Curio Cabinet / Teaser Curio

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!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
 

Be very wary, Mary. This week's riddle is a little hairy, but you can do it solitary, or to the contrary, do it with a full military. It's customary, though, to do it with nary a dictionary. You don't have to be visionary; the words are all ordinary and are in your vocabulary. But enough! Let's bury the unnecessary commentary. To the riddle!
 
This is a common 7-letter English word.

(The original word) Something you carry
(Remove the 3rd letter) Terribly scary
(Remove the 2nd and 3rd letters) When you should parry
(Remove the 1st and 3rd letters) One is to marry

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #145" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
 

Hungry? Food is more than just sustenance. Food feeds the soul, delights the eyes, tickles the senses, creates joy, and makes your jeans not fit anymore. This week's word riddle is dedicated to the pursuit of food.
 
This is a common 5-letter English word.

You can eat this if you're hungry.
Remove the first letter, and this is one of four at a table where there is no food.
Remove the second letter, and you can break this if you're hungry, especially in the morning.
Remove the first letter, then move the last letter to the front, and you can take these if you're hungry, especially in the afternoon.

What is the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #136" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
 

Sometimes, it's the smallest changes that make the largest differences. That's often called the Butterfly Effect, based on the idea that the beat of a butterfly's wings can start a tornado. The sequence below is not that far removed from a sequence you'd probably recognize.
 
What's the next number in this sequence?
 
1, 1, -1, -3, -1, 5, 7, -3, -17, -11, 23, 45, ...
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #122" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Nothing gets the juices flowing (brain juices and blood juices) like a math teaser in winter. If your furnace is out, or you've cranked down the heat to help save the planet, or you think heat is for the weak, warm up your brain with this one.
 
The weather outside is frightful, a frigid n°. As it turns out, if you divide n2 by 5, you get the remainder 4. And, as it also turns out, if you divide n3 by 5, you get the remainder 3. Bored out of your skull because you don't want to go outside, you decide to divide n by 5. What remainder to you get?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #167" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

With Thanksgiving over, our attention turns to decorating the tree. Bust out the shimmering tinsel, sparking lights, beautiful ornaments, and painfully-hideous-but-some-kid-made-it-and-so-it-has-to-stay ornaments. There may not be a lot of agreement about how to decorate the tree, but when you're all done, get some hot chocolate and enjoy the hideousness while you sit by the fire.
 
Here's a ladder to help top off your decorating. Can you find a word ladder from TREE to FIRE that satisfies the clues below?
 

TREE
 
 A bump on your neck
 
 
 Someone may have done this to your tree
 
 
FIRE

 
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 #166" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

That distant cousin taking the last of the stuffing at Thanksgiving is irritating. Black Friday sales that put everything on sale except that one thing you patiently waited to buy are irritating. You've had enough irritations this holiday weekend, so don't let this riddle get under your skin.
 
This is a common 6-letter English word.

(The original word) It gets under your skin.
(Take off the first letter) It's well below your skin.
(Take off the first and last letter) When you see something as fast as possible, it's often this.
(Swap the second and third letters) When you do something not quite as fast as possible, you could get this.

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #165" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Calculators are great (calculator watches are even better), but we too often use them as a crutch. So today, carefully put down the calculator, slowly step away, and dust off your arithmetic skills. We think this week's Teaser is actually easier to solve without a calculator, despite how it might look at first. Your 5th grade teacher would be so proud of you!
 
Simple question: How many 1s are in the smallest multiple of 17 that is made up entirely of 1s?
 
Put another way: there is a whole number x that is made up entirely of 1s. It is the smallest multiple of 17 that is made up entirely of 1s. How many digits does x have?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #164" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

We don't really think of brain teasers as particularly emotional because well, generally, they aren't. But we hope you feel all the feels from this week's teaser. Ya feel me?
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?

She sang an emotionally uplifting song.
An often emotionally draining song.
For the highly educated, a time when you are judged.
A way that you just judged others.

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #163" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Election day is hurtling toward us here in the US. Sometimes, it feels futile. You vote, and then you don't always get what you want. But we know what you really, really want: a word riddle. And we aim to please.
 
But vote anyway; you really still should.
 
This is a common 7-letter English word.

(The original word) This is a person.
(Remove the 2nd letter) This is what the person in Clue #1 often does.
(Remove the last and 2nd to last letters) It's made from things you often don't want.
(Remove the 1st and 2nd letters) It's what you get when you don't want what you get first.

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #162" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Counting is so simple, isn't it? But its simplicity can make it super, super boring (and why you can combine it with sheep to fall asleep). The challenge of this week's Teaser is to stay awake while you're counting from 1 to 1,000,000.
 
Quick; write all the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000. Done? Great!
 
What's the most common digit you wrote? And how many of that digit did you write?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #161" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats said it best, so we're not even going to try to riff on that. Let's unscramble!
 
This quote about truth is from Winston Churchill. 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! In truth, that's cheating.

The truth is never robotic lint. Malice may attack it, yoga-in-car men deride it, but in the end, I hit trees.
 
The truth is (16). Malice may attack it, (9) (3) deride it, but in the end, (5) (2) (2).

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #160" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Here's a little-known fact about bees. They like to geek out! Video games, Dr. Who, subatomic particles... they dig it all. So what do you get when four BFF bees (or Bee-FFs) get together? A geek fest.
 
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 B, E, G, and K?
 

  BEE
  BEE
  BEE
+ BEE
 GEEK

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #159" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

You're not worried, are you? There are no prizes if you get the Teaser right, and no penalty if you get it terribly, outrageously, hilariously wrong. Right or wrong, don't worry; it'll start, then it'll end. And who knows? Maybe we do have to give a prize for hilariously wrong answers to this word square.
 
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?

Worry
Worry when doing a survey
Where your days start
Reading ways to end

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #158" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Whose turn is it? Well, it's our turn to send you a teaser, followed by your turn to bombard us with (hopefully correct) answers. But right after you do, let's flip it around. Send us a teaser (and hopefully correct answer), and we might use it for a future teaser! Ready? It's your turn.
 
This is a common 5-letter English word.

(The original word) You can turn with this.
(Remove the 1st letter) You can turn on this.
(Remove the 1st and 2nd letters) This can be turned delicious.
(Remove the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd letters) This might turn above you (less common).

What's the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #157" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Genius comes in all shapes. It might come in the shape of a mathematical symbol. Or in the shape of a pair of glasses with tape in the middle. Or, in the case of Word Genius, a 10x10 grid of letters meant to tickle your genius bone. And, in the case of this specific Word Genius puzzle, round is beautiful.
 
Today's daily Word Genius puzzle has no proper nouns and no multi-word answers. Solve it in Word Genius to learn an interesting fact about the puzzle's theme (and earn Word Genius coins, too!).

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

Sometimes, you just want a simple question with a simple answer. No silliness, no lengthy preamble, just get down to business. Bringing the heat...
 
On an analog clock with smoothly moving hands, what is the first time after midnight where the minute and hour hands are 90° apart?
 
Note: the answer isn't a nice round time, so you can leave your answer with fractional time, or round it to the nearest tenth of a second.
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #155" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Kids are great! Really, they are. But sometimes, just sometimes, when they're being extra bratty, you just wanna tag out and not deal with them. This time of year, there are times you want to camp out in front of the TV, especially on the weekends, away from any bratty kids.
 
This quote from Jimmy Fallon might suggest that he wants to watch a lot of TV on the weekends, too. Two phrases from this quote have been scrambled. The phrases of the original quote have 2 and 4 words, respectively, with the number of letters shown. 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 phrase?
 
Remember, no Googling for help! We'd call you a brat for that.

Thank you... fantasy fat doll of brat, for letting me know that even in my fantasies, I top mad as brats.
 
Thank you... fantasy (8) (5), for letting me know that even in my fantasies, I (2) (3) (2) (6).

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #154" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!