PRONUNCIATION PUZZLE.

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 115, 16 May 1936, Page 26

PRONUNCIATION PUZZLE.

In the lines given below the three spaces are to be filled with words which look as if they ought to rhyme, judging by the way they are spelled, but their accepted pronunciation makes them sound quite unlike one another. He planned a good long , this lucky man, Who could contrive a whole month's holiday, It seemed a liberal term, when it began, . But all too fast the weeks sped away. As we, who have much shorter spells I of leisure " | Spend all too soon our last free of pleasure. PRIZE WINNERS. Two girls received books as prizes, and noticed that the prices pencilled inside the front covers were still readable, and were for numbers of shillings without .pence. Probably both prizes were awarded for mathematics, because the first thing which occurred to the minds of both recipients was that the value of Ada's book could be i stated at one half-penny per page, and j that of Betty's at three farthings per page. There were 712 pages in the two books together but Ada's had the larger number, in fact it exceeded the other by more than- 100. What were the prices paid for these books? A WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY. Mr. and Mrs. Hardup spent last I weekend motoring and camping. Their expenses were not heavy, but as neither of them had much money to spend, it happened that both had to j contribute towards the cost of the ex-j pedition. Mrs. H. says that she paid sixpence more than her husband. He j admits this, but adds that they Were ! fortunate in being invited to lunch by a friend, whom they met on Sunday. If he had been compelled to pay two shillings for each of them, his expendi- I ture would have exceeded that of his ! wife, in fact it would have been 60 per cent, of the whole amount they really did pay. They talk as if they had squandered many pounds, but the question now raised is how much did they really spend? THE EXECUTOR'S PROBLEM. The will of an old lady gave instructions that a sum of money left in. a drawer of her table was to be given to her servants. She stipulated that no two of them should have the same amount, and also that no two of the differences, by which one share exceeded another, should be the same. The money was found to be in £5 notes, but the executor changed some of them into £1 notes. In doing so he obtained'the smallest possible number of these £1 notes, and paid the sums according to the terms of the will without difficulty. But he stated that he could not have done so, if another j beneficiary had been- among the num- I ber. What were the sums required, and I how many £5 notes had to be,changed in order.to pay them? '-. .: r A MATINEE. There was a matinee with reduced .prices for children at a picture theatre in a certain town, and three families, living a short distance away, made up a party to go to it. Mr. Robinson's story is as follows: "I was treasurer, and I made a stupid miscalculation about the railway fares, for when I. put down three ten-shilling notes, the clerk required a penny more, and I had to borrow it from Mr. Stephenson's elder daughter. At the theatre we had to take seats in three different rows, and strangely enough, we were able to keep each family intact. Both my wife and I thought that our seats were very good, and our one and only son, who sat between us, was equally pleased. Our lot, you will see, consisted of just a little more than a quarter of the whole party. Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, with their equal number of girls and boys, were nearer the screen than we were. Their numbers, as you know, are more than ours, but they did not quite make one-third of the whole parly." Can it be deduced from these words how many boys and girls there are in each family? ARMCHAIR, PROBLEM. I answered the telephone and heard the voice of my helpful friend proposing a problem. "A storekeeper, named Adamson, was offering some goods in small tins at a reduced price, in order to clear his stock. He was prepared to supply four of these for 11 pence. The rival store across the road, owned by Brownson, entered into competition by giving five tins for a shilling. When both of them had sold all they had, one man had made sixpence more than the other. How many did'Adamson sell?" I thought I had not heard perfectly, and asked which of the two had the most money. "I am not going to tell you that," she replied. "And if you give just a little thought to it, you will see that it is not iri the least necessary that I should tell you anything more about it." Now, Readers, how many of them did Adamson sell?