Sleeping Execution

Time for the new puzzler.

Here we go.

It was a long, hot summer Sunday. This older couple was sitting in the Sunday Service at their church.

The old man nods off during the sermon and he falls into a deep sleep.

He dreams that he is involved in the French Revolution. He's one of the leaders in the French Revolution, and he has been brought to the guillotine for execution.

He is about to be executed in this nightmare. Just as he dreams that the blade is falling, his wife notices that her husband is asleep, and she taps him on the back of the neck with her finger to wake him up.

The shock of thinking that the blade has arrived to cut off his head makes him have a heart attack, and he dies on the spot.

And the puzzler is simply this.

What's wrong with this story?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Birth of a Word

Time for the new puzzler.

This puzzler has to do with the birth of a word, you might say.

Here we go.

So, as usual, I don't have all the facts straight. But I will make them up as I go along.

During the 19th century, there were these disgruntled French peasants who worked in the fields sowing and harvesting the crops.

These peasants would go into the fields of their rich landlords and would trample the crops wearing their wooden peasant shoes.

Out of this behavior, a new word was born.

This word has entered not just the French vocabulary, but the English vocabulary as well.

And is a very common word, a word that you perhaps hear every day.

What is that word?