Mitch Townsend

Word Puzzles

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1. Think of a set of three words that sound the same (homophones) but begin with different letters. Example: nice and gneiss sound alike and they begin with different letters, but there are only two of them. There is no third that I can think of that sounds like that. I can come up with four sets of three words, but I believe I have forgotten one.

2. How many English words begin with s but not sh, and are pronounced as sh? I can think of three, not counting derivatives of these three.

3. Give yourself 1 minute and write down all the words you can think of that are doubled syllables. Examples: bye-bye, Dada. Punctuation and capitalization do not matter, but spelling does (syllables must be spelled identically). See if you can come up with a primate, a flowering tree, an actress (her Magyar nickname for the name Susan, in English), and a treat.

Again

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On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb that destroyed the Murra Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The truck was parked at the loading dock, directly under the day care center. My daughter, three years old at the time, was in the day care center on the first floor of the Kennedy Federal Building in Boston. It is next to the loading dock. My wife was working on the 19th floor. When I returned to work the next day, someone in the elevator joked that it was too bad the bomb hadn’t taken out the IRS. The ride was short, and I was able to stay still.

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Now it’s Official: Tax-Free New Hampshire

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CONCORD NH (Reuters) – Governor John Lynch today announced that he will begin the process to change the official name of the state to Tax-Free New Hampshire. This will require an amendment to the state constitution, which must receive a three-fifths majority in both houses of the state legislature and approval by a majority of the voters in the next regular election. “It’s clear that we will not have the change in place for the 2008 elections. In fact, that will be our earliest opportunity to get it on the ballot. We’re looking ahead to 2012.” The heavily-covered New Hampshire presidential primary is expected to give the new name wide exposure.

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Failure, Part 1

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Stone Wall, Andover MA

Those picturesque New England stone walls were not put there for their looks. They weren’t even the first choice of material. Fences were originally wood, using the zigzag design that calls for a lot of wood for the length. Wood became scarce and too valuable for fencing after the forests were cleared, so stone walls became the default.

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