A Mystery Fail

Ann H GabhartAnn's Posts, One Writer's Journal 48 Comments

“Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all…” ― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Okay, so nearly all of you solved the last mystery here with aplomb. At least I get to use a fancy sounding word. Some words just seem to roll off one’s tongue. Aplomb is one of them. Do you know some others? One I like is whippoorwill, and I guess the whippoorwill bird does too since it sings its name.

Words can be fun, and Lois proved that with her mystery guess. Thank you, Lois, for being wrong.  LOL. You and maybe five others were wrong. A few who had spent some time working where there were conveyor belts thought it might be that. Marji saw the wheels on a toy train. Karen was sort of with Lois with the farm equipment.

But back to Lois’s guess that has me thinking about the great sound of some words. She thought it might be old quack digger tines. Since I had never, ever heard of a quack digger, I went right out on the internet and found some pictures of those old quack diggers with weeds growing up around them. Maybe quackgrass because that’s where the quack diggers got their names – for their ability to get rid of quackgrass. I just looked up quackgrass and discovered it’s considered worse than crabgrass. So no wonder farmers came up with a special piece of equipment to try to get rid of it.  Lois introduced a new mystery to me, but one I could solve.

Nearly all of you did solve my mystery photo with no problem at all. I guess I thought you might not remember manual typewriters. It was so easy for some of you that you were sure you couldn’t be right. You thought I wouldn’t post a mystery that easy to solve, but in this case, I did. Not intentionally, of course. I really did like the mystery picture. I didn’t think all  of you would get it. Sigh. Now, I’m thinking no more Mr. Nice guy.

I did a lot of playing around with this old typewriter when I was a kid. It belonged to the aunt who was like a grandmother to my sisters and me. She went to a business school and learned to type and take shorthand. She never got married or had a job to use what she’d learned. Instead she took care of her parents as they aged, and she spoiled her nieces. Her business course knowledge was extra fun for us. I played around with her shorthand book a little, but what I really liked was rolling a piece of paper into that old typewriter and pretending I was writer Ann. To practice learning where the keys were, my aunt told me to type this sentence. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.  Do you know why? Right. Because it has all the letters of the alphabet. I typed that a lot and imagined that fox jumping over dogs. Did you ever type on an old manual typewriter?

The above picture is a little fuzzy. That might be part of my no more Mr. Nice Guy thinking. Or it’s just that when you enlarge a picture a bunch, it simply loses its clear lines. I think you can see it well enough to make a guess, but if the first five of you get it right, I may take it down and get a new picture. No, I wouldn’t really do that. While all’s fair in love and mystery photo games, I will leave the picture up and try to be a good sport if you get this one too. Try, I said. No promises. 🙂

As always, thanks for reading. If you make a guess on the above mystery photo, right or wrong (I’m hoping for wrong. LOL),  you get an entry in my giveaway of winner’s choice of one of my books and a grab bag book. by a different author. You do have to be at least 18 years old to play. If you don’t live in the United States and win the drawing, you will get an e-book copy of one of my books. Deadline for entries is May 5, 2019 at noon EST.

 

Comments 48

  1. Post
    Author

    Thanks for all the guesses. Whew! Even if some of you are right, at least this time you aren’t all right. I’m not saying that any of you are right, but I’m not saying you aren’t right either. Have to keep the mystery going better today that last week when it was no mystery at all. Sigh.

    Sue, I do like to take pictures of butterflies. So you could be right. Maybe. Maybe not.

    Laura S, I am impressed that you went out on the net to find a moth that might match this picture. That’s a curious mind that wants to have a right answer. So we shall see if that research paid off or this mystery photo.

    Ola & Margaret, love the thought of flowers and I do take plenty of flower pictures. And I have made some mystery photos out of some of those pictures, but the mystery remains as to whether I did so this time.

    Kristy, Debi, Linda Mc – I think all of you have gone to the dogs. But the same as flowers, I do take a lot of pictures of Frankie. It could be his nose or tongue. If it’s his tongue, maybe that’s why the picture is fuzzy. Hmm, are you going to be right?

    Donna, I love your guess of a Fisher Price doll. I do so totally see that. Not saying your guess is right, but loved the way you imagined it.

    Emily, it could be an apple. Doris says it could be too as she second guessed herself to say it was an apple that somebody had taken a few bits from. Apples are red.

    Linda Dianne – I like your guess of a bird or wait a minute, where did kewpie doll comes from? LOL. And Karen joins right in with the bird thinking, suggesting that’s what the mystery photo might be.

    Lisa B, I like your guess of a dragon fruit. They are unusual looking fruit with an unusual name. I could have bought a dragon fruit and raised my own.

  2. Hopefully you will get a laugh out of this. As soon as I saw the picture, it looks like the top of a devil/demon doll’s head.

    1. Post
      Author

      Interesting, Joy. It is red like the devil is generally pictured. Who knows? If I have a doll like that, you might just be right. Or it could be you’re wrong. Check back Wednesday to see the rest of the picture.

  3. A moth’s wing…curious, I looked up moths in Kentucky…came up with one-eyed Sphinx moth. I’m probably way, way off…

  4. I think this is a picture of one of the Fisher-Price little people that our son had. The picture is taken from the top so that it is the hair on its head. 🙂

    1. By the way — yes, I learned to type on a manual typewriter. It wasn’t quite this old, but the electric ones weren’t out yet. I can remember not liking the IBM electric when it came out.

  5. My first thought, Frankie’s tongue but the white makes me think one of Frankie’s guest’s 👅 tongue! Thanks for making life interesting and I learned how to type on a manual typewriter. Remember it well, aa, semicolon, semicolon, ss, ll, and on it goes! Have a great week!

  6. Well, I overthought the last picture , too. My first guess was typewriter keys. But I thought the angle was wrong! Yes! I used a manual typewriter in highschool. Then we got IBM selectrics! It sure made typing faster! I still had an old Royal at home.

    My guess this time would be the inside of an Iris. But on first glance I saw Ironman’s helmet.

    1. Post
      Author

      I still have my old typewriter too, Paula. Several of them, but they don’t work. Well, one of them might if I could get a new ribbon for it. And if my fingers were strong enough to pound on those keys these days.

      Fun that you are seeing a super guy’s head. Some others have guessed Spiderman. Could be I’m a comic book fan. Or it could be the inside of an iris. Could be. Could not be. That’s the fun of a mystery.

  7. Spiderman! HaHa! I have no clue. My dad had an old manual typewriter too. I remember the keys being hard to push down & always getting locked together in the upper body part. Thanks Ann!

    1. Post
      Author

      Those keys can get jammed up, Robin. Happened a lot to me when I used to write on a manual typewriter.

      Fun guess Spiderman and I do have grandkids who like Spiderman. So could be.

  8. At first glance this looks like Spiderman’s head !!LOL …..this is a tough one….! Yes, I had a manual typewriter and classes in business school….I never was very good at typing. I also had a precious aunt like yours….we often said she was everybody’s mother.

    1. Post
      Author

      Two Spiderman guesses, but even if you’re right, I’m not ready to take the picture down and through a fit because everybody is getting it. You may have gotten if. It could be Spiderman’s head. It could be. It could not be.

      My aunt was precious. We spent the night with her nearly every Friday night.

  9. Congratulations to all those correct guessers!!! That was my first guess, believe it or not, but overthinking caused me to guess something more complicated. When taking tests in school we were always told not to overthink an answer—-go with the first one that came to mind. With that in mind, my first thought when I saw the new picture was the head of a bird. Ha ha!!! That couldn’t be correct but that’s my guess and I’m sticking to it! 🤣😂😉

  10. My guess is an enlarged photo of a bleeding heart flower – a single blossom. Of course, not sure if they are in bloom right now. Or maybe an apple with a couple bites taken from it.

    Words I like are apropos and superfluous and lots of others.

    1. Post
      Author

      I’m not above using a photo from a previous year, Doris, so don’t count out your guess because bleeding hearts aren’t blooming. It could be right. It could be wrong.

      The words you mention are fun too.

  11. I’m going to guess this is a closeup of a butterfly wing! And does the fact that so many of us guessed the previous picture make a commentary on our age that we actually remember using typewriters 🙂

    1. Post
      Author

      I’m guessing you could be right about us being a certain age in order to recognize those typewriter keys, Sue. Typewriters are such a novelty now that some people like to collect them or buy them to write on just for fun. I’ll still take a keyboard even if it has made my fingers lazy.

      I got your guess. Could be right. Could be wrong.

  12. Wow…this is a tough one! At first glance…maybe because of my sewing hobby…I see a blurry photo of a lady wearing a red dress and white gloves. But that wouldn’t be a zoomed-in picture, just a fuzzy one. So I’m making a wild guess of a rabbit’s nose…because they have pink noses. I think. I guess other animals do too, like some dogs and cats and cows… hahaa
    It’s late, and my brain is still on toddler time after a weekend with my youngest grandgirls, fairytales and talking animal stories. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. It’s going to be fun to read everyone’s guesses!

    1. Post
      Author

      Fun, Lavon. I’m going to give the photo another look and see if I can see that lady in a red dress and white gloves. Don’t you just love the way our imaginations can take us on some interesting roads.

      But rabbit’s nose is a fun guess too. Hope you had a great weekend with your grandgirl. You probably need to rest today. 🙂

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