Word Quiz Nets This Writer an ‘F’

It all happened very accidentally. I was coming out of a building when a young man stopped me in my tracks. He had been waiting in a remote passageway and was acting very suspicious.

“Hey, mister,” he said. “You look like a man of average intelligence. I bet you a dollar you can’t guess how many F’s there are on this card.”

He handed me a green calling card with the enclosed sentence: “Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the years of experience.”

“A dollar says you can’t correctly count the number of ‘F’ letters,” he reiterated. “You read the sentence once and don’t go back counting them again. That’s cheating.”

Was this some kind of a gimmick to steal my wallet? I played his game and counted the F’s. Surely, anybody in their right mind can identify the alphabet accordingly.

Without really concentrating, I skimmed over the sentence and gave him my answer. “Three!”

Two were located in the beginning of the first two words and another was picked up in the last syllable of “scientific.”

The boy laughed. “Your mind is too cluttered,” he said. “You didn’t concentrate. The answer wasn’t even in the ballpark.”

I turned the card over and much to my chagrin, discovered that one of only average intelligence would find three F’s. If I spotted four, I was above average.

Five F’s would have given me the privilege of sticking my nose up at almost anybody. And if I caught six, I was labeled as a genius and too good to be wasting my time on foolishness like this.

I handed over my dollar. All three F’s in the “of” words were passed over blindly. The funny part about this was my tenacity to win. I cheated a little and read the sentence three times without noticing the two-letter words.

The lad was right. I was too preoccupied in my own little world and couldn’t even read a sentence correctly.

How many others were there like me who would fall for such a trap? I took the card, bent on becoming rich overnight.

My first victim was a writer friend. She appeared engrossed in her work and need a break. The woman took the card and studied it carefully. The wait seemed interminable.

“Three,” she muttered with a knowing smile. “There are three F’s.”

Her purse became a dollar lighter.

I next approached a salesman with a gift of gab. He was looking to make a quick buck and took the card. His answer was four. He caught the “F’ in the third “of” and replied with an air of certainty. A disgruntled look came over his face.

“I’ve been taken,” he accused. “There’s some trick to it.”

He changed his tune after reading the sentence over a half dozen times. He then called it an “optical illusion,” which it wasn’t.

A cousin put up his dollar—the one who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He, too, noticed only three but responded with five, giving himself the benefit of the doubt. It didn’t work.

Another refused to make a wager but decided to try anyway. I gave her that option and she gave the worse response of all.

“Zero,” came her reply. “There are no F’s in that sentence.”

I couldn’t blame the woman. She had been working 14 hours a day and was obviously spent. Her car needed a new transmission. And she had just received word of being overdrawn on her checking account. I felt mean showing her the card.

By the time this day ended, 11 people had taken the test and nobody had passed. I was not only $10 richer but marveled at the sight of their faces reading the card. It ranged from quizzical to one of absolute assurance. All were laid to dumbfounded rest.

I couldn’t complete the day without victimizing at least one of my children. I wanted to get back at him for the stunt he pulled on me a few years ago that cost me.

He made a bet that he could throw a paper match into the air and have it land on its side—balanced. After a number of futile practice attempts on his part, I accepted the challenge. The culprit flipped the match upward and down it came on its side. He had bent it secretly and there was no way he could lose.

I decided to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “My $20 against your $2 you can’t read the number of F’s,” I proposed.

“Deal,” he reciprocated with a smirk. “There are six F’s in that sentence.”

Little did I know he had the card, too.

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Tom Vartabedian

Tom Vartabedian is a retired journalist with the Haverhill Gazette, where he spent 40 years as an award-winning writer and photographer. He has volunteered his services for the past 46 years as a columnist and correspondent with the Armenian Weekly, where his pet project was the publication of a special issue of the AYF Olympics each September.

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