Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Koji Kondo: Our Beethoven?

Da, Da, Da. Da Dada Da. Dada dada dada da dadada. While that may sound like nonsense, if I told you it’s my best attempt to spell out the Super Mario Bros. tune, it becomes immediately recognizable. If you were born after 1970, chances are you can hum the theme from the first [...]

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

14 Crazy Chess Boards and Variations

The game of chess has been around in its current form for hundreds of years. It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master, but it’s not much of a spectator sport. Still, chess is so fascinating that considerable imagination has gone into making it more accessible and exciting for players, students, and [...]

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

The Weekend Links

• If you are one of those savvy TV viewers who gives a knowing nod when, say, Britney Spears or Cher suddenly shows up on your favorite network show (”sweeps!” says I), some of these ridiculous celebrity cameos will probably look familiar.
• The ultimate show of fandom—how about a person who makes the entire Godfather [...]

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

The Weekend Links

Science Fairs were the bane of my existence. At my Catholic school, the priest even once said during Mass, “… and the parents did a great job on their kid’s science fair projects this year.” Zing! Anyway, if you’re looking to relive aspects of your childhood, this link to ridiculously funny science [...]

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Ridiculous Board Games: Live from Birmingham (winner!)

Update #3: We have a winner!
A lot of you were close. But it took 596 comments before Joe Maz finally guessed the right quote. I’ll be in touch about your free t-shirt.

“A,B,C. A: Always. B: Be. C: Closing. Always be closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING.”
If you’re OK with coarse language and yelling, here’s that classic Glengarry [...]

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

A Different Kind of T-Shirt Contest (update)

UPDATE: Still another whole day-and-a-half to send in your brilliant ideas for a future mental_floss t-shirt. See below for details.

We’ve run our share of t-shirt contests, from Ridiculous Board Games to eBay scavenger hunts to Weekend Genius Challenges. But this one is different. To celebrate the arrival of our new shirts (above), let’s start working [...]

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Awards Ceremony

With the 423rd comment in yesterday’s Ridiculous Board Game, Phunk correctly guessed In-N-Out Burger. Congratulations! As Donny Kerabatsos would say, those are good burgers.
You win the free mental_floss t-shirt of your choosing – and it looks like you’re choosing “When Life Gives You Scurvy, Make Lemonade” (my personal favorite). I’ll be in touch to ask [...]

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

Ridiculous Board Games: It’s Company Time

Update: We have a winner…
Today’s topic is business. Mangesh has drawn one company’s logo on our whiteboard. How prescient are you? The first person to correctly guess wins a free mental_floss t-shirt. Let’s go over the rules…
1) This is a complete game of chance, the equivalent of saying “We chose a number between 1 and [...]

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Ridiculous Board Games: Three Winners

In our most recent Ridiculous Board Game, it only took 138 comments to find three winners. However, nobody correctly guessed the guest artist – our own Becky Hayes. She was visiting from Los Angeles.
Here’s what we were looking for:
1) Sailboat (Jonathan, #138)
2) Boy Scouts (Troy, #56)
3) W-H-A-L-E (Ben, #33)
4) Becky (no winners)
Jonathan, Troy and Ben: [...]

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

Ridiculous Board Games: FOUR T-SHIRTS UP FOR GRABS

We haven’t done this in a while, so we’re raising the stakes. Mangesh and I invited a special guest artist to draw on our whiteboard. Rather than just draw one element as we’ve done in the past, our guest artist drew three. To win a free mental_floss t-shirt, all you have to do is correctly [...]