Now it's time for our collaboration with the awesome What Is It? Blog! What is this thing? You don't have to know to win!
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. You might know the true answer, but we're going to select two winners who come up with the funniest, most outlandish guesses to win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop. However...
See more pictures of this strange thing at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: it's an apple parer, corer, and slicer, patent number 122,553. Several people knew that, but we're looking for the funniest answers. Phil and Buster had a good one: "This, to me, looks like a bean extractor. The child is told the end-piece is a fragrant flower. Upon sniffing, the extractor is slowly inserted and rotated to acquire the bean. Once extracted, the child is usually left none the wiser." Once I realized he was talking about the child's nose instead of the ear, it made sense! Then marcintosh also had a great story about a prototype automobile that you need to go here to read. Both win T-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Neatorama presents our collaboration with Pzzlr, a site where you can always find a riddle to exercise your brain. Can you solve this one?
Having just received their degrees, ten friends line up in the sunshine to have their photo taken when a gust of wind blows off their morterboards (caps). Each retrieves a cap at random during the ensuing scramble. What is the probability that exactly nine of them retrieve their own cap?
Each puzzle consists of a grid containing colored clues in various places. Every clue, except for the 1’s, is half of a pair. The object is to reveal a hidden picture by linking the pairs and painting the paths so that the number of squares (including the squares at the ends) and the color of the path is the same as the value and the color of the clues being linked together. Paths may follow horizontal or vertical directions and are not allowed to cross other paths. There is only one unique solution for each puzzle.
Game Instructions: Link-a-Pix Light is played by creating links in a grid according to the rules. To create a link, click mouse on a clue and drag to a square with the same clue so that the length of the path equals the value of the clues. Links with length 1 are created with a single click. To edit, click one of the link’s ends and drag mouse to redraw the path. To delete, double click mouse anywhere on the partial link’s path.
It was a frigid day in February as Carol Bixby warmed herself in front of the fireplace in Aunt Penny's old-fashioned living room. Sitting beside her were her cousins, Aunt Penny's two other nieces. All of them stared silently at the Victorian brooch lying on a footstool, its central diamond gleaming in the fire's red glow.
Aunt Penny had died two weeks ago. On the afternoon after the funeral, her three nieces cleaned out the old woman's house. It was Stephanie who found the brooch in a dusty jewelry box in the attic. Her sister Gwen thought it must be a piece of cheap costume jewelry, but the other two cousins noticed the diamond's deep gleam. Together, they took it to a jeweler who confirmed their suspicions. It was real, all right. Aunt Penny's gaudy piece of jewelry was worth a lot.
The next day, their discovery made the local paper, complete with a color photo of the brooch. But all the publicity made Carol Bixby nervous. "We should get it insured," the police detective told her cousins. They both agreed, and that's what they were doing here on the coldest day of the year, waiting for the insurance appraiser to arrive and place a value on it.
Jonah walked in from the kitchen, munching a PB&J sandwich, just in time to see Stephanie picking up the brooch and cupping it in her hands. "You know, I'm the one who found this," she said. "It's rightfully mine."
"Don't start that," Gwen said. "Aunt Penny left her estate to all of us. We'll sell it and divide the proceeds."
Gwen grabbed the brooch from her sister. Then Stephanie tried to grab it back. It looked to Jonah like a fight might break out right then and there. But that's when the doorbell rang.
A half-frozen man in an overcoat stood on the porch. "John Bitterman," he announced, showing them his card. "Apex Fine Insurables. May I come in?"
The three women ushered him inside and took his coat. Carol offered him a chair, and Stephanie ran off to the kitchen to pour him a cup of coffee.
"I suppose you want to see the brooch," Gwen said and handed it to the stocky middle-aged man.
John Bitterman adjusted the floor lamp, took a jeweler's loupe from his pocket, and began to inspect the central diamond. He turned it over, then put it back on the table. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but this brooch is a fake."
Hey look! It's time for our collaboration with the wonderful What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is? It doesn't really matter if you do, because we are looking for the funniest guesses. You can win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! But first, read the rules:
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners who submit funny and/or clever (albeit ultimately wrong) answers will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
If you guess the correct answer, you'll get a big pat on the back.
See more pictures of this item at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: this turned out to be a loose coupler for radio reception. It was used as the primary tuning device in an early receiver. No one here knew that, but we had some funny answers to win a t-shirt! One goes to ladybugs, who said, "Want to surprise the person sitting next to you? The kinetic energy from this ambush style Jack-in-the-Box will spring the dowel out from the side and smack them." The other goes to Rubinsky, who had a funny (but long) description of how this was used to train Victorian circus mice -read it here. Congratulations! You'll see the answers to all this week's mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
Neatorama presents our collaboration with Pzzlr, a site where you can always find a riddle to exercise your brain. Can you solve this one?
Four people need to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately it is pouring down rain and nobody wants to get wet. They have one umbrella between them which can keep two people dry at a time. Person 1 can make the trip from A to B in 1 minute, person 2 in 2 minutes, person 3 in 5 minutes, and person 4 in 8 minutes. Two people travelling together underneath the umbrella will go at the pace of the slower person. How can everyone get from A to B in no more than 15 minutes?
Our weekly collaboration with Conceptis Puzzles is back! Today, we get to play Hitori Light, a game where you get to shade squares so that numbers don't appear in a row or column more than once.
Each puzzle consists of a square grid with numbers appearing in all squares. The object is to shade squares so that the numbers don't appear in a row or column more than once. In addition, shaded squares must not touch each other vertically or horizontally while all un-shaded squares must create a single continuous area. There is only one unique solution for each puzzle.
Game Instructions: Hitori Light is played by shading and un-shading squares in a grid. First click un-shades the square, second click shades the square and the third click brings the square back to its original state.
Jonah Bixby was not your average twelve year-old. He spent more time in police stations than most career criminals. And although he had just started middle school, Jonah was single-handedly responsible for bringing more than a few of those career criminals to justice. But let's start at the beginning....
Jonah's mother and his father had both been police detectives in the city's Major Crimes Division, solving murders and assaults and high-profile robberies. It was while working there that they met and fell in love, then got married and had a son.
When Jonah was only five, his father was killed in the line of duty. At that point, Carol Bixby could have retired from the force. But she didn't. She stayed busy with the most important job she knew, law enforcement. And that's how young Jonah became the unofficial mascot of the Beaverton Police Department.
From the first grade on, Jonah would get out of school each day, walk across the street to the Fifth Precinct, and wait until his mother got off her shift. Carol's fellow officers took turns keeping an eye on him. Detective Massey from the Fraud Squad helped young Jonah with his math homework while Sergeant Gonzales tutored him in Spanish.
Jonah was blessed with an inquisitive mind and an eye for detail. And his love for police work came naturally. Before long, he was making deductions even the best officers on the force couldn't come up with and whispering them to his mother. Little did the other detectives know that many of Detective Bixby's toughest crimes were being solved by her preteen son.
It was Saturday, and for Jonah that meant a visit to Crazy Kate. Every Saturday, his mother would put together a few bags of groceries and have Jonah and his friends deliver them to the old woman who lived in the shack across from the park. "At least once a week I know she gets some decent food," Carol Bixby said. "I feel sorry for the helpless old woman."
But Jonah and his friends knew Crazy Kate wasn't helpless. They knew you had to stop outside the gate to her overgrown yard and get her permission to enter. If you were dumb enough to open the gate without asking, Crazy Kate would hear you. Then a shotgun would appear at the window and a volley of birdseed would fly in your general direction.
"Hello!" called out Frankie. They had just parked their bikes outside the gate. "It's just us, Frankie, Bill, and Jonah. Can we come in?"
"All right," a voice called back. "Just the three of you, no one else."
A minute later and they were inside the shack, watching the old woman rummage through the bags. "Humph, the food was better last week," she complained. But that's exactly what she said every week. "You boys want to see something?" Before they could answer, Kate reached into a pile of newspapers and pulled out an old baseball. Bill examined the faded signature and let out a low whistle. "Babe Ruth! Wow!"
Kate smiled through her stained teeth. "My brother got it signed personally when he was a kid."
All the way home, the boys talked about the rare autographed ball. They talked about it again the next afternoon, when all three ran into each other at the skateboard ramp in the park. "Can you believe she's got something like that in the middle of all that junk?" Frankie said, pointing to the shack across the street. "What a waste."
Jonah followed his gaze to Crazy Kate's shack, then suddenly noticed something. "Look at the window," he said. "It's broken."
"I thought she always had a broken window," said Bill.
"No, it wasn't broken yesterday. I wonder if something's wrong."
Jonah and Bill argued about what to do. Should they just forget about it? Or should they check on Kate and make sure she was all right. Or should they... Jonah turned around to get Frankie's opinion, but he wasn't there.
"Hey, guys." Frankie was already at Kate's front door, peering inside. "I don't think she's home."
Jonah and Bill joined Frankie at the door. "Miss Kate?" Jonah called out as he knocked. "Are you there?"
It's once again time for our collaboration with the wonderfully entertaining What Is It? Blog. Do you know what the pictured item is? Can you make up something totally wacky? That's what we're looking for: the funniest and most creative guesses. We will award t-shirts from the NeatoShop to two commenters who post the cleverest, funniest, or most outlandish use for this thing!
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments. You have until Friday evening to come up with great guesses.
See, you don't have to know the answer to win! And remember, there are more mystery items to figure out at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: this item is an automobile valve spring compressor, according to the What Is It? blog. Y'all had much funnier answers, and two of them won t-shirts. MEM said "It's a pogo-stick for fence-sitters. It's for those times when you just don't want to overcome your ambivalence." Ha! And Steven Vredenburgh had a great answer:
This is an example of the "I've got your nose" device. 1340's Germany tradition held that the nose of a ginger child could cure the black plague. The "I've got your nose" device, pictured above, was used to gather the noses of these unfortunate children. Though the practice of harvesting noses soon died out, the idea lingered in the "I've got your nose" game that adults still play with children as a reminder of the horrors of the black plague.
So they both win! Thanks for playing, everyone, and stay tuned for the next What Is It game from the What Is It? blog and Neatorama!
Neatorama presents our collaboration with Pzzlr, a site where you can always find a riddle to exercise your brain. Can you solve this one?
Levi and Kate were reporting the results of the under 9s 100 metre sprint race. Levi said that Michael came first and Hayley came second. Kate said that Chad came first and Michael came second. Both Levi and Kate had each made one correct statement and one false statement.
Who placed where in the race (assuming that the only runners were Michael, Hayley and Chad)?
W00t! Our weekly collaboration with Conceptis Puzzles is back with the neat game of Chain Sudoku, where you get to fill empty circles so each number appears exactly once in a row, column and chain.
Each puzzle consists of a group of circles arranged in a square grid and containing given clues in various places. The object is to fill all empty circles so that the numbers 1 to 5 for 5x5 puzzles and 1 to 6 for 6x6 puzzles appear exactly once in each row, column and chain. There is only one unique solution for each puzzle.
Game Instructions: Click mouse on the desired circle to open dial pad and then click on the desired number. To remove a number, repeat the above using X at the bottom of the dial pad. Numbers can also be placed by pointing mouse on the desired circle and then typing with the keyboard.
Jonah Bixby was not your average twelve year-old. He spent more time in police stations than most career criminals. And although he had just started middle school, Jonah was single-handedly responsible for bringing more than a few of those career criminals to justice. But let's start at the beginning....
Jonah's mother and his father had both been police detectives in the city's Major Crimes Division, solving murders and assaults and high-profile robberies. It was while working there that they met and fell in love, then got married and had a son.
When Jonah was only five, his father was killed in the line of duty. At that point, Carol Bixby could have retired from the force. But she didn't. She stayed busy with the most important job she knew, law enforcement. And that's how young Jonah became the unofficial mascot of the Beaverton Police Department.
From the first grade on, Jonah would get out of school each day, walk across the street to the Fifth Precinct, and wait until his mother got off her shift. Carol's fellow officers took turns keeping an eye on him. Detective Massey from the Fraud Squad helped young Jonah with his math homework while Sergeant Gonzales tutored him in Spanish.
Jonah was blessed with an inquisitive mind and an eye for detail. And his love for police work came naturally. Before long, he was making deductions even the best officers on the force couldn't come up with and whispering them to his mother. Little did the other detectives know that many of Detective Bixby's toughest crimes were being solved by her preteen son.
For Jonah and his friends, the one sure sign of spring was the opening of the tree house. It had been built in the fork of a huge oak in the Smiths' backyard. For the past four summers, Sally Smith, Bill Tollbar, Lisa Valdez, and Jonah had convened there almost daily to play games and talk and eat lunch. They used to call it the Oak Tree Club, but now that they were twelve, they were too cool for a club. Although Jonah didn't want to think of it, this would probably be their last summer before turning the tree house over to Sally's younger brother and his friends.
On a warm Saturday in late April, Sally got the key from her mother and, with Jonah and the others, climbed the ladder and unlocked the padlock that had kept the clubhouse secure through the long winter months.
The tree house was just one room, with the tree trunk and a large limb poking through the floor and dissecting the space. The structure was solid but far from weatherproof. As the kids unlatched and opened the shutters, they could feel the musty dampness. Anything made of metal, like the telescope stand, was a little rusty, and tiny pools of water near the trunk spoke of last week's torrential rains.
Jonah and Bill took the job of sweeping it out, while Sally and Lisa did general cleaning. "Oh, my gosh," said Sally. She was pointing to something on the other side of the room. "Look!"
The boys joined them and saw it, too. There, on the wall, were five words written in blood-red paint: "Welcome Back, Children. -- The Specter."
The Specter was their own creation, a bogeyman they invented last Halloween, right before closing the tree house. Jonah had started the story of an angry tree spirit who seeps through the walls and curses them all. Sally took up the story next, and by the end of the evening, they had managed to scare each other pretty thoroughly.
The four of them stared at the scrawled words, open-mouthed. And then Bill laughed. "Good job, Sal. You had us going there."
"It wasn't me," Sally protested. "I haven't been up here since we locked up. My mom's had the key ever since. Go ask her."
Hey look! It's time for our collaboration with the wonderful What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is? It doesn't really matter if you do, because we are looking for the funniest guesses. You can win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! But first, read the rules:
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners who submit funny and/or clever (albeit ultimately wrong) answers will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
If you guess the correct answer, you'll get a big pat on the back.
There is another picture of this thing at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: the tool shown is an ice pick with a retainer for removing cubes that had been formed on a block of ice by a Coolerator ice cube cutter, patent number 2,070,773. The Coolerator ice cube cutter was another of the mystery items explained at the What Is It? blog. Of course, we wanted your wrong but funny answers -and we got them!
One winner is Peawatt, who explained, "This appears to be a gentleman's lice removal tool. Properly positioned by placing his organ in the lower chamber with handle pointing away from body, hot coal was placed on the upper pan. A slight tilting of the handle up and toward the body sent the hot coal off the pan, over the spikes, setting the pubic hair aflame. When the lice ran into the clearing, they were quickly dispatched by repeated stabbing from the three prongs." Cool!
The other winner is Tapisbis, who said it is the "Ultimate s'mores tool, you place the first graham cracker & a liberal serve of chocolate in the lower tray; roast not one, not two, but three marshmallows on the prongs; whilst the marshmallows cook the chocolate melts; finally slide the final cracker off the top tray and enjoy perfection." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Neatorama presents our collaboration with Pzzlr, a site where you can always find a riddle to exercise your brain. Can you solve this one?
Eka is a young man of marrying age within the lost tribe of the Milcarnicans. He and Nikku, the daughter of the tribe’s Chief, are in love and go to the Chief to request permission to marry.
The Chief gives Eka 5 blue pebbles, 5 green pebbles and two bowls. Out of sight of Nikku, Eka must divide the pebbles between the two bowls any way he chooses. A blindfolded Nikku must then draw a pebble from one of the two bowls. If she draws a blue pebble then the couple will have the Chief’s blessing to marry, but if the pebble is green then the union will be forbidden (green being the color of the evil serpent spirit, Balcan).
How should Eka divide the pebbles between the bowls to give Nikku the greatest chance of drawing out a blue pebble?
Yay! Our weekly collaboration with Conceptis Puzzles is here! This week's game is Maze-a-Pix Light (Vol 1), where you get to discover a path from entrance to exit, and paint it to reveal a hidden picture.
Each puzzle consists of a maze-grid with one entrance and one exit. The object is to reveal a hidden picture by finding and painting the path from the entrance to the exit. There is only one unique solution for each puzzle.
Game Instructions: To start painting the path, click mouse on the maze entrance and drag along the grid. To continue painting or to change the path, click mouse on the tip of the path and drag in the desired direction. To delete a path segment, double click mouse anywhere along the path.
