Guess What Article for February 2001
By Bob Cahn, “The Primitive Man”

Vicious look, ominously aggressive posture, in an attack mode — baring serrated teeth… yet docile, benign and caring with a humanitarian end result. How’s this for a set of conflicting enigmas. That’s what we’re asking you to wrestle with — an alligator-looking hand-operated chrome plated device that measures eight inches long and works like a scissors with spring-handle action.

We can tell by the look in your eyes and the hesitation in your think tank that you’d like us to help you solve this “Guess What” as expeditiously and as frivolously as always. So here goes with our half-hearted attempt to be helpful.

A list of improbable solutions:

1. Veterinarian group nail clipper for a family of two-toed sloths
2. Shredded lettuce slicer for Taco Bell taco maker
3. Tinsmith’s strip edge cutter
4. Train conductor or theatre admissions lobby hand ticket emasculator
5. Horticulturists dead leaf lopper
6. Pet shop puppy paper bedding material shredder
7. Home gardener’s window box grafting tool
8. Indian trading post leather worker’s buckskin fringe slitter
9. Chef salad makers ingredient dicer
10. Electricians wire splicer/stripper
11. hicken carving shears
12. Slivered almond slicer
13. Cooked asparagus grasper
14. Stubborn bolt and nut turner
15. Metal workers hot tin forceps
16. Dried jalapeno pepper crusher
17. Fabric pinking shears.

The correct answer is already at the printers being proofread for next month. Signing up for a subscription guarantees the answer each issue. See you and have fun!

Answer to January’s Guess What..?

Last month we teased you with a bonafide contest to see how alert you — our reader — were by challenging you to search for the answer somewhere in that issue — buried in a featured portion of a storied article.

The winner, Mrs. Alice Legro, was able to identify the “Guess What” as a partially filled cigar box spring platform stabilizer. By inserting upside down in the box, the split level springs would prevent the cigars from rolling around — becoming damaged, by keeping even pressure on two uneven stacks in the cigar box. Invented and patented by M. Michaelis February 3, 1885, there is no evidence that it was ever produced.*

*From the vast Rothschild-Peterson Patent Model Museum, Cazenovia, New York.

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