For a Hot, Sweltering Summer Day

Yes, it’s the hot, sweltering days of Summer and I’ve searched and found what Gerard Mosler sent me on another hot Summer day. I enjoyed his words (questions) and hope you do, too.

And it’s the perfect Quiz for such days as we have had. It’s a list of puzzle questions, and try not to peek at the answers at the bottom of my column, but, what the heck, it’s August.  It’s hot.  I don’t know who you are, so cheat on every one, if you want.  I won’t know.  And, if the truth be know, I cheated the first time (and the second time, too) that I read them, too.

1. Which was the smallest continent before Australia was discovered?

2. You have prepared ten pounds of peaches because you’re making jam.  When you start to put them in the kettle, you remember the old recipe advised, for improved flavor,  you to add the juice of a lemon for every dozen peaches.  You don’t remember the number of peaches you’ve prepared, and so how can you determine the proper number of lemons to squeeze?

3. An old fashioned, antique six-day alarm clock will run at least five days without winding. True or false?

4. What is the only word to the English language that can be written without pen, pencil, chalk, or any other pigment?

5. Behind each girl is a boy.  Behind each boy is a girl.  What is the smallest number of children that will fulfill those specifications?

6. A planeload of famous people crashed near the boundary of two countries.  A question of International Law arose about where to bury the survivors.  It was finally decided that each country would bury half of them.  Do you agree?

7. Can you make sense of the following sentence by adding to it question marks? “Before popping the important man often time.

8. Three women are standing under one umbrella without anybody’s getting wet.  How is this done?

9. What word will be shorter if you add a syllable to it?

10. Can you tell in what case two times two is six.

ANSWERS

1. It has always been Australia whether we knew it was there or not.

2. Just count the peach pits.

3. No non-electric clock will run without winding, five days, five minutes or otherwise.

4. The word already is “written.”

5. One boy, one girl, standing back to back.

6. Who ever heard of survivors being buried?

7. Before popping the important QUESTION man often MARKS  time.

8.  It isn’t raining.

9. Short.

10.  In no case!

See, I told you it was a ‘hot, sweltering summer day’ quiz.  But Gerard Mosler must have enjoyed putting it together, and I enjoyed it enough to tuck it away to be found at a later date, and the same to you.  And you.  And you.