Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

60 Springsteen Facts for Bruce’s 60th Birthday

60 Springsteen Facts for Bruce’s 60th Birthday

Today Bruce Springsteen turns 60. To celebrate his big day, here are 60 things you should know about Bruce and the rest of the E Street Band.

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

Gasp… Is This the End of the Weekend Genius Challenge?

It’s been a struggle to come up with mental exercises that are difficult enough for the many, many brilliant folks who read mental_floss and visit mentalfloss.com. It’s difficult to develop puzzles that are (1) safe from Web searches, but (2) not impossible to solve. After seeing many difficult contests won in a matter of minutes, [...]

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

Weekend Genius Challenge #30: Unwritten Rules

We got SO many entries for last week’s WGC that it may take us the rest of the weekend to sort through all the responses… but we’ll choose a winner before Monday arrives. In the meantime, since you all seem to enjoy being creative, let’s give away another T-shirt by unleashing Weekend Genius Challenge #30!
Many [...]

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Weekend Genius Challenge #29: The Writer in You

About two years ago, I got the idea of compiling some works of poetry or prose using the subject lines from the scores and scores of spam emails I receive every day. Many of them use random-word generators, so you end up with some nonsensical (but interesting-sounding) phrases. One email that I got was labeled [...]

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Weekend Genius Challenge #28 Winner

In WGC #28, we asked you to complete a sequence of numbers that began: 5, 6, 6, 6, 3, 5…
It took several hours, but Buddz finally came up with the correct answer. Congratulations! To see it, click here.

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Weekend Genius Challenge #28: By the Numbers

It’s time for Weekend Genius Challenge #28, and we’re doing things by the numbers. All you have to do is correctly complete ALL the rest of the numbers in this series. Sorry, no hints as to how many numbers there are in total; you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. And here it is:
Complete [...]

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Weekend Genius Challenge #27 Winner

Congratulations to Jack da Bomb, who won WGC #27 by figuring out that the answer was “forty.” Nice job, Jack! We’ll be in touch via email soon to get your T-shirt on its way. In the meantime, scroll down and check out what you may have missed last week. A new Weekend Genius Challenge will [...]

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Weekend Genius Challenge #27: Another Dose of Riddlin’

I loved sorting through the solutions (and reading the related explanations) for Friday’s riddle, so here’s a new one for this weekend’s Weekend Genius Challenge:

Be it days or nights
It measures our slumber
But with letters in order
It is THE only number
WHAT is it? And WHY?

As with many riddles, they may be multiple near-correct answers, but of course, we’re only looking for [...]

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Two Recent Winners

The winner of Weekend Genius Challenge #26 was Tom, who determined the correct (though unlikely) 2009 Super Bowl matchup. And congratulations to Eric, who was the first to match our solution to Friday’s Dose of Riddlin’ post. Both of these smart gentlemen win a T-shirt of choice from the mental_floss store.
We’ll have a new Weekend Genius Challenge ready a bit later today. [...]

Friday, April 11th, 2008

A Dose of Riddlin’

Short and sweet: be the first to solve our riddle and win a free T-shirt of your choice from the mental_floss store:

With noggin in oven
It has letters seven
But contains eleven
And takes you to heaven
Answer by commenting to this post; PLEASE REMEMBER that comments are moderated and won’t show up until they’re released, so they may not appear right away. [...]