About Caliber

Time for the puzzler. This one is an old one. But a good one.

This one needs a preface. Here it is. We are going to start out with an old joke.

Back in the days of yesteryear, when the circus was the greatest show on Earth, one of the chief attractions was the guy that got shot out of the cannon.

This was forever ago, when they used to do things like that...

Anyway, they used to shoot a guy out of a cannon!

One day after the show, the guy is just over it. He cleans himself off, and then goes to his boss and says, "I quit."

His boss says, "You can't quit! I'll never find the man of your caliber again!"

LOL

And so that joke is the introduction or segue into the concept of caliber.

Okay here is the actual puzzler.

During World War Two, the infantry men carried a rifle that used 30 caliber ammunition.

So a 30 caliber bullet happens to be 7.62 millimeters.

During the war when hostilities broke out between us and the enemy, they hurriedly began to make rifles that would fire a 31 caliber bullet or a 7.7 millimeter bullet.

And the puzzler is, why would they do this?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Cryptic Teacher

This one is short.

Here we go.

Years ago, back when I was in school, our teacher had the habit of putting little cryptic messages on the blackboard.

One day near the end of the school year, she wrote the following thing on the board:

E, I, L, N, P, U.

And the only hint I'll give is that it was near the end of the school year.

So what did this mean?