Coming to your inbox every Monday with educational fun-facts and all the answers to Trainwreck Labs games from the past week.
This week, we have…
A fun fact inspired by a recent Fictogram answer
Answers to last week's games
Game updates
Holden Caulfield - the name says it all
We’re not sure if John Lennon ever read The Catcher in the Rye. Would he have seen himself as Holden or as one of the “phonies”? Image generated by DALL-E.
It is no wonder Mark David Chapman was carrying a copy of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye when he assassinated John Lennon. Said to have been reading the book at the time of his arrest, Chapman believed that killing Lennon would help him take on the spirit of the book’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield (Fictogram answer #118, although incidentally “rye” was Plant #169 from Metaflora this week as well). That comes as no surprise, considering Holden Caulfield gave traction to the term “screwed up.”
Being responsible is a mature quality which requires adapting to the rules of society. The need to defend innocence is central to Holden Caulfield’s identity. And, like Caulfield, Chapman believed he was protecting against the phoniness of an adult world.
Most fascinating, the word “caul” describes the membrane which encloses the head of a fetus in utero. When Holden wants to protect the children playing in the rye field from the dangerous prospect of tumbling off a cliff, we are reminded of the wider metaphor: Hold-On Caul-Field. This resistance to leave “the field” of youth and self-sacrifice into the disingenuous life of adulthood is at the heart of both Holden’s journey and the ultimate path of a deranged killer who so famously shot one of the loudest voices for peace and love of his generation. Holden Caulfield may have felt he was saving children from the death of a world of responsibility—and in so doing, inspired others to take on the role of assassin. But, as John Lennon so famously quipped, “I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car and into another.”
Answers to last week's games
Monday, March 11 to Sunday, March 17.
Globle
Mar 11 Haiti
Mar 12 Marshall Is.
Mar 13 Australia
Mar 14 Algeria
Mar 15 South Korea
Mar 16 Armenia
Mar 17 Sweden
Mar 18 Play now!
Globle: Capitals
Mar 11 Budapest
Mar 12 Suva
Mar 13 Kigali
Mar 14 Phnom Penh
Mar 15 Dhaka
Mar 16 Amman
Mar 17 Vientiane
Mar 18 Play now!
Chronogram
#345 Rabindranath Tagore
#346 Joan Crawford
#347 Charles Dickens
#348 Rumi
#349 Duke Ellington
#350 Vivien Leigh
#351 Le Corbusier
#352 Play now!
Fictogram
#113 August Rush
#114 Hannibal Lecter
#115 Princess Jasmine
#116 Brida
#117 Christopher Tietjens
#118 Holden Caulfield
#119 Paddington Bear
#120 Play now!
Metazooa
#224 guppy
#225 narwhal
#226 bass
#227 condor
#228 green tree python
#229 sea turtle
#230 sea otter
#231 Play now!
Metaflora
#163 orchard grass
#164 black pepper
#165 touch-me-not
#166 cactus
#167 pomegranate
#168 rosemary
#169 rye
#170 Play now!
Linxicon
The following are the shortest paths from last week:
#28 location -> moving -> creeping -> slowly
#29 lucky -> fortune -> growth -> emerge
#30 practical -> experienced -> age -> fifteen
#31 exposure -> displayed -> proposed
#32 proposed -> reject -> deny -> false
#33 debate -> talking -> flying -> jet
#34 breathe -> wind -> northerly -> north
#35 Play now!
Forgeous
"Man Weighing Gold" by Adriaen Isenbrandt
Forgery of week, from March 15
92.0% accurate
Isenbrandt, Adriaen. Man Weighing Gold. 1515, oil paint on panel, 50.8 x 30.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436722.
Play Forgeous for March 18.
Game updates
You can now play Linxicon on dark mode! Dark modes for Metazooa and Chronogram coming soon.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!
