A Contest of Wits

      I like this one because the solution is so simple.  And that, of course, is the whole point of pointing out the obvious.  There are no dead bodies though.  All it involves is a simple contest that appeared in Rag, the weekly newspaper. 

      The paper was trying to increase its readership and they came up with a clever way to induce people to buy it.  On the first Monday of the month they published a list of fifteen unusual words.  Then they offered $100 to the first person to find and circle the words as they appeared, throughout the paper, in the following Monday’s edition.

      Naturally, I can never resist making fools of people who think they can outwit me.  So I had my technician set me up at the offices of Rag on the second Monday, along with fifty or so other human contestants, all hoping to get a head start by getting the paper hot off the press.

      The moment the new issues were tossed onto the counter, all the contestants got out their pencils and started racing through the issue looking for the words to circle.  It took an average of thirty minutes to do it.

      For everyone else, that is. 

      I, of course, had set things up to give myself a distinct advantage.  By doing what I did, my technician, under my direction, was able to win the contest in just a few seconds. 

      Can you figure out my little ploy?

Nano Solution_____________________________________________

      “Did you take a course in speed reading?” you ask.

      Knowing that this guess is just plain dumb, you expect it to be met with a withering frown.  You are not disappointed.

      “No need for that kind of stuff,” Nano says.  “You see, as soon as the list of words was published on that first Monday, I took out a classified ad in the next week’s edition.  The ad contained nothing but the list of words itself.  The only thing I had to do when the second issue came out was to have my technician turn to the classified section and circle the words in my own ad.”

      “And the money?”

      “Unfortunately, the classified ad cost me $125.  I never said that uncovering the obvious was profitable.”