RDAU_2026-ISSUE0809_DIGITAL MAGAZINE

KOLONKO/GETTY IMAGES The ORBISCULATE Challenge easy Howmany words can you find within the 11-letter word below? Words must be at least three letters long and appear in the dictionary (we use Merriam-Webster) to count toward your score. Bonus The longest word we found within HARPISCHORD is nine letters long. Can you find it? (See answer below.) What’s With This Game’s Crazy Name? We first published “Warning: This Fruit May Orbisculate,” about a family’s made-up word, in our December 2021/January 2022 issue. Orbisculate means “when you dig your spoon into a grapefruit (or another fruit or vegetable), and it squirts juice directly in your eye.” Soon after, reader SueMollineaux of Torrington, Connecticut, wrote us to say that residents of her senior community had put their heads together and found 223 words using the letters in orbisculate (like orb , brace or—good one— aerobics ). After we shared her letter, hun- dreds of readers took up the challenge and wrote us with their scores. We were so delighted, we decided to feature the ORBISCULATE Challenge, with a new (legit, not made-up!) word in every issue of Reader’s Digest . your score: H I A C R H P O S R D Answer: Rhapsodic reader ’ s digest 138 August/september 2026 Brain GAMES Sharpen Your Mind EMILY GOODMAN (JUST THE TICKET, DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH). FRASER SIMPSON (PLACE YOUR CHIPS) Just the Ticket Difficult Thanksgiving is a busy time of year—especially at the airport. These plane tickets feature real American airport codes. And while their letters formwords or abbreviations that are meaningful in other ways, they also provide hints as to where the airports are located. Can you identify the places connected by these trips? Place Your Chips Difficult You have poker chips with values of $5, $10 and $25. Place them on the squares of this grid—no more than one chip per square—so that their values total the amounts shown for each row, column and diagonal. Hint: Not every square will have a chip on it. Several chips and one blank space (indicated by a star) have been placed to get you started. Diamonds in the Rough Easy In geometry, a diamond has four sides of equal length. But in this puzzle, most of them are shaped more like kites. How many diamonds/kites are there in this triangle? (The shapes may be symmetrical or skewed.) 65 H 50 85 30 65 50 95 45 30 75   90 80 readersdigest.com.au 139 reader ’ s digest