Mr. Fun

No day at the amusement park

To enter this week's contest, e-mail me your caption (with the subject line "CAPTION CONTEST") before 5 p.m. on Monday. Voting runs from Monday evening to Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Another alien joke

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Wait til Lou Dobbs hears about THIS

To enter this week's contest, send me your caption entries by 5 p.m. on Monday. I'll be on the road, but we'll get these posted, then tally the results at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

CODE BREAKER: We have a winner!

Last week’s reader-game featured a cipher that occurred to me as I was researching the Friday 5 feature on getting more out of your cell phone.

The more I text-messaged, the more I realized that I was starting to think about individual letters and punctuation as numbers and combinations (for more on how to type with a cell phone key pad, see today’s Friday 5). Hence: To type “Dan,” I’d have to press the 3 key once, the 2 key once and the 6 key twice.

Which made me realize that a cell phone could be used as a key for a simple substitution code: “Dan” would become “3.1 2.1 6.2.” A zero represents a space (just as it does on a cell phone) and a number without a decimal represents the number of times you have to press the 1 key to get the desired punctuation. So: 3.1 2.1 6.2 0 4.3 7.4 0 2.1 0 4.1 3.2 3.2 5.2 1 equals “Dan is a geek.” How true.

Once you understand what the code is, deciphering it is simple. But recognizing it? Not so easy, proving once again that life is all in how you look at things. To help, I left a few rhyming clues on the site.

The winner? Beau Inabinet, an attorney with Pierce, Herns, Sloan & McLeod. The answer? “Friday is puzzle day!”

Inabinet originally thought it was a mathematical sequence, used one of my clues to rule that out, then cracked the code at 3:25 p.m. Monday.

THIS WEEK’S GAME: Use this cell phone code to come up with the most difficult-to-type sentence. Your sentence may contain as many as four words, and no word may be longer than four letters. Send your sentences, along with the number of key-taps required to write it, to me, Dan, by Wednesday morning.

And then the SECRETARY says...

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7.1 8.2 9.4 9.4 5.3 3.2

3.3 7.3 4.3 3.1 2.1 9.3 0 4.3 7.4 0 7.1 8.2 9.4 9.4 5.3 3.2 0 3.1 2.1 9.3 1

Well, that's never a good sign...

To enter this week's contest, e-mail me your captions no later than 5 p.m. on Monday. Voting on the five finalists begins Monday evening and runs until 10 a.m. Wednesday.

10, 12, hut... HUT!

Opinion Polls & Market Research

The fifth quarter

To enter this week's contest, e-mail your captions to me by 5 p.m. Monday. Voting on the finalists begins soon after and runs until Wednesday at 10 a.m.

On the couch

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