1. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer and.generally more comfortable to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "?" came from.
2. The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English alphabet, as you know. What you might not know is that it was developed by whom to test telex/fax communications?
3. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is .....? Hint - what we hope all the pictures on blogs are.
4. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account ..... what?
5. The phrase "?" comes from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
Answers
Goodnight, sleep tight; Western Union; uncopyrightable; the weight of all the books that would occupy the building; rule of thumb
There is actually a lot of dispute about whether 5 is true or not. See here for example for an internet description
ReplyDeleteI'd trust you on that one, Tiberius.
ReplyDeleteOnly number 1!
ReplyDeleteI guessed the last one, but my favourite's the first!
ReplyDeleteI heard a women on the radio once, discussing 5. She concluded it was bogus. Then, on essentially no evidence at all, she decided that it was part of old Welsh law.
ReplyDeleteWomen, eh?
The question in 5 is an urban legend.
ReplyDeleteSeems a lot of attention on N5. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell, let's see how cluttered my mind is:
ReplyDelete1.Sleep tight.
2-
3.uncopyrighted.[ok 2 short]
4.weight of additional books.
5.rule of thumb.
* This law is legit except the man was only permitted to hit his wife with a stick providing it was no wider than his thumb.
Well done, Uber - you're clearly Mensa material. I'll post on that phenomenon of the wife-beating later.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, no - the potty woman I heard on the radio had good evidence that the stuff about a stick no wider than your thumb was rubbish - that is to say, it was no part of English law. Her pottiness lay in suddenly accepting someone's evidence-free allegation that it was part of old Welsh law.
ReplyDeleteAh.
ReplyDelete