Comments (12)

1. Dude! You left out Pluto. What’s up with that? Pluto was, is, and always will be a planet!

   posted by Bob on 9-15-2009 at 7:38 am

2. Yeah, but Pluto would be *next* in the sequence. With 1. (Check my link for JoCo’s statement on the subject.)

   posted by Lugh on 9-15-2009 at 9:15 am

3. Who can keep up with the number of moons on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? I think it changes weekly!

   posted by John on 9-15-2009 at 10:13 am

4. I’m sorry, I am now completely uninterested in the brain game. It has devolved into daily mixes of esoteric pattern recognitions, random and obscure trivia for very specific interest groups, ordering puzzles or word ladders.

   I know it must be difficult to do this every day, but it has gotten to the point where I see things like a number pattern and think “well, there’s no point in trying to figure this out, because it’s probably the number of cheerios that fell out of a cereal box this morning.”

   Word ladders can be fun, but if an X letter word takes X steps to change into the goal word, it’s so easy it’s barely worth the effort to bother.

   This isn’t meant to be offensive and I appreciate the effort that goes into offering this daily for free, it’s just an appeal from a frustrated fan.

   posted by jso on 9-15-2009 at 1:21 pm

5. It’s too easy, it’s too hard, more logic puzzles, fewer logic puzzles, it’s lame because it took forever, it’s lame because it took only a second… sigh. I hear it every day.

   The point of a puzzle like this is to determine how many numbers there are in the set (eight), figure out what type of sequence might come in eights (hey, there are eight planets) and then go from there. Sure, you may have to Google to find out how many moons Neptune has… I wouldn’t know offhand myself… but then you solve the puzzle.

   I don’t think Beatles fans or NFL fans are “very specific interest groups.” (Have you examples of others that I’ve done?) And having written trivia and puzzles since 1992, I’ve never done anything like your Cheerios example – EVER.

   That said, the number of readers who report that they enjoy the Brain Game far outweigh those that do not. I cannot please everyone all the time. There’s simply no way to write puzzles that are appropriate for every reader, so I mix easier ones with more difficult ones. Everyone deserves a chance to solve a Brain Game occasionally.

   Thanks for your patronage. I hope you enjoy the rest of the content on mentalfloss.com and in mental_floss magazine.

   posted by Sandy Wood on 9-15-2009 at 1:48 pm

6. I agree with Sandy…only your response should have been another puzzle.

   6,21,3,11,25,15,21

   posted by graham on 9-15-2009 at 2:49 pm

7. Good for you Sandy!

   If someone doesn’t like the puzzles, they just waste their time and ours by coming to the page and complaining. Go someplace else!

   Keep up the strange and esoteric puzzles! I love learning new things and discovering new ways to think.

   posted by Jeffrey on 9-15-2009 at 5:24 pm

8. Ouch, Graham! That’s a little harsh!

   Buh-bye, jso.

   Keep up the good work, Sandy.

   posted by Ron on 9-15-2009 at 6:36 pm

9. Hey! I figured out Graham’s puzzle! but i didn’t Sandy’s. Maybe next time! :)

   posted by Lindsey on 9-15-2009 at 7:08 pm

10. Lugh,

    Pluto, which will always be a planet, monor or otherwise, has 3 moons now: Charon, Nix and Hydra. The latter two are pretty damn small and were oly recently discovered.

    posted by eric! on 9-15-2009 at 8:50 pm

11. @jso I always thought mental_floss was a website/magazine dedicated to interesting facts and trivia…. Hang on. That’s exactly what it is.

    Sandy could of posted that Neptune has 13 moons. It would be a very boring post, so instead we get a quirky puzzle which in the end gives us this little piece of trivia.

    If the local pub quiz night asks me how many moons does Neptune have? I will have the answer. Which I will only remember because of a puzzle like this.

    Great job mental_floss, keep up the good work.

    Also, I get lots of positive comments on my R.I.P Pluto t-shirt.

    posted by Mark on 9-16-2009 at 2:28 am

12. It amazes me at how emotional people get over Pluto.

    By the current definition of planet, Pluto is not now and never was a planet.

    By the previous definition of planet, Pluto was and always will be a planet.

    Pluto didn’t have it’s “planet license” revoked. The change in its status was not a result of any malice against Pluto. The simple fact is that science changes. It evolves to incorporate new information. Sometimes that means that we have to change our definitions. It used to be that only four things were considered elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Since then, the scientific community has revised their definition to incorporate new information like the discovery of protons, and we now have a new definition that includes over a hundred elements, none of which is earth, air, fire, or water.

    Pluto is not a planet. Accept it. If that bothers you, it’s regrettable, but you’ll have to live with it. It’s the price we pay for progress. Sometimes we have to adapt.

    Maybe one day the definition of planet will change again, and, by that definition, Pluto just might be a planet. I wonder, though, how many people will then decry its sudden elevation to planetary status.

    I wonder if there was a similar outcry when earth, air, fire, and water were no longer considered elements.

    posted by Eric on 9-16-2009 at 2:53 am

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