On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Ralph Walter wrote:

> those puzzles where you move 15 little numbered tiles around in 16
> spaces.

My grandfather was a printing equipment salesman in his time, and perhaps
as a little tchotchke or souvenir of the trade, my grandparents had a
15-tile puzzle with letters that spelled out either "SPEED FOR QUALITY",
or "QUALITY FOR SPEED", depending on how you arranged it.  (Actually, I
suppose, it was "SPEE/DFOR/QUAL/ITY" or the like.)  Hanging around my
grandparents' house as a child with not much better to do, I sometimes
found it entertaining to rearrange the tiles from one version to the
other.

I didn't quite understand the point of the slogan: were they promising to
sacrifice speed to get quality, or vice versa?  One assumes that even the
old-time printers couldn't maximize both simultaneously.

I have been thinking about those puzzles lately as I have struggled to
totally rearrange the stuff in our basement.

Unfortunately, in mid-puzzle, Sarah came home from day care sounding a bit
hoarse, and within hours, all three of us were so ill (not to mention
repeatedly staying up all night with a feverish and very unhappy three
year old) that moving boxes and furniture was inconceivable.

That was almost two weeks ago, and we are still getting over it.
Meanwhile, the basement is even less usable than it was before I started
moving stuff around.

                                  Larry

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
Washtenaw County Commissioner, 4th District
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Mailing address: P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106

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