Puzzles

Sure enough (see my prediction on May 6), cold air blew through northern Illinois along with thunder and rain in the morning. Pleasant to lie in bed, half asleep, half awake, and listen to the rain on the roof and mid-distant thunder just as dawn breaks. The rest of the day was cloudy and distinctly cool—maybe 30 degrees off the previous day. Spring in the North is a series of ever-weaker blasts of cold air.

Spent some time the other day doing multiple-choice puzzles, for reasons that I will elaborate on some other time. By puzzles, I mean figuring out patterns in sequences of numbers and letters.

Some were easy: 5, 10, 6, 9, 7… next? Some took a few moments: 60, 30, 20, 15, 12… next? And one I puzzled about for about 20 minutes before I figured it out: 23 to is 3,983 as 32 is to (a) 3,839 (b) 3,994 (c) 4,874 or (d) 9,599. I tried all sorts of things on that one, till the answer popped into my head. At least the puzzles weren’t timed, since I needed time to think about some of them. Which makes me wonder about time limits on standardized tests. I've long wondered about them. A few problems in life require immediate attention, but number puzzles aren’t one of them.