Curio Cabinet / Teaser Curio

Life isn't always fun, but, we really should have as much fun and laughter as we can. But who would boo life? Jen? And red dust on Mars in the month of June? Does Mars even have months?
 
Confused? This thoroughly confused quote about fun and life is from Gordon B. Hinckley. Two phrases from this quote have been scrambled. The phrases of the original quote have the number of words and letters shown below. The phrases were scrambled independently (i.e., the letters from the first phrase aren't scrambled into the second phrase). Can you figure out the original phrases?
 
Remember, no Googling for help! What's the fun in that?.

In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is booed yet, Jen, not red June dust.
 
In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is (2) (2) (7), not (4) (7).

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #187" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

The world can be a dangerous place. Maybe you need protection from someone trying to steal your credit cards, or from antibiotic-resistant super-bugs, or from a particularly ornery squirrel in your backyard. Curious provides none of that. Hopefully, today's teaser will provide a little protection from Saturday boredom.
 
This is a common 6-letter English word.

(The original word) It can be a good way to protect the ground.
(Remove the first letter) A good one will protect you for life.
(Remove the second letter) A good one will protect you from burning.
(Remove the second and last letters) A good one will protect you from drowning.

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #186" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

All we've been hearing about the past two years has been Robert Mueller and his report, and all we've been hearing about the past two weeks has been William Barr. And what do you get when you add a lot of Mueller with a little Barr? A lot of juicy details and a lot of black bars.
 
In the addition problem below, each unique letter represents a different single digit. None of the number "words" starts with a 0 (i.e., M, B, and R are not 0). What are the values of MUELLER, BARR, and REDACTED?
 

  MUELLER
  MUELLER
  MUELLER
  MUELLER
+    BARR
 REDACTED

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #185" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

How many languages are there in the world? Well, as you can imagine, the answer is the subject of quite a bit of argument, and that argument is probably held in many different languages. Ethnologue catalogs over 7,000 spoken languages, including an astounding 151 with fewer than 10 speakers!
 
For this word square, we're sticking with English instead of, say, Marathi. And no, Marathi isn't a rare language; it's the 11th most popular language with 83 million speakers.
 
Remember: a word square is similar to a square crossword puzzle, but the same words appear across and down. Here's an example of a 3x3 word square:
 

CAT
AGO
TOY

 
Below are four clues, not in order. Can you make a 4x4 word square out of it?

A universal language for some, a completely foreign language for others
It can accent a language
The effect you can get when using the right language
It's usually performed in a different language (not English)

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #184" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

So one morning, Josh struggled to get out of bed, his head groggy from the previous night's excesses (studying, booze, or "Game of Thrones" marathon; it's unclear). He stumbled into the bathroom and looked at the digital clock in his bathroom (ya know, the kind where each digit is made up from as many as 7 lit segments). This clock does not show the first 0 if the hour is a single digit; i.e., if it's 7am, the clock shows "7:00" not "07:00".
 
Even through his brain fog, Josh noticed that the clock showed 4 different digits. That's not particularly odd, but then it got weird. As he reached for his toothbrush, he knocked over the clock, and it landed upside down. "Bah! I don't care," he thought. He turned back to the mirror and noticed the reflection of the upside down clock and... what?!? The reflection showed the same time as when he saw it the first time.
 
What time is it?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #183" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

This week, the world saw the first-ever image of a black hole from the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, approximately 55 million light-years away. This one image came from the decades-long collaboration of teams of scientists from around the world. We dare say it's the coolest picture of a fuzzy ring of light ever.
 
Luckily, we're not going to make you put that much effort into solving today's teaser. Can you find the word ladder that connects BLACK to HOLES that satisfies the clues below?
 

BLACK
 
 
 Like constellations, they require a little imagination.
 
 
 
 Most astronomers wore them.
 
HOLES

 
Remember: a word ladder is a series of words, starting from one word and ending with another, where each subsequent word is a one-letter change from the previous word (without rearranging, adding, or removing letters). And, of course, each step is a common, valid English word. For instance, you can change CAT to DOG like this: CAT => COT => DOT => DOG.
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #182" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Dating. For many, that word brings to mind horrors of rude conversations, irritating jokes, and awkward silences. We suffer through these so we don't have to be alone on major holidays. For the nerds here at Curious, we make brain teasers out of them, which may explain why we also tend to make brain teasers on major holidays.
 
This is a common 5-letter English word.

(The original word) It may be between a pair on a good date.
(Remove the last letter) It may be between a pair on a bad date.
(Remove the first letter) It may be where a pair meet on a play date.
(Remove the first two letters) It may have been where pairs met on a wet date.

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #181" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Have you tried Word Genius yet? What? Haven't you heard that it's the most important app of the day? It's chock full of wholesome brains, well-balanced cognition, fortified with Vitamin S(mart), and goes best with excessive amounts of warm maple syrup.
 
Here's a sample puzzle from Word Genius. Give it a taste!
 

 
Did you get it? Get more (a LOT more) in Word Genius, available for iOS and Android.

Is there such a thing as too much bacon? The answer will shock you!
 
Of course, there is. John, however, loves bacon and refuses to give it up. Recently, he went way overboard with a 100%-bacon lunch, justifying it to himself and his cardiologist by saying it helped him come up with this math teaser.
 
In the addition problem below, each unique letter represents a different single digit. None of the numbers starts with a 0 (i.e., B and L are not 0). What are the values of BACON and LUNCH?
 

  BACON
  BACON
  BACON
+ BACON
  LUNCH

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #179" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Did you know that the average square inch of human skin has 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes (cells that produce melanin that give skin its color), and more than 1,000 nerve endings? You did? Wow... Well, then today's teaser is dedicated to you and the latent dermatopathologist in all of us.
 
Remember: a word square is similar to a square crossword puzzle, but the same words appear across and down. Here's an example of a 3x3 word square:
 

CAT
AGO
TOY

 
Below are four clues, not in order. Can you make a 4x4 word square out of it?

The skin
It will puncture the skin
It will heal the skin
To find it, look deep beneath the skin

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #178" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Cindy got a glitzy new watch for Christmas last year. It was an analog watch (ya know, the one with the hands). Shiny, metal band, what looked like a diamond in the face, very special. Unfortunately, despite it being so fancy, it wasn't great at actually keeping time. In the first week she had it, she noticed it gained exactly 6 minutes smoothly over the course of the day, but lost 2 minutes over the course of the next day, and kept alternating gains and losses on alternating days like that.
 
Not wanting to return the gift, she reset the watch to the correct time at exactly midnight at the beginning of New Year's Day 2019 (just before downing her champagne). And just as she thought it would, it gained 6 minutes on January 1. If she doesn't reset the watch again, when will the watch show the correct time again?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #177" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Carl Sagan was a astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, and, more than anything else, a great communicator of science. He made a science accessible, inspiring, and exciting for generations, and turned countless children to a future in science. But did you know he also researched hawks and donkeys?
 
OK, maybe he didn't. In this quote about science from Carl Sagan, two phrases have been scrambled. The phrases of the original quote have the number of words and letters shown below. The phrases were scrambled independently (i.e., the letters from the first phrase aren't scrambled into the second phrase). Can you figure out the original phrases?
 
Remember, no Googling for help!

Science is a tiny hawk in fog much more than it is a glob of donkey dew.
 
Science is a (3) (2) (8) much more than it is a (4) (2) (9).

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #176" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Everyone needs a little support sometimes, especially when you're jumping brain first into a Saturday Teaser. Call your friends, your family, or your local barista. Ya know, the one with all the piercings who seems like they would be totally into word riddles. Whomever you call, we just want you to get the support you need in noodling on this word riddle.
 
This is a common 7-letter English word.

(The original word) Supported the host.
(Remove the second letter) Supported a mom & pop.
(Remove the second and last letters) Supporter of a baby, but a bad one.
(Remove the first and last letters) Supporter of a golf ball, but a bad one.

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #175" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Sorry! We messed up Teaser #172, making it impossible to solve. It has been fixed, so feel free to try again.
 
Here's your teaser: how many shoes does a horse need?
 
OK, we're kidding. We think they need four, but we have't asked our neighborhood farrier recently because, well, who has a neighborhood farrier?! What do we have? Math teasers.
 
In the addition problem below, each unique letter represents a different single digit. None of the numbers starts with a 0 (because that's just weird). What are the values of H, O, R, S, and E?
 

  SHOE
  SHOE
  SHOE
+ SHOE
 HORSE

 Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #174" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

We usually have math teasers and we have word teasers. They usually don't mix, really for fear of the rioting that would likely ensue. Today, we throw caution on the wind. A word square about math! (OK, it's really just a word square with some math terms, but it's a start.)
 
Remember: a word square is similar to a square crossword puzzle, but the same words appear across and down. Here's an example of a 3x3 word square:
 

CAT
AGO
TOY

 
Below are four clues, not in order. Can you make a 4x4 word square out of it?

We recently found out they can do a little addition and subtraction.
A unit you might get if you do a little multiplication with two distances.
What you might get with too much torus topology.
A design you might get from a little fractal geometry.

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #173" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Love 'em or hate 'em (and really, there's no middle ground), the Patriots are back in the Super Bowl taking on the LA Rams. And what do Patriot fans want? A lot of connections from their ageless wonder at quarterback Tom Brady and their bulldozer tight end Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski.
 
Can the Patriots make the connection? Can you complete the word ladder pass from BRADY to GRONK that satisfies the clues below?
 

BRADY
 
 
 The Rams have it at home, but the Pats don't.
 
 
 Adult
 
 
 
CRONKA hoarse croak or honk
GRONK

 
Remember: a word ladder is a series of words, starting from one word and ending with another, where each subsequent word is a one-letter change from the previous word (without rearranging, adding, or removing letters). And, of course, each step is a common, valid English word. For instance, you can change CAT to DOG like this: CAT => COT => DOT => DOG.
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #172" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Kindness can feel like it's in short supply these days. We're going to top off your kindness tank with a scrambled quote about the power of kindness. After you solve it, go do something kind.
 
This quote about kindness is often attributed to Lao Tzu (though that may not be true). Three phrases from this quote have been scrambled. The phrases of the original quote have the number of words and letters shown below. The phrases were scrambled independently (i.e., the letters from the first phrase aren't scrambled into the second phrase). Can you figure out the original phrases?
 
Remember, no Googling for help! That would not be kind.

Kindness in words refines decent coca. Kindness in thinking produces no fasteners. Kindness in giving covets a reel.
 
Kindness in words (7) (10). Kindness in thinking (7) (12). Kindness in giving (7) (4).

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #171" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

This Teaser is not so scary, Mary. We know you're still very wary. But it's unnecessary to find sanctuary in a monastery, or even a commissary. Any fear you carry is momentary. All the words are ordinary, known to every secretary, actuary, or emissary, though likely nary a solitary cassowary or hairy dromedary. So unbury your planetary stationery, sit among the statuary in the aviary, and solve this Teaser.
 
This is an ordinary 6-letter English word.

(The original word) Finding everything scary.
(Take off the first letter) It's famously scary, to the literary.
(Take off the first and last letter) Call something extraordinary.
(Take off the last letter) Want more than customary.

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #170" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

We trust you, Curious Nation. You obviously appreciate learning interesting things and solving challenging puzzles. So we can trust you with our bank PIN, right? Of course, we can.
 
We have a three-digit PIN that does not start with 0. The sum of the PIN and the next two consecutive numbers is square (i.e., the sum of p, p + 1, and p + 2 is a square number). Our PIN is the smallest number for which this is true. What's our PIN?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #169" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Happy New Year! We wish you all the best in 2019! To make sure you have a great new year, we're bringing you a little square to protect from all the slings and arrows life can throw your way.
 
Remember: a word square is similar to a square crossword puzzle, but the same words appear across and down. Here's an example of a 3x3 word square:
 

CAT
AGO
TOY

 
Below are four clues, not in order. Can you make a 4x4 word square out of it?

This can protect you from rain.
This can protect you from cold.
This is where you can store something you want to protect.
There are charms to protect you from this.

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #168" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!