Thursday, February 14, 2008

Hidden in plain view

This one was given to me several years back while I was working the aftercare program in a Louisiana Christian school. I was able to find all the necessary books in about 20 minutes. Not bad considering I wasnt as overly familiar with the Bible as some of those kids. I did manage to find them all before some of the teachers though LOL. Anyhow, it's made it to my inbox a couple times since then and I enjoy trying to beat that 20 minutes. Im putting it in here for your enjoyment.

Don't grab your Bible---I challenge you to do this without any outside assistance. One bit of advice I would give is to read the following through before you start trying to solve it. The instructions are in the paragraph. Enjoy!
There are 30 books of the bible in this paragraph. Can you find them? This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat pocket, on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for hours. He enjoyed it so much; he passed it on to some friends. One friend from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his johnboat. Another friend studied it while playing his banjo. Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly newspaper column. Another friend judges the job of solving this puzzle so involving; she brews a cup of tea to help her nerves. There will be some names that are really easy to spot. That's a fact . Some people, however, will soon find themselves in a jam; especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized. Truthfully, from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or a scholar to see some of them at the worst. Research has shown that something in our genes is responsible for the difficulty we have in seeing books in this paragraph. During a recent fund raising event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Philemonade booth set a new record. The local paper, the Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who reported that this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever seen. As Daniel Humana humbly puts it, "Those able to find them all will hear great lamentations from those who have to be shown. One revelation that may help is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur without their numbers. Also, keep in mind, that punctuation and spaces in the middle are normal. A chipper attitude will help you to compete really well against those who claim to know the answer. Remember, there is no need for a man to exodus, there really are 30 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found. God Bless.

3 comments:

ChicagoLady said...

Hmmmm, I found 12 on the first pass. Let's see if I can find any more.

ChicagoLady said...

I only found 16, I give up, lol.

LadyStyx said...

It's been several years so I played this again. I found 17 with the first pass and bumped up to 20 on the second. Some of them are really really hard though so no worries.

FOr those that gave up, the answer is here: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/answer.htm