Curio Cabinet / Teaser Curio

Ron and Ava challenge each other with number challenges all the time. They love the flexibility, power, and most of all, precision of numbers. One day, Ava thought of a challenge that she thought would get him.
 
Ava: "I've grouped all the digits into two groups. The first group includes 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. The second group has 6, 8, and 9. Where does 0 go?"
 
Ron: "What about 4? You skipped 4."
 
Ava: "Well, that's a bit complicated, because it's not clear. Sometimes 4 is in the first group, and sometimes it's in the second."
 
Ron, confused: "What? That doesn't make any sense... 4 should be in one or the other, not both!"
 
Ava, smirking: "And yet, it is!"
 
Ron twisted his brain into a pretzel, but it suddenly it dawned on him.
 
Where does the 0 go and why?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #146" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

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!

So you figured out our phone number, then you figured out our new phone number, and now you want the pin to our ATM card? Well, why not? What harm could that do?
 
The pin is a 5-digit number that is three prime numbers, all less than 100, written in a row, in increasing order. All the digits are strictly increasing; i.e., each digit is greater than the last. Still need more? OK, it's the largest number for which the above conditions are true.
 
What's our pin?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #144" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

The World Cup is upon us with all of its competition, excitement, nationalism, rabid fans, and occasional scoring. And in that spirit (the love of competition, not the occasional scoring), we bring you this scrambled quote.
 
The end of this quote from soccer super-stud Pelé has been scrambled. The original quote ends with 3 words with the number of letters shown.
 
Remember, no Googling for help! That's cheating, and there's no cheating in soccer. Right?

The more difficult the victory, the greater the spinning naps I win, eh?.
 
The more difficult the victory, the greater the (9) (2) (7).

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #143" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Work, work, work. Even the best of jobs, after you've done them enough, feel like work sometimes. Take a break from your real job and work on this word riddle instead. Unless your job is solving word riddles; in that case, take a nap.
 
This is a common 5-letter English word.

You might have to work to reach a high one.
Reverse the letters, and you might have to use one to make sure your work is done well.
Change the last letter to R, and it can be used to make your work easier (famously in Greece).
Change the first letter to R, and this is something you can do after your hard work is done.

What is the original word?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #142" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Writing years with just two digits doesn't really work anymore. Does '30 mean 1930 or 2030? For this teaser, we're going to ignore the 20th century and stick with the now!
 
Last week, we just passed a mildly interesting (and admittedly contrived) calendar milestone. On June 3, the product of the month and day was the year (6 x 3 = '18).
 
How many times does this happen in the 21st century? (Note: a product of 100 is not equivalent to a year of '00.)
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #141" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Summer's here! Time to party, maybe at the beach, maybe with a little lemonade, some BBQ... Or even better: a word square. 'Cuz there's no party like a nerd party.
 
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?

Where you might go to party hard
Where you might go to party bard?
A person who might party hard this time of year
What a party guard might do to you if you're not on the list

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #140" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Really, you should download and try Word Genius. If you like Curios and word puzzles and fun facts and crosswords and learning things and animated owls (and seriously, who doesn't?), then Word Genius is for you. Here's a little taste. You might want to solve this one with about 100 of your talented friends.
 
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.

The royal wedding today has us thinking about weddings, and weddings have us thinking about cake. Actually, every gathering has us thinking about food. Does food make us think about brain teasers? No; thinking about food usually shuts down all other high cognitive functions.
 
Today, however, we're focusing enough to present you with a wedding-cake-themed puzzle.
 
Harry and Meghan (of course) are having a small, intimate wedding with only 20 total people in attendance. They have a two-tier wedding cake where the top tier is 8" x 8" x 4" tall and the bottom tier is 16" x 16" x 4" tall, and your job is to cut the cake. You can re-stack the tiers any way you like, but once you start cutting, you can't move the cakes around until all the cuts are complete.
 
What is the minimum number of straight-line cuts you need to make to cut the cakes into 20 pieces that are the same size and shape? (Imagine you have an exceptionally long knife, and don't worry about sharing the frosting equally. It's covered in fondant, and fondant's nasty.)
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #138" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

To all the mothers out there, we hope you have a wonderful Mothers' Day tomorrow. For our simple, nerdy tribute to mothers, we have a quote for you that needs a little... fixing.
 
The end of this quote from Victor Hugo has been scrambled. The original quote ends with 4 words with the number of letters shown.
 
And no Googling around for help! If you need help, you can only do one thing: call your mother.

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children thump needles nosily.
 
A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children (5) (7) (2) (4).

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #137" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

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?

What? You want my new phone number? I changed my phone number so you wouldn't call me anymore! OK, ok, fine, but I'm not going to make it easy. I don't have to give you my area code 'cuz it's the same as yours, but you'll have to figure out my 7 digits.
 
My 7-digit phone number is three prime numbers written in order from smallest to largest (like 3711 is 3, then 7, then 11). Amazingly, the sum of the prime numbers is exactly 1,000, and all 7 digits are unique.
 
What? You need more info? OK, fine; the last prime number is more than twice the second prime number.
 
So... what's my phone number?
 
Note: again, this is not our real phone number, so if you figure it out, don't call it!
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #135" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Sometimes, solving puzzles takes creativity. Sometimes, it takes perseverance. Sometimes, it takes numerical manipulation.
 
This one just takes a square. Take the puzzle, take your time, and take a breath. When you're done, take a drink, or take a bath, but make sure you take a bow!
 
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?

It might take this to break a bad habit.
You might have to take this to talk to Congress.
Things from here take an Allen wrench and a lot of patience.
What you might get if you take off a gram.

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #134" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Are you ready for some baseball? The season is fully underway, so it's time for a baseball-themed teaser. You need something to do while waiting through another meeting on the pitcher's mound, right?
 
In the phrase below, the first blank is an anagram of the second. The numbers in the parentheses are the number of letters in each word.

Dave always had bad excuses for his poor play. After he hit into that   (6) (4)  , he whined, "  (1) (3) (6)   my attention away by calling me a mean name!"

What words fit into the two blanks?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #133" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

...That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Another moment not playing Word Genius
Or to take your phone against its sea of troubles,
And by challenging solve them.
 
We just launched two new levels in Word Genius, What's Your Sign? and To Be or Not to Be. And no, there is nothing noble about not playing it. Give it a shot!
 
To get you in the mood, here's a little trouble for you. A famous Shakespearean quote is embedded in the admittedly odd text below. The quote itself is 29 letters long, meaning only 19 letters were added; we're not counting punctuation or whitespace. All the letters of the quote appear in the correct order in the text (we only inserted additional letters).

All over? Call the Rusted Cafe. We down a strong, strong ounce!

What's the original Shakespearean quote?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #132" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Have you tried our new app yet? Word Genius is for all of you who like a little more game in your learning (or a little more learning in your game). It throws some of the best parts of Curious into a blender (puzzles, Curios, and learning about everything) and gives you an addictively fun smoothie. Calorie-free.
 
Today's daily Word Genius puzzle has one proper noun and one multi-word answer. 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? Solve hundreds more in Word Genius, available for iOS and Android. Curious users get 100 free Word Genius coins with the gift code curiousfamily.

Two basketball playing brothers, Paul and Max both made it to the NCAA March Madness tournament, playing on different basketball teams. Unfortunately, they ended up on opposite sides of the bracket so if their teams were going to meet, it would have to be in the championship final. That would be really difficult.
 
They still wanted to put a friendly bet on it, so they bet dinner on which one would score more total points in the tournament.
 
Max averaged 12 points per game through the tournament, but his team, the 9th-seeded College of Collard Collages (Go, Fightin' Art Installations!), finally met their match and lost against the 4th-seeded Really Tall Tech. They did not fulfill their dream of making the Final Four.
 
Paul had been averaging 11 points per game in the tournament when his team, the 10th-seeded Montessori University of Dentistry (Go, Fightin' Drill Bits!) started their game against the 8th-seeded Pretty Good U. Unfortunately, they lost, so also failed to reach the Final Four.
 
At the end of that game, he totaled his points, and he figured out that the brothers actually tied with the same number of total points each.
 
How many points did Paul score in that last game?
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #130" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Maybe it's the Black Panther superhero movie mania talking, but this week's word riddle feels a little violent. But don't worry; you won't lose your nerd cred if you do it. You're spending your weekend working on a word riddle! You're already superhero nerds to us.

This is a 7-letter English word.

You could probably only get one of this if you made a killing.
Remove the last three letters, and this (and its friends) might run you down in the street.
Remove the first three letters, and this is a great hunter.
Replace the second letter with an 'i', and if you had one of these, you could buy roughly 2,000 of the first word.

What is the original word?

 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #129" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Lilah is a special child. Adorable as they come, but she can challenge her parents to the brink of insanity. One particularly mischievous afternoon, she threw down the gauntlet.
 
Lilah dumped her Crayolas on the floor, as kids tend to do, and then started sorting them into piles, as this particularly precocious child tends to do.

scarlet, dandelion, apricot, chestnut, asparagus, lavender
blue, white, brick red, silver, sky blue, cornflower
orange, violet, cerulean, sepia, goldenrod
red, brown, black, tan, gold

She stood back, proudly looking over her work. Then she handed her parents the yellow crayon and sweetly asked, "Where does the yellow go?"
 
Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #128" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Deliciousness comes in any form really. Square, round, tubular, flat discs covered in cheese... Word squares are still just square, but that doesn't mean we won't throw a word rectangle at you some day. But today, we have a food-themed 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?

A little morsel of deliciousness, often in a sweet liquid, served with a spoon.
A little morsel of deliciousness, often in a sweet liquid, served with a straw.
Where a lot of deliciousness comes from.
This can be found in cannelloni.

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #127" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!