let us watch The Exorcist,’ says Jeremy. Joan makes a mental note to think twice about the suitability of Suzanne as a babysitter next time.
‘What do you know about those things on the lawn?’ says Mrs Jones suspiciously, swallowing a couple of aspirin and pouring boiling water into two mugs. ‘Did you put them on the lawn?’ Jeremy smiles and shakes his head. He pours some sugar-coated breakfast cereal into a bowl and adds nearly a pint of milk and a good deal more sugar. ‘What about Julie?’ asks his mum.
‘No,’ replies Jeremy with his mouth full, ‘she didn’t put them on the lawn either. Nobody did.’
Mrs Jones is bemused but doesn’t fancy an argument. She also decides against breakfast. ‘Not too much noise this morning, darling,’ she tells her son. ‘Your father had a busy day yesterday.’ She carries the coffee cups upstairs, trying, between hiccups, to solve the mystery of the strange objects arranged on her lawn.
The problem
Jeremy was telling the truth. Nobody put the strange assortment of objects on the Joneses’ lawn. But there is a very straightforward reason why they are there. What is it?
The annoying computer password
The mystery
Children these days seem to have little trouble remembering twenty computer passwords, yet they still cannot remember the kings and queens of England. Why should they, when they can look them up on their iPhone?
Older people often have trouble remembering where they live and their own names, let alone recalling their PIN number, mobile number, telephone banking security questions and all that stuff.
I don’t know who is responsible for the following joke about computers – I wish I did – but it kind of sums up the situation.
COMPUTER: Please enter your new password.
USER: cabbage
COMPUTER: Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.
USER: boiled cabbage
COMPUTER: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.
USER: 1 boiled cabbage
COMPUTER: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.
USER: 50fuckingboiledcabbages
COMPUTER: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper-case character.
USER: 50FUCKINGboiledcabbages
COMPUTER: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper-case character consecutively.
USER: 50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourArseIfYouDon’tGiveMeAccessNow!
COMPUTER: Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.
USER: ReallyPissedOff50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourArseIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow
COMPUTER: Sorry, that password is already in use.
Anyway, the point is to tell you about a man named Bill, who could never remember how to spell his password. He was alert, sane, and happy with computers, but spelling had always been a bit tricky for him. It wasn’t just unusual words like ‘acquit’ and ‘minuscule’ that gave him trouble, it was ordinary words with double letters, like ‘misspell’ – somewhat ironically.
The most annoying of the lot was his password, which he never could spell correctly, so that he spent many wasted hours trying to log on to his computer.
The problem
How did Bill spell his password?
The mystery
Terry is a young man with two girlfriends: Emma, who lives to his east, and Wendy, who lives to his west. Emma East is a petite and sultry redhead; Wendy West is a blonde volcano – cool on the outside but bubbling hot below the surface ice. Terry likes both girls equally and enjoys the company of one just as much as the other.
Terry’s local railway station has only one platform. It is one of those ‘island’ platforms of the sort where trains on one side always go one way and trains on the other side always go the opposite way. There is an unfailingly reliable hourly service in each direction, east and west, the trains always run on time, there are the same number both ways, and no train is ever cancelled. (You’ll have noticed that this is very unlike the real world.)
Unfortunately, Terry is completely disorganised, with no idea of the actual times of either service. In one respect this doesn’t matter, because Terry’s girlfriends never go out. They are so devoted to him that they’re always at home in their respective houses, looking out of their front window, waiting for him to visit.
Every time Terry fancies some female company he leaves home without consulting a watch or clock, goes straight to the station, buys a ticket valid to either station, runs up the steps to the middle of the island platform, and boards the first train that comes in, whether eastbound or westbound. There’s one of each every hour and they are perfectly normal trains in every way. He catches his trains at random times and on random days. Sometimes he gets there late in the evening. Sometimes it’s early morning. Sometimes it’s lunchtime, sometimes teatime. He arrives on any and every day of the week in no particular order and he goes either east or west according to which train arrives first.
The westbound train, going to Wendy, leaves at exactly the same time past each hour. The eastbound ‘Emma’ train does the same but leaves at a different time from the westbound ‘Wendy’ train, so Terry is never torn between the two.
The problem
Last year Terry saw Emma East a lot, and many more times than he saw Wendy West. In fact, he hardly saw Wendy West at all. Why?
The mystery
