Happy Monday, everyone! Reading the stories about how people’s user names came to be was interesting (see leadfoot’s 8/18/07 newsletter )! Check it out and add your story if you missed it over the weekend.

Tonight I just have this link (but I think it’s enough for today) to this year’s annual MIT puzzle challenge (now long passed but open to the public to check out the puzzles). There are at least 151 (more but they included “Red Herring” puzzles). The puzzle hunt is kind of like a scavenger hunt done over the winter break at MIT and done in teams. I’ll try to write a newsletter this January when the new one starts up but in the meantime, you can see the kinds of puzzles they use.

Just click on each red circle in the spiral on the left. There is a link at the top right corner of each to see the solutions. Some are not exactly possible to solve correctly unless your actually there on the campus and some aren’t anymore because things that existed specifically for the puzzle challenge are no longer there. But, it is a humbling way to spend some time.

Here you can read more about it. And I’m sure you can find more information by Googling it.

Now for a word challenge. FTP 10 points.
What English word is 9 letters long, and each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains a word?

Include the word and each new word formed at each step.

Try and see if you can do it without Googling it first!

Thanks and have a good night!
—
Shannyn Mc Arthur