Sandy Wood
Brain Game: Pete Fell Off
by Sandy Wood - September 16, 2009 - 7:30 AM

bloghead_braingames.jpg

Here’s hoping that you’ll enjoy today’s Brain Game. Good luck!

Bookkeepis one of a handful of eight-letter
English words that contain three sets 
of consecutively-repeating letters.

Name another.

Here are five possible ANSWERS.
Click here to get a Risk-Free issue of mental_floss magazine
Comments (16)
  1. Not so much words as names, but Tennessee and Mississippi

  2. bookkeeper :-)

    successfully

  3. Assessee!

    Proof: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/assessee

  4. To continue with the proper names: Tallahassee.

  5. But none of the proposed solutions have consecutive repeating letters… so they’re not really solutions…

  6. Jim

    The have consecutively repeating letters but not consecutively repeating PAIRS of letters.

    It kind of takes the fun out the the whole “Bookkeeper” solution.

  7. Tennessee

  8. Kate’s right. I tried to be careful by saying “sets of consecutively-repeating letters” instead of “consecutive sets of repeating letters.”

    The sets can be anywhere in the word as long as those sets contain repeating letters (AA, BB, CC, and so on).

    And, as always, the Brain Game is about thinking, not rules. If you put some thought into your answer, that’s what matters.

    I see more and more studies about how important this type of problem-solving is to brain health. Seeing my mother’s mind decay from Lewy’s Body dementia over the last several years has taught me that mental exercise is just as important – and more important in many cases – as the physical stuff.

    So think up!

  9. allottee
    appellee
    assessee
    heelless
    keelless
    keenness
    toolless

  10. This one I heard somewhere before: an apprentice to an incompetent bookkeeper is a subboobbookkeeper.

  11. I can’t help but notice that many of the proposed answers in the comments have more than the required 8 letters.

  12. This question was totally the solution to an Encyclopedia Brown story. One of two I remember. The other one had to do with someone filing their nails while pretending to have just taken a bath.

    Which, when you think about it, is also the solution to Legally Blonde.

  13. committee

  14. teenness
    eelless

  15. Jacquilynne, I was trying to remember that Encyclopedia Brown story for other words! I also remember the nail filing one, and one where Bugs Meany confuses the usage of Us and We as the subject in a sentence. I loved those books growing up!

  16. I love these word puzzles.

    If you allow overlapping pairs, then you can also use “wallless”, which is a very funny looking word.

Comment

commenting policy