Interesting Combination

Am I the only one who thinks this is funny?

Either this is wrong or I'm an idiot...

Guess which one I'm hoping for.


Okay, so here's a puzzle from my IQ calendar:


M..A...N
O...A...L
L....Z...?

Which letter should replace the question mark?



Are you thinking? Are you trying to figure this out? Cuz I sure did. I finally gave up and looked at the solution, which reads:


W. This is determined by the position of the letters in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc). The letter from the first column is added to that of the third column to dertermine the letter in the second column. So L(12)+N(14)=Z(26)


That would be lovely if L, N and Z were on the same row, which they are not. Or if you could add W(23) to ANY letter in the above equation to get the value of any other letter, let alone limiting your choices to some first column number added to W to equal some second column number.

Did they make a mistake or am I missing something here?

Seriously. I need to know. If I hadn't already thrown the box away I'd be on the phone to this company right now. I don't mind when I can't figure out a problem because my brain still gets a work out and I learn something from the solution. (I wish I'd saved the penny one for you.) But this is just driving me batty.

B.A.T.T.Y.

Help!!!!

Big, Big, BIG Numbers

My one-a-day calendar for this year is an IQ Puzzles calendar. I decided I need to challenge my brain on a more regular basis and this seemed a good way to do it. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are a fun challenge, and some are downright impossible.

Okay, not impossible. Just hard enough that I give up and look at the answers on the back.

The January 6 puzzle is meant to be a math puzzle, but I didn't even try to solve it since it felt more like a trivia question to me. You know, an interesting fact.

For those of you who like math enough to tackle this kind of problem, I'll give you the question and let you scroll a bit for the answer:

You have someone counting a billion dollars for you and he counts a dollar per second. He works eight hours a day and takes four weeks holiday. How long will this person be counting?

(Insert Jeopary music here...)

Answer: If this person works five days a week, 48 weeks a year, he will be counting 144 years, 248 days and 1.6 hours.

That's a really, really, really long time.

It kinda gives new weight to the number "one billion" - something we hear tossed around so much that I think we get numb to it. Like gratuitous violence in movies and soft-core porn in our commercials. How many of us really grasp the implications of one billion of anything?

Especially in the following context:

As of January 15, 2010 the United States National Debt is

twelve trillion dollars.

Trillion, not billion. There are one thousand billions in one trillion. And we've got 12 trillion in debt.

If I'm doing my math correctly (feel free to check me, since it's highly likely I'm not) that little dollar counting fellow would be counting our national debt for roughly

1 million 736 thousand 160 YEARS!

That can't be good.

Old Apache Trail

We did it! We drove the Old Apache Trail on Saturday!

We grabbed some lunch for the kids and headed out about 12:30. When the kids asked me how long we'd be gone, I said a couple of hours. Brian said four. I thought he was nuts. No way was that drive going to take four hours. And I was right.

It took five.

LOL! But we had a great time.

It was a wee bit cold up here. Well, to us anyway. The fellow who so kindly took this picture for us was visiting from Wisconsin and he described the weather as "quite warm."

I loved how the rock hung over the road.

We drove all the way up to the dam.

I seem to remember driving over this dam when I was a kid. Traffic goes over the bridge now, but that was a change made before Sept 11 because they wanted to raise the height of the dam to protect against floods.

I wish I would've taken some pictures of the kids in the visitor's center. It was small but it was cool. Everyone enjoyed it.

At this point we could've gone home via Payson or Globe and we opted for Globe. Shortly after headed down that highway we passed a sign for cliff dwellings. Oh man. I love stuff like that!!

Unfortunately we got there just after the visitor's center closed and we were all too tired to go on a hike. But do you see that little white dot at the bottom of the ruins? That's a guy!

Guess what my next 2010 goal is???