Read Our Minds: January

A ‘temporary’ wartime measure in 1917 led to pubs closing at what time for the next 50 years?

Word Puzzles

Have you been over indulging on Christmas fare and under stimulating your mental muscle? Here are some puzzles from Reader’s Digest’s Mind Stretchers, to keep your mind active over the holiday season.

Three of a Kind

Find three hidden words in the sentence that, read in order, go together in some way.
Example: I sold Norma new screwdrivers (answer ‘old man river’).

The army infantry regiment won a recent skirmish.

Betweener

What four-letter word belongs between the word at the left and the word at the right, so that the first and the second word, and the second and the third word, each form a common two-word phase?

EYE _ _ _ _ OUT

Tongue Twister From what language are all of these words derived?

Alligator, Canyon, Stampede and Vanilla?

A) Czech
B) Welsh
C) Spanish
D) Greek
 

Take Our Word For It

Are you struggling to keep your New Year Resolutions after only a few weeks (or days)?

Take heart, for as Elizabeth Taylor says, ‘The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.’ You will find this wonderful quote in Reader’s Digest’s Quotable Quotes, along with other such gems as: ‘I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals,’ by Winston Churchill, and ‘The real art of conversation is not to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment,’ by Dorothy Nevill.

This month’s giveaway

When real life and fiction intersect.

We Are All Made of Glue, by Marina Lewycka, tells the story of an unlikely friendship between Georgie Sinclair, a recently separated woman with a teenaged son, and her eccentric elderly neighbour, Naomi Shapiro.

Read an extract from We Are All Made of Glue