The Arena

All right, it's time for the new puzzler. And as I promised, this is a non-automotive, historic puzzler.

It has all the elements that it needs to be considered a great puzzler, in my opinion.

A while back, years ago, I was going to get my hair cut. And the place had reading materials laying around to look at while you wait. I came across a book on tremendous buildings or something like that, it was about great architecture throughout the ages.

So I'm flipping through this thing, and it describes the Alhambra in Spain, the Taj Mahal in India, and of course, one of the things the book talks about is the Colosseum in Rome as the most magnificent arena ever built. It goes on and on about the history of it, gladiator battles, Christians and lions, and all that stuff. I never knew this, but a little known fact is there were even mock naval battles in the Colosseum. They used to flood the floor of the arena and put ships in there and everything. Really interesting stuff.

So while reading all about this, of course, they were calling the Colosseum an 'arena' which is a word we use today, all the time. I was interested in this word, and I was wondering where it came from. I looked it up and I was amazed to find out what arena means in Latin, it means 'beach' or 'beach sand.'

And I thought, how strange. Why would they call the Colosseum something that means 'beach' or 'beach sand'?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Biodegradable Cars

This is an old one. Older than the normal old ones!

Okay, here it is.

In 1993, a book was published about methods to make industrial production ecologically friendly.

In this book, the author mentions an auto prototype proposed by a leading automobile executive. The book says that if the proposed car were actually put into production, its body would be made of soybean plastic. The vehicle would be powered by ethanol and the tires would be made from goldenrod, that wildflower that grows on the side of the road. The entire car proposed would be biodegradable. The executive went so far as to say we would be growing our own cars.

And the puzzler question is, what is the name of this innovative automobile executive?