You need a genius IQ to crack cryptic password in just 5 seconds
It's time to put on your thinking caps and test out your intellect with this baffling brainteaser that's leaving most Brits utterly stumped. Cracking riddles and cryptic puzzles may seem like nothing more than a boredom buster, but research has shown they can actually positively impact the central nervous system.
This isn't enough to transform you into a rocket scientist or brain surgeon, but it could improve your concentration levels and better your attention span. This particular brainteaser, however, is so tricky that it may also result in bursts of anger and family rows.
If you're a Countdown aficionado, you may have a slight advantage (even if you only watch the episodes with Jimmy Carr). So, let's dive straight in, shall we?
The image above shows an incomplete password, and you need to solve it in just five seconds or less to prove you have the IQ of a genius. Fail, and you kiss goodbye to any chances of becoming the next Albert Einstein or Marie Curie.
Okay so, what we know is the passwords start with the letter 'I' and ends with the letter 'N'. The letters 'A,T' are placed as the sixth and seventh letter. As previously reported, the remaining letters are: 'N, V, N, O, I, O'.
We're not giving away any clues for this one, but if you're finding it a little too challenging - ignore the strict time limit and take as long as you need to solve the anagram. Once you're done, scroll down to the bottom of the article to reveal the answer.
If that cryptic puzzle was no match for a boffin like yourself, check out this mind-boggling riddle that's been causing even bigger waves. No matter how many times you binge-watch Countdown, you'll still struggle with this one.
"Mrs. Watt has 5 children. The oldest four children's names are Lala, Lele, Lili, and Lolo," the riddle reads. "What is the name of the youngest child - why do people laugh at her name?"
Now, most people instantly think they have got the answer - and will proudly declare the fourth child is called 'Lulu'. This is because all the children have the same name with different vowels (A,E,I,O) and 'U' is the last one remaining.
However, this isn't the correct answer - and if you fell for such an obvious trick you clearly don't have a sky-high IQ. If you reckon you dodged the trap, and think you've properly cracked the riddle, you can check your answer here.
tricky brainteasers, baffling riddles, and mind-boggling puzzles here - or, learn more about your hidden personality traits with these fascinating optical illusions.
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Wales Online
2 hours ago
- Wales Online
The 20 most irritating habits that make you the worst TV companion
The 20 most irritating habits that make you the worst TV companion A new study of 2,000 Brits has found the top 20 most annoying habits for people to have while watching TV If you've ever found yourself at your wit's end as someone chats away to you or hogs the remote while you're watching TV, you're definitely not the only one. A study of 2,000 British adults has revealed the country's most irritating TV viewing behaviours. These included people who ask constant questions throughout a show, perpetually flicking between channels, and accidentally revealing crucial plot twists. The research was commissioned by M&M'S to mark the debut of its "It's More Fun Together" campaign. It discovered that 24 per cent of Britons become frustrated when the person they're watching TV with munches their snacks too noisily, while another 21 per cent grow irritated with people who keep the volume too low. Sam Thompson and Scarlett Moffatt host M&M'S Couch Confessions pop up at Battersea Power Station (Image: PinPep) However, it appears many of us are guilty of doing the same. A quarter of adults acknowledged they're dreadful viewing partners, owning up to continuously bombarding others with questions during programmes. For nearly half, asking its mainly about understanding what is happening but 31 per cent confessed they simply weren't concentrating on what was happening. Despite these annoying habits, watching television together continues to be a strong way of bonding. A third (33 per cent) of those polled said an evening in front of the telly with mates is just as enjoyable as doing an activity together. To honour these peculiar habits, MandM'S launched a "Couch Confessions" pop-up experience in London, featuring telly-obsessed celebrities Sam Thompson and Scarlett Moffatt. Reality TV favourite Scarlett Moffatt revealed: "TV nights at home are my love language, chaotic, full of theme-tune singalongs and subtitle debates." She continued: "But hunkering down on the couch with Scott and Jude is what makes it so special. "I love the little quirks that turn ordinary nights into unforgettable family moments, because watching together is always more fun, even if Jude is the remote-control-king nowadays." The study also revealed what Britons believe would enhance their television-viewing experiences. A fifth (20 per cent) expressed a desire for snack bowls that perfectly distribute portions amongst viewers, whilst 19 per cent fantasised about a family-sized footstool allowing everyone to elevate their feet. Meanwhile, 15 per cent wished there was a device that automatically set the television to the 'perfect' volume. Guests at the M&M'S pop-up encountered some of these innovations directly, alongside treasure hunts for TV treats. The experience also celebrated the nation's preferred methods of communal television viewing, featuring themed spaces modelled on the contemporary British lounge. Regarding ideal TV viewing partners, Britons would most relish settling in with David Attenborough, Ant and Dec, and Olivia Colman. TV Personality and Radio Host, Sam Thompson, added: "I'm all about turning TV nights into a proper event with bean bags, onesies, volume up and a stash of snacks. Article continues below "It's my favourite time to just hang out with mates, even if it takes us an hour to agree on what to watch and someone always falls asleep halfway through." Brits shared their weird and wonderful TV rituals (Image: PinPep) TOP ANNOYING TELLY HABITS BRITS ADMIT TO:
New Statesman
8 hours ago
- New Statesman
Berlin's dark past and me
The platform was empty. It was a serene scene: the rain had stopped and the air smelled green, the trees showering droplets each time the wind blew. My mother and I carefully stepped around the puddles as we read the plaques on the very edge of the platform. 18.10.1941 / 1251 Juden / Berlin – Lodz. 29.11.1942 / 1000 Juden / Berlin – Auschwitz. 2.2.1945 / 88 Juden / Berlin – Theresienstadt. The Gleis 17 (Platform 17) memorial at Grunewald station on the western outskirts of Berlin commemorates the 50,000 Jews who were deported from the city to concentration camps by the Nazis. There are 186 steel plaques in total, in chronological order, each detailing the number of deportees and where they went. Vegetation has been left to grow around the platform and over the train tracks, 'a symbol that no train will ever leave the station at this track again', according to the official Berlin tourist website. Were we tourists? I wasn't sure. I paused at one plaque in particular: 5.9.1942 / 790 Juden / Berlin – Riga. My great-grandmother, Ryfka, was one of the 790 Jews deported to Riga on 5 September 1942. She was murdered three days later. Her husband, Max, had been arrested and taken as a labourer to the Siedlce ghetto the previous year. In 1942 he was shot and thrown into a mass grave. When I told people we were taking a family trip to Berlin, many brought up Jesse Eisenberg's 2024 film A Real Pain (released January 2025 in the UK), in which Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play mismatched cousins on a tour of Poland, confronting the inherited trauma of their grandmother's Holocaust survival story. But when we first started planning our trip six years ago, that wasn't the idea at all. It wasn't supposed to be about Max and Ryfka. It was about their daughter, my grandmother, Mirjam, and my grandfather, Ali, whom we called Opa. Opa's ancestry enabled us to claim German citizenship. My mother, sister and I started this process in 2017 without really thinking about it. The UK had voted to leave the EU, and Brits with relatives from all over were looking for ways to retain an EU passport. The Global Citizenship Observatory estimates that 90,000 Brits have acquired a second passport from an EU country since 2016, not counting those eligible for Irish citizenship. Article 116(2) of the German Constitution states: 'Persons who surrendered, lost or were denied German citizenship between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 due to persecution on political, racial or religious grounds are entitled to naturalisation.' The same applies to their descendants. Mirjam died in 1990, before I was born, and Opa in 2003 – both British and only British citizens. But we had his voided German passport, his birth certificate, the notice of statelessness he'd received when he came to England in 1936. It took two years, but on 3 June 2019, the three of us attended the embassy in Belgravia and were solemnly dubbed citizens of Germany. We received our passports a few weeks later. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe My mother wanted to celebrate with a trip to Berlin – the city where her parents grew up, and which my sister and I had never visited. Five years later than planned, thanks to Covid travel bans, we made it, honouring Opa by sweeping through immigration on the passports he had posthumously gifted us. I was prepared for the attempts at schoolgirl German, the arguments over bus timetables, itineraries and whether or not it was acceptable to fare-dodge on the U-Bahn. What I wasn't prepared for was being struck down by tears on a suburban street, faced with the reality of how exactly I had come to be there and what my presence meant. Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin. Photo by Jon Arnold Images Ltd My grandfather's family made it out of Nazi Germany. So did my grandmother and her siblings. Her parents did not. Max and Ryfka were typical middle-class Berliners, owners of a profitable cigarette factory. They had three children: Fanny, Mirjam and Harry. The family lived in a five-storey apartment block with a dramatic art nouveau facade – an open-mouthed deity staring down as residents came and went – on Thomasiusstrasse, on the edge of the Tiergarten city park. Around the corner, in the same affluent neighbourhood, lived the boy who would become my grandfather, Ali. They used to play together as children. Two decades, multiple emigrations and an internment in Canada later, Ali married Mirjam. My mother was born two years later. I know all this thanks to her, her sister and their cousins. A few years before the Brexit vote, they had set out to consolidate everything we know about the family – sifting through documents, photos and letters, sharing recollections of their parents, writing down everything so the story would not be forgotten. I know, for example, that the basement of the house in Thomasiusstrasse was used for meetings of their Zionist youth movement long before emigration became an urgent issue. I know when and how the siblings fled Berlin to what was then British-occupied Palestine: Fanny going first to Denmark in July 1937, then to Palestine in February 1939, where she worked at the first haute couture fashion house in Israel. Mirjam left in April 1936 via a boat from Italy. She studied horticulture before eventually marrying Ali in 1951 and moving to England. Harry arrived in Palestine on 1 September 1937, his 16th birthday. And I know, from the letters we have, how often and how seriously all three urged their parents to sell the cigarette factory and leave Berlin, before it was too late. On the pavement outside the apartment block on Thomasiusstrasse, set into the cobblestones, gleamed the Stolpersteine. Any visitor to Berlin will find the streets scattered with these 'stumbling stones', small brass plates, each one a memorial to a victim of the Nazis who lived at that address: their name, year of birth, where and when they were killed. The commemorative art project, begun in 1992 by artist Gunter Demnig, has spread across Europe: there now are more than 116,000 stones, in 31 countries. The Stolpersteine for Max and Ryfka were laid in August 2014. My mother and her family attended; a clarinettist played klezmer music. There are eight stones for that single apartment block. The day before we visited, my mother had booked us on a tour of the Jewish quarter. 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I slipped – and through my perhaps disproportionate tears realised there was a lot more to my new German passport than I had imagined. Everyone knows about the Holocaust. Six million Jews, more than a quarter of a million Gypsies, millions more Poles, Soviets, homosexuals and people with disabilities, systematically exterminated at death camps. I had always known that my family was in some way linked to it all, that the Holocaust was why we were in Britain in the first place, that I wouldn't be here were it not for my maternal grandparents being 'denied German citizenship… due to persecution on political, racial or religious grounds'. Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled the Nazis. Every Jewish family I know has a story: of how their ancestors escaped, and what happened to the ones who didn't. I knew long before I visited Berlin that there is nothing special about my family's history. But I had always seen it as just that: history. The Jewish Museum's core exhibition charts the history of Jews in Germany from medieval times to the present day. The final section looks at descendants of Holocaust victims and refugees who chose to restore their German citizenship – and why they made that decision. Why had I done it? To get an EU passport after Brexit. To make it easier to work abroad one day. To give my future children the option to live anywhere in Europe. To skip the queues at immigration. All valid reasons. And all, suddenly, entirely inconsequential Staring at the memorial plaques on Platform 17, sitting on the steps of the apartment block on Thomasiusstrasse, losing my footing in the Garden of Exile, I felt myself slot into the narrative, the next chapter of a story that is both unfathomable and at the same time utterly unexceptional. Opa died when I was 12. He was so proud of being British. I never asked him how he would feel about us using the trauma of his past to become German for the sake of convenience. I'd always thought he'd like the idea of us reclaiming his rightful heritage, but in Berlin it seemed less clear. But I do think he would have liked the fact that we were all there in Berlin, on the streets where he and his wife grew up, laughing and crying together, realising our mother-and-daughters getaway had ended up a lot like Eisenberg's A Real Pain after all. The three of us lost in reverie outside the apartment block, picturing my grandmother coming and going. A sign by the door was engraved in looping gothic script. It looked like a memorial plaque. We struggled to decipher first the letters, then the German. Eventually we resorted to Google Translate, and discovered in lieu of the profound message we had expected, a polite request for guests to please wipe their feet. [See also: Rachel Reeves' 'impossible trilemma'] Related
Scotsman
11 hours ago
- Scotsman
How much have concert ticket prices risen in the space of 20 years?
Why have concert tickets not fallen in line with inflation - and could newer record deals be one of the causes of gigflation? Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... 2025's biggest issue in the music scene happens to be one that affects many audiences across the UK. With smaller venues closing and acts adopting more arena shows than traditional tours, could that be the reason why ticket prices have skyrocketed in recent years? Digital marketing experts Dark Horse studied some of 2025's biggest concerts and how ticket prices have increased over a period of 20 years. When did the price of going to a concert become almost akin to a monthly mortgage payment in 2025? That might sound like hyperbole, but if there has been one predominant issue in the world of music throughout the past year, it once again stems from the price of seeing some of our favourite artists when they tour the United Kingdom. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Be it dynamic pricing or the cost of logistics for shipping entire stage productions to the country, there seems to be a real problem as more and more people are struggling to afford what was once considered a beloved pastime for many Brits. But there is more to these costs than simply musicians and management wanting a bigger slice of the pie; other contributing factors also have to be taken into account, including a lack of smaller, grassroots venues, dwindling physical album sales and, according to today's study, the consolidation of tour venues into arena-centric schedules. Bigger venues, bigger crowds – and of course, with that, bigger expenses to cover. Digital marketing experts Dark Horse analysed concert tickets for a selection of top artists, comparing the price in 2005 to 2025, to see whether the cost of seeing them live had kept in line with inflation or outstripped it, and how the UK's median hourly wage compares to the cost of tickets. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad They sourced the cost of tickets 20 years ago through ticket stub archives and eBay, and compared them to the face value price many paid for to see some of this year's biggest shows. Sadly, their findings demonstrate a trend that could see concerts, with many music fans priced out of going to shows, sooner rather than later. How much have concert ticket prices risen since 2005? Dark Horse found that the cost of concert tickets remained the same for some artists, but the bigger acts have seen huge increases over the course of 20 years - and it could continue. | Canva Of the artists that Dark Horse sampled, they showed that ticket prices have far outpaced inflation over the years. The average ticket price for the artists listed has risen from £34.82 in 2005 to £132.90 in 2025, representing an average increase of over 280% over the two decades. If prices had kept pace with inflation, the average ticket price would only be around £60.61 today, highlighting that the actual increase is more than double the rate of inflation. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The price hikes are also more drastic with some artists compared to others; while Robbie Williams and Busted have managed to maintain a low, affordable price to see them perform, the spike in the cost to see Beyoncé on tour was the most dramatic. In 2005, to see her perform would cost fans £27.50, but in 2025, to see her on the 'Cowboy Carter' tour, fans were expected to stump up £224.85 - an increase of 718%. It's a similar situation with Oasis, who in 2005 could be seen for a mere £32.50 to £148.50 - an increase of 357%. That's if you managed to avoid dynamic pricing for those shows, too. How many hours would I have had to work to see Oasis back in 2005? Though Oasis, according to the study, are hardly the worst when it comes to ticket price increases, they have been the talking point throughout the last eight months when it comes to the price of concerts, and again, the problems with a dynamic pricing model. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In 2005, you would have to work 3 hours and 1 minute on a median UK hourly wage to see Oasis on tour, but two decades later, that has increased to 7 hours and 56 minutes on a median UK hourly wage to see them play. Compare that to Robbie Williams (not to cause issues between the two artists), in 2005, it would take 4 hours and 11 minutes to pick up a ticket to see the former Take That member. In 2025, that has only increased by 14 minutes (4 hours 25 minutes) to grab a ticket; a similar situation with Busted too, according to the study. What has led to the increase in concert ticket prices? It clearly can't just be inflation, right? If we were to adjust ticket prices in line with inflation, a ticket to see Oasis in 2025 should have cost £57.20, while to see Coldplay would have cost £62.40, according to Dark Horse's study. There are several factors considered why concert tickets have become a luxury rather than a privilege; AJ Sutherland, a production manager who has worked with artists like Tate McRae and Mura Masa, explained that the surge in concert ticket prices is a trend rooted in the economics of the modern music business. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He connects this shift to the decline of physical music sales, the rise of streaming, and the consolidation of tours into arena-centric schedules. "Back in 2005, artists might have played 20 club shows across the UK," Sutherland notes. "Now they do four arena gigs in major cities and make the same ticket sales in a fraction of the time.' He adds that this new model is not only more efficient but also far more profitable for major artists. Despite the financial benefits for top-tier acts, Sutherland also highlights the serious negative impact on the wider music ecosystem; this shift has led to the closure of grassroots venues, reduced touring opportunities for independent artists, and left fans facing premium prices with a limited choice of shows. Production costs have also driven up the price of putting on concerts, from the cost of fuel for our buses and trucks, wages for an entire crew of lighting techs, to the price of renting state-of-the-art equipment and the venues themselves have escalated dramatically. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But the industry shift, in an era where physical and streaming sales are not what they once were, newer 360 deals might have a part to play in the increase in ticket prices. Traditional record deals would see a label's primary source of income coming from a percentage of album sales, but as that is no longer viable, more and more labels have adopted 360 deals that take a cut not only of their music sales, but other revenue streams too including a cut of any live performances. This partnership with the label can lead to a stronger effort to push for higher ticket prices, more expensive VIP packages, and a wider range of high-cost offerings to increase the total revenue generated from a tour, shifting the entire focus from simply selling records to monetising the artist's brand and live performance at every opportunity. As Dark Horse concluded their study, the question does seem incredibly pertinent: is the joy of live music becoming financially inaccessible? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Do you think that musicians or labels have a responsibility to ensure fans can still see their shows without going into financial ruin, or is it simply a case of supply meeting demand? Let us know your thoughts - or how we can fix the problem - by leaving your comments and ideas below.
