WORD WEDNESDAY - Quadruple or nothing
This week's Word Wednesday comes to us from reader Steve Cowan.
Today's Puzzle
Our puzzle today is all about homophones. You probably remember these from grade school but if you don't, here's a refresher: homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things. For example, fur and fir are homophones, as are bear and bare.*
The puzzle is to find a set of four homophones - that is, four words that all sound the same but are all spelled differently and all have different meanings. (An example of a set of three homophones is sent, scent, cent.)
We are aware of two possible answers but there may be more, so reply to this email and let us know what you come up with!**
*Some definitions of homophone allow for the same spelling, but this puzzle is looking for words with different spellings. So book (something to read) and book (make travel plans) don't count since they're spelled the same. Alternative spellings like color and colour also don't count because they mean the same thing.
**Disclaimer: Different people pronounce words differently, and words that some people consider foreign may be native English to others. As such, we will happily be publishing all reasonable answers that we receive. If you think this policy is silly, note that the authors of Occasional Puzzles have between them five degrees in Linguistics.*** So, I guess what we're saying is: come at us, bro.
***Two BAs, one MA, one MS, and one PhD.
Monday's Puzzle - Easy as 1-2-3 (4-5-6-7-8-9)
How can you make 100 by interspersing any number of pluses and minuses into the string of digits 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1? (You can't change the order of the digits.)
There is more than one correct answer here - for a challenge, try to find the answer with the fewest pluses and minuses.
[SPOILER] Answer to Monday's Puzzle
One answer: 98+7-6+5-4-3+2+1=100.
This and similar answers rely on the idea that, hey, 98+2=100 so let's see if we can't just cancel the other ones out!
The optimal answer, it turns out, has only four pluses and minuses:
98-76+54+3+21=100.