitious. The FAQ says:

Wikileaks may become the most powerful “intelligence agency” on earth — an intelligence agency of the people. It will be an open source, democratic intelligence agency. But it will be far more principled, and far less parochial than any governmental intelligence agency; consequently, it will be more accurate, and more relevant. It will have no commercial or national interests at heart; its only interests will be truth and freedom of information. Unlike the covert activities of state intelligence agencies, Wikileaks will rely upon the power of overt fact to inform citizens about the truths of their world.

It’s got a million leaked docs already and expects to surpass Wikipedia in number of entries. But it’s hard to see how it becomes anything like an intelligence agency if it only consists of leaks; if a citizen wants information about a topic, seeing only the leaked material is going to give quite a skewed and incomplete view. On the other hand, if you’re researching a topic, I can see the value of checking in with Wikileaks to see if there’s anything you’re not supposed to know about it.

Here’s another bit from the FAQ:

Couldn’t leaking involve invasions of privacy? Couldn’t mass leaking of documents be irresponsible? Aren’t some leaks deliberately false and misleading?

Providing a forum for freely posting information involves the potential for abuse, but measures can be taken to minimize any potential harm. The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.

It’ll be fascinating to see how this works out in the edge cases. Does posting the names of covert agents count as a leak? [Tags: wikileaks wikis wikipedia intelligence politics media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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In 2005, how many breast enhancement surgeries were performed in the U.S., excluding reconstructive ones? (Source: Boston Globe)

Getting this answer right means getting it within an order of magnitude.

The answer is in the first comment. [Tags: puzzles medicine surgery]

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The Democratic Congressional Committee has posted a report card you can fill in. (Thanks for the link, Chip.) It’s a pretty bland set of questions. So, what questions would you add?

For example:

How can the Democrats show they’re as strong on terrorism as the Republicans?
a. Have Howard Dean eat Saddam Hussein’s liver on TV.
b. Reveal that Hillary served as a Navy SEAL for four years.
c. Require the candidates to work the word “pussy” into their stump speeches.
d. Prosecute more teenagers for downloading music.

What phrase would you prefer the Democrats use instead of “surge”?
a. Squander.
b. Operation Incapable of Learning.

What strategy is most likely to lead to a Democratic victory in the 2008 Presidential elections?
a. Run a campaign exactly like John Kerry’s but just 4% better this time.
b. Find a charismatic younger person, perhaps from a mixed racial background, who energizes masses of eligible non-voters with a message of hope.
c. Learn how to program electronic voting machines.

Should we impeach the bastard?
a. Yes.
b. And how!
c. And his little dog, too!

[Tags: doep puzzle politics humor]

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I don’t know who came up with the name “Iceland,” but it’s a marketing disaster. Surely such a beautiful and interesting nation deserve better! And you’re just the folks to do it. So, put on your marketing caps (and make sure they’ve got earflaps) and come up with a name that better represents the Iceland brand. E.g.,

“Winterwonderland”

“Frostia”

“Disney Presents Iceland”

[Tags: doep puzzle marketing iceland]

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At the symposium I’m at, we’re discussing how long the conference wiki should be left up and editable, which raises the question: What is the past tense of wiki?

[Tags: doep puzzle wiki]

9 Comments »

What packaging makes your blood boil?

I hate the thick, clear plastic, blister-packaging that’s sealed all the way around and inviolable except with a serious knife or possibly a band saw. And puncturing it isn’t enough. The plastic is so thick that you have to actually carve the product out of its container. Because the cut plastic is itself sharp, I worry about amputating a finger if the knife slips.

I also hate the way the cut plastic smells, but now I’m just piling on.

On the other hand, I find this to be funny to the point of being depressing…

And you? Vent your packaged ire!

[Tags: doep puzzle packaging marketing]

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The Democrats are (smartly) committed to a 100 hours of introducing legislation that defines them as a party, little things such as raising the minimum wage from Debtors Prison level to full Squalor.

But after six years of watching the worst president in our lifetime strut his time upon the stage, don’t you think the Democrats are entitled to a little fun? In those first 100 hours, what legislation could the Democrats pass just for the pure hell of it? Require Bush to deliver the State of the Union topless so we can all see how amazingly buff he’s gotten on our watch? Hold hearings, complete with subpoened witnesses, charts and graphs, to determine which is worse, war or blow jobs? Trade in all presidential limousines for Priuses (Prii?)? Replace the opening prayer at Congress with a Moment of Gloating?

It’s been a long six years… [Tags: doep puzzle politics]

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As I crawl through the jungle of black vines under my desk, I’m led to wonder: If you were able to create a standard—no folksonomies here!—for color coding the cables going into and out of a computer, what sort of scheme would you come up with? [Tags: doep puzzle taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous]

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The current issue of Wired has a feature I like a lot: They got 33 sf writers to contribute six-word short stories. So, I’m shamelessly ripping off that idea, but with a twist. Here’s the six-word version of today’s DOEP:

Six-word story. Any genre. Surprise ending.

For example:

Duel to death at noon. Eclipse.

Brother impregnates sister. Disgusting. They’re bees.*

For extra points, make it Web-themed… [Tags: doep puzzle]

---

*I know that bees don’t get pregnant, and I’m not sure that the concept of brother and sister really applies, but let’s just say that’s all part of the surprise ending.

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I am so poorly oriented in space that I cannot make a checkers move without first physically moving the piece. I can stand on a marked street corner with a map and a compass and still go wrong 50% of the time. When I take a shirt out of a drawer, I can’t predict which half will be on my left, although I do pride myself on rarely going wrong about which will be the outside.

So, this “procedure” for solving a Rubik’s Cube is to me indistinguishable from gibberish, even though I’m certain that it’s right. [Tags: rubik's_cube puzzles]

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The Republicans are in a concerted way calling Democrats “Defeatocrats.” Forget whether the content is true or not, and ignore how degrading to democracy name-calling is. “Defeatocrat” is just lame. Not only doesn’t it rhyme with “Democrat,” it doesn’t even scan.

Surely we can help the Republicans come up with a better insulting term for the Democrats! [Tags: doep puzzle]

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If The Wizard of Oz were written today, how would it end? [Tags: doep puzzle oz]

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Instructions for cooking in a normal oven tell you how long and how hot. But microwaves rely on unscaled buttons for “power” that vary from machine to machine. Why isn’t there a standard unit of cooking energy for microwaves so instructions could say “Cook in your microwave for ten minutes at 350 joules” (or ohms, watts, newtons, pounds per square inch, parsecs, francs, or whatever the right unit of measurement is…I’m a humanities major, dammit!)? [Tags: doep puzzles]

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What would it take to make a bumble bee happy?

(My answer is the first in the comments.) [Tags: puzzle :doep]

5 Comments »

After three seasons of trying, I finally biked up the big hill that leads to our street. I had to drop into second gear and stand up and pump each half-cycle like Suzanne Pleshette bench pressing her own weight*, but I made it, dammit. Of course, being passed by a twelve-year old on a bike piled with 75 pounds of school books didn’t do anything for my mood. But I made it, dammit.

The hill is named “Corey Road,” but that doesn’t sound very impressive in sentences that begin: “I finally beat _____.” So, I’m looking for a more impressive nickname for the street. “I finally beat Glory Road.” “I finally beat The Widow-Maker.” You know, something like that.

Suggestions? [Tags: doep puzzles]

*That was a completely gratuitous Suzanne Pleshette reference. I just like her name. It sounds like fake fur.

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My son and I were distressed to find out that non-tivo-ed tv is still showing ads. So as we watched the five minutes of The Monkees that we could endure—an infuriating and stupid ripoff of The Beatles’ movies—we were forced to see a 30 second ad that showed an attractive young woman sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. “Don’t you wish everything was soft?” the narrator asks as the bench turns into a comfy couch.

1. Can you guess what this ad advertises? No, this is not the open-ended part of the puzzle, although it does give a new meaning to “open-ended.” The answer is in the first comment.

2. Once you’ve checked the answer, if you were in charge of marketing that product, what would one of your television commercials look like? Keep in mind that it has to be suitable for showing on whatever lame-ass cable station shows Monkee re-runs, although I suppose you could pick some other program to sponsor.

3. For extra credit, how might you market it on the Internet, and how would that change what you say about it? [Tags: doep puzzle]

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