Why Did I Buy This Book? Read online

  For all the forgetters I’ll never forget.

  Copyright © 2009 by Lynn Brunelle

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4521-3164-1

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Brunelle, Lynn.

  Why did I buy this book? : over 500 puzzlers, teasers, and challenges to boost your brainpower / by Lynn Brunelle.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8118-6686-6

  1. Puzzles. I. Title

  GV1493.B697 2009

  793.73—dc22

  2008038467

  Designed by Jennifer Tolo Pierce

  Typesetting by Janis Reed

  Illustrations by Lynn Brunelle

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.chroniclebooks.com

  11

  Foreword

  13

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE:

  17

  WHAT WAS THAT WORD AGAIN?

  19 Words—Definitions

  29 Hink-Pink, or Rhyming Pairs

  38 Homophones

  46 Memory Box #1

  CHAPTER TWO:

  51

  WHO WAS THAT?

  53 Sing It!

  61 I Think I Saw This One Already: Film Trivia

  76 Book Worm

  93 History Trivia

  104 Memory Box #2

  CHAPTER THREE:

  109

  WHAT WAS THAT, AGAIN?

  111 In Other Words

  122 Scramblers—Famous Quotes, Titles, Etc.

  132 Find the Misspelled Word

  141 Memory Box #3

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  145

  WORD SURGERY

  147 Word Transformers

  159 Shrinky-Thinks

  166 Lop the Top

  175 Memory Box #4

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  179

  THAT’S A DIFFERENT WAY

  TO LOOK AT IT

  181 Anagrams

  192 Rebuses

  199 Word Pictures

  205 Picture This

  213 Memory Box #5

  CHAPTER SIX:

  217

  WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

  219 Mix Up Match

  248 Find the Misfit

  270 Memory Box #6

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  275

  THAT’S LOGICAL

  277 Brain Melters

  304 Phoning It In

  306 Behind the Eight Ball

  309 Morse Code

  311 Busted!

  315 Memory Box #7

  318

  ANSWERS

  Foreword

  By Ira Flatow

  Host of Science Friday

  Decades before all the current research about the brain and memory, my dad Sam said that if you wanted to stay sharp you needed to “exercise” your brain. He drilled that message into my brain countless times. What he didn’t know is why the brain can be helped by exercise. Today, we know better.

  Our brains are made of a hundred billion nerve cells. Each of these nerve cells is networked to tens of thousands of others. We used to think that the neurons we were born with were all the brain cells we were ever going to get. So, if the neurons were damaged by stroke or trauma to the head, you would never be able to regain the functions they served, such as speaking or walking.

  Today, we know that’s not true. We know that our brain is very plastic and pliable; it has the ability to regain functions it might have lost. People whose speech is impaired by stroke lose some functioning in their arms or legs, but are able to regain those functions from exercise. Healthy parts of a damaged brain are even able to help take over functions of the damaged part. And most importantly, we know that the brain can grow new nerve cells. Stem cells are able to grow into functioning neurons.

  What all this means is that the brain can rewire itself for learning and memory, too. Experiments with laboratory animals show that when they learn a new task, they strengthen the synapses—the connections between the brain cells. And now, with the exercises in this book, you’ll be able to remember why you bought it in the first place.

  Introduction

  Admit it.

  It’s happened to you.

  You park the car and you can’t remember where the heck you left it. You lose your keys for the umpteenth time. That guy in accounting always says “Hi” and you have no idea what his name is—even though you have been introduced a half dozen times. Your daughter tells a funny story about how you were covered with cake on her tenth birthday party. Obviously you were there, but what the heck is she talking about?

  It happens to the best of us. It’s called getting older—a process that starts as soon as we emerge into the world. But those fuzzy little moments of not feeling like the sharp tack as we used to is something that starts to bug us when we reach, oh, a certain age.

  Movie titles, book characters, historical events, simple math: All these things seem stowed somewhere ultrasecret or completely erased from your hard drive.

  But not to worry. Help is here!

  If you’ve ever had a brainblank (and who hasn’t), Why Did I Buy This Book? Over 500 Puzzlers, Teasers, and Challenges to Boost Your Brainpower has your name written all over it.

  The latest neuroscience research shows that the idea of “use it or lose it” is exactly the ticket when it comes to keeping your brain sharp. Makes sense when you think about it. If you eat donuts and watch TV all day, chances are you are more than a mere shadow of your former physical self. You have to eat right and exercise your body to remain fit, right? Same with your brain. You gotta give your wits a workout.

  Puzzles are terrific ways to keep those mental muscles moving and cerebral sparks flying. They spruce up your abilities to reason, analyze, sequence, deduce, think logically, and problem-solve.

  This isn’t your mom’s sudoku. It’s a compilation of word games, visual spatial challenges, bad puns, trips down memory lane, logic puzzlers, and memory boosters. With several levels of difficulties and themes, your hard drive will be cleaned up and spinning right along before you know it.

  So why did you buy this book? Dive on in, flip through, find a challenge that looks like fun and take it. It won’t be long before you remember exactly why.

  Chapter One:

  WHAT WAS THAT WORD AGAIN?

  You don’t have to be an aging English major to have fun and benefit from these puzzles. Wordplay and vocabulary games are terrific ways to stimulate your brain and make connections—keeping it supple and fit.

  Language itself is one of the first complex journeys our brains take when we’re born. From the get-go our brains absorb and process the construction of language. So it makes a lot of sense that exercising these skills is a great way to keep your brain sharp. These puzzles will challenge you to think about complex ideas and word associations and will keep your brain busy maintaining old pathways and creating a few new ones along the way.

  See if those crossword puzzles, games of Scrabble, and constant book-reading did the trick for your powers of definition. Get your pun-maker in gear and sort out the homophones. And tap into your inner Seuss-Frost- Eliot-Dickinson-Angelou and try your rhyming skills in Hink-Pinks.

  Words—Definitions

  Are these words familiar to you? If you don’t know them on sight, try to figure out what they mean based on word root.

  answers on page 319

  1. GOUACHE

  A. an Eastern European stew

  B. a method of painting

  C. a medical term for false pain<
br />
  2. BIVALVE

  A. a mollusk in a hinged shell

  B. a hot and cold water faucet

  C. a cow’s heart

  3. PILOT

  A. the final episode in a TV series

  B. an electric switch

  C. a ship’s helmsman

  4. BILGE

  A. discarded, rotting produce

  B. an offensive burp

  C. the rounded-out part of a barrel

  5. PLANTAIN

  A. the farmland at a mountain’s base

  B. a type of banana

  C. a glass-enclosed porch

  6. WORSTED

  A. a smooth, long-fibered yarn

  B. the opposite of bested

  C. a heavy application of eye makeup

  7. SYLLABUS

  A. a British dessert

  B. the outline of an academic course

  C. an old-fashioned joke book

  8. PORTENT

  A. a glass for serving liqueur

  B. turning a ship or plane leftward

  C. an omen of things to come

  9. FEBRILE

  A. feverish

  B. a species of houseplant

  C. easily broken

  10. VERISIMILITUDE

  A. a talent for defining words

  B. the quality of appearing real

  C. a description of fraternal twins

  11. POPINJAY

  A. a supercilious person

  B. a rubber duck

  C. a form of breakfast muffin

  12. BELLICOSE

  A. “beautiful cousin” in Italian

  B. a little white lie

  C. inclined to provoke quarrels

  13. OBSEQUIOUS

  A. out of chronological order

  B. a fawning, subservient manner

  C. entertaining, hilarious

  14. PANTHEISM

  A. the study of the planets

  B. the classic guide to trouser design

  C. the belief in numerous gods

  15. ACTUARY

  A. a calculator of statistical probabilities

  B. the setting for improvisational theater

  C. an area within a cathedral

  16. INTERSTICE

  A. the space between things

  B. an especially fancy sewing method

  C. a conversation-stopping remark

  17. CRINOLINE

  A. literally, a crinkly line

  B. a stiff cotton or horsehair fabric

  C. a type of hairless poodle

  18. GARRULOUS

  A. excessively talkative

  B. red-faced

  C. given to constant throat-clearing

  19. ALPACA

  A. a Native American infant’s sling

  B. a woolly Peruvian animal

  C. an ancient copper coin

  20. UNGAINLY

  A. given to losing weight

  B. sluggish stocks and bonds

  C. clumsy

  21. TABULAR

  A. having a flat surface

  B. a form of newspaper

  C. catlike

  22. PEDANTIC

  A. two-footed, nonhuman animals

  B. narrow, often showy studiousness

  C. a comical walking style

  23. LEGUME

  A. an Apache symbol of power

  B. a French salad fork

  C. a peapod

  24. PERNICIOUS

  A. funny

  B. destructive

  C. irritating

  25. ALLOY

  A. a combination of metals

  B. Benjamin Franklin’s middle name

  C. a naval greeting

  Hink-Pink, or Rhyming Pairs

  Creating rhyming pairs develops phonological awareness. When you make words that sound alike, you’re using the areas of your brain that focus on language and sound, as well as making connections between concepts. Can you find the rhyming pairs based on these clues? Hink-Pinks have one syllable in each word, Hinky-Pinkys have two, and Hinkity-Pinkitys have three.

  answers on page 320

  1. What is this Hink-Pink for a lackluster crustacean?

  2. What is this Hinky-Pinky for a crustacean modeled after Tony Soprano?

  3. What is this Hinky-Pinky for a fowl practicing witchcraft?

  4. Name this Hink-Pink for a young man fond of pounded taro-root paste.

  5. What is this Hink-Pink for a housekeeping employee who enjoys being out of direct sunlight?

  6. Name this Hinkity-Pinkity for an infant swaddled in designer wool clothing.

  7. What is this Hink-Pink for a contest where the greatest “pertusser” reigns?

  8. Name this Hink-Pink for a vehicle carrying an urban pest.

  9. What is this Hinky-Pinky for a shelled reptile with bountiful offspring?

  10. What’s this Hink-Pink for a recording device concentrating on what fashionable folks wear?

  11. What’s a Hinky-Pinky for a mother who’s gone tropical?

  12. What’s a Hinky-Pinky for a person who enjoys setting flame to paper art images made for hanging on walls?

  13. What’s a Hink-Pink for a musical group that gets fired from their gig?

  14. If Kermit used frog polish he’d have this Hink-Pink.

  15. What Hinky-Pinky describes a mama wolf’s snout rubbing against her baby?

  16. Name the Hink-Pink you get when you first try to make a call.

  17. What’s a Hink-Pink for a happy father?

  18. This Hinky-Pinky describes the gossip you might hear when you take the dog in for a bath.

  19. What’s a Hinky-Pinky for a big, dozy conical tent?

  20. This Hink-Pink is a suspicious female.

  21. A knife can be this Hinky-Pinky—especially at toast time.

  22. Intelligent creative works are this Hink-Pink.

  23. A dog with technique and a twig is all you need for this Hink-Pink.

  24. This Hink-Pink is a free fowl!

  25. A chanteuse and a stand-up comedienne, this Hinky-Pinky is both.

  Homophones

  Homophones are pairs of words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. In these puzzles, the homophones have been removed. Can you figure out what the real words should be?

  answers on page 321

  For example:

  Sal didn’t know he had to pay sales ________ on a box of ________.

  Tax/tacks

  1. After the________ in the paper, Randy could hardly ________ up the orders fast enough!

  2. Keith thought everyone knew that the solution for anything that might ________ was a frosty glass of ________.

  3. Leo used a paste made from ________ and water to make a ________ for his mother that would never wilt.

  4. The village ________ was an adept chef, and people came from miles around to see what he had cooking in his ________.

  5. Ella felt that every ________ on her face was so big, she could ________ an entire glass of water into each.

  6. Sean used ________ to figure out how many slices of ________ to serve to the family.

  7. The grandkids were the picture of________ and happiness until the last ________ of pizza was up for grabs.

  8. ________ the holes Ayla made in the leather garment were made with her trusty ________.

  9. Edna suspected that if she dressed in plastic ________ and gyrated to some ________ music, she might work Edgar into an amorous state.

  10. Felicity’s new ________ was pleased when she wore a ________ in her hair.

  11. Chip wasn’t sure what ________ the dinner ________ played—soup sopper or between-courses palate cleanser?

  12. Samantha found a small ________ in her new ________ hat.

  13. Dizzy ________ his trumpet until he was ________ in the face.

  14. All ________ the ________ and hearty!

  15. You didn’t ________ this from me, but do you know who was ________ this afternoon?

  16. During
the test, Kai knew that it was important to write ________ answer in the blank, but he wanted to make sure he figured the ________ correctly in the first place.

  17. Sheena had to offer a ________ salary in order to ________ the candidate she wanted.

  18. Abigail had no idea that the charming ________ ride would end in her desire to ________ the driver.

  19. Alex ate a ________ as he listened to the throbbing ________ of Rosie’s new song.

  20. When Lisa lost her ________ down the drain, she couldn’t help but ________ her hands in worry.

  21. Everyone ________ that a ________ smells!

  22. Lynn took the afternoon to wander the ________ and was struck with how many ________ items there were.

  23. Jim didn’t even set foot ________ the ________ because he didn’t like the look of it.