MONDAY

Quiz Time!

In preparation for the upcoming holiday season and seeing our extended family, my sister and I decided to give the kids an after-breakfast quiz. “What is your Grandfather’s first name?” “What is the name of your cousins’ new dog?” etc. etc.

The kids decided we should be quizzed too. After lunch they gave us questions that included: “In which month are most babies born?” “How much does the earth weigh?” “Why can you not take a picture of a man with a wooden leg in British Columbia?” (Answers at end of post).

Having been roundly humiliated by this latest set of questions, we decided to up the ante with new questions of our own, relating to our work: “What are the ingredients of a roux?” “What is the purpose of a Form I-765?”

The kids were not amused. The next round, a math quiz, continued at the shabu shabu restaurant we went to for dinner…The kids posed questions along the lines of: “What is the cubed root of 512?”

Here was the final bonus round…

Adding only mathematical symbols (NOT numbers), make the three numbers to the left equal 6:

0              0                0        =      6

1              1                1        =      6

2              2                2        =      6

3              3                3        =      6

4              4                4        =      6

5              5                5        =      6

6              6                6        =      6

7              7                7        =      6

8              8                8        =      6

9              9                9        =      6

My sister and I, English and Russian majors respectively, looked at each other blankly.

“Here! I’ll even do one for you as an example,” my son generously offered.

2     +      2     +     2      =      6

My sister and I puzzled our way through almost all of them, but were stumped by the last few.

Again, my son tried to save us from utter humiliation with what he thought was a huge hint.

“Factorials.”

Alas, this did nothing to shed light upon our benighted ignorance.

“What’s a factorial?” I asked my sister. She shrugged.

Quiz Time is not over. Not by a long shot. We’ve already got the next round (“The Etiquette Round”) queued up and ready to go.

TUESDAY

The National Gallery

WEDNESDAY

Princeton

The rest of the tribe arrives tonight…

Answers to Round 2 Quiz questions: August, 1,000 trillion metric tons or 6 sextillion, You can’t take a picture with a leg.