Friday, November 24, 2023

Can you solve this week's puzzler?

The Scratches

This puzzler today was sent in years ago by a listener in California.

Here it is.

"This tale starts on Halloween night in the town of Soda Springs near Donner Summit in the Sierra Nevada. As we got in the car to go to a Halloween party, the windshield was coated with a fairly thick layer of ice. We could not find an ice scraper, so a friend of ours grabbed an empty aluminum soda can and then used the unpainted bottom to scrape off the ice.

So, he is holding the can as you would drink it, except he is using it to get the ice off the windshield, rubbing it across the surface a bunch of times.

So then, off we went to the Halloween party without a worry about the windshield because we knew that aluminum is softer than glass. We thought that the only thing that could scratch glass was a diamond. I think we have all heard that before.

So the next afternoon we go to the car and to our dismay we find a bunch of deep scratches in the windshield.

When we got home we looked up the hardness values for aluminum in the CRC Handbook for Chemistry and Physics. So we looked it up and sure enough, aluminum is considerably softer than glass on the Mohs Hardness Scale. So it stands to reason that no scratches should have appeared on the windshield."

And the puzzler is, why were there scratches on the windshield?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Rents

Today's puzzler is historic, brought to us by an old book of trivia sent in from a listener years ago.

Here it is.

In Ireland in the 1800s, it was common for peasants to rent the land they lived on from landlords. And, as is often the case, rents would get out of hand and the rent collectors became very unpopular fellows.

One particular rental agent was collecting taxes for the Earl of Erne in County Mayo, and this land agent ignored the peasants' pleas for more reasonable rents during a time when things were really rough. The peasants were so poor, they had nothing at all to spare. But he insisted on collecting these outrageously high rents anyway for the Earl.

So, one morning he awoke to find that he was apparently invisible to the town folk. His servants had left him. The shops in town would not wait on him. The blacksmith would not see his horse. The mailman didn't bring his mail, and most importantly, he could get no one to harvest his crops. So he called in the army. He asked for 50 laborers and an escort of 2000 soldiers to come to his assistance because he was fearful of some kind of civil unrest.

So, when the small army arrived in the town, they found there was no transportation available at the train station. All the shops and pubs in town were suddenly closed and out of everything. So, the army walked 15 miles to the farm and then ate him out of his house and home while harvesting the crops. Then he found he could not sell the crops that were left over. No one in town would buy the crops.

Other than these petty annoyances, the man never came to any harm, and in fact lived to a ripe old age. He lived long enough, in fact, to see his name become a household word.

What was his name?

Find out here »

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Wednesday, November 22, 2023

A McLaren F1 Windshield Costs $33,000 To Replace, Man Arrested For Pleasuring Himself At Kum & Go Gas..

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