Dr. Gary Gruber's Brain Teasers, Vol. 1

Dr. Gary R. Gruber on March 20, 2014

1. Put these statements in the correct order:

THis is your brain on music

a. The orchestra rehearsed for a concert.
b. A clarinetist corrected himself and counted carefully through the rest of the music.
c. A clarinetist missed his entrance by a beat.
d. A clarinetist didn’t tell anyone about his slip.
e. A clarinetist got a job in an orchestra.

 

2. Bonnie’s father has five daughters but has no sons. Four of the daughters are named Chacha, Cheche, Chichi, and Chocho. What is the fifth daughter's name?

a) Chuchu
b) Chochu
c) Chuchy
d) Chochy
e) none of these

 

3. Rearrange these letters to make a pun about two famous composers.

ENOG POICHN, CHAB ONOS

 

4. Trivia: Which of the following pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach were rediscovered and popularized after his death?

a. Six Suites for Solo Cello
b. the “Brandenburg” Concertos
c. Passion According to St. Matthew
d. The Well-Tempered Clavier

 

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ANSWERS:

1: e, a, c, b, d

2: e. The fifth daughter is Bonnie herself.

This is a classic situation of the mind fixating on one part of the question (the four daughter's names) and dismissing the information in the first part about "Bonnie."

3 : Gone Chopin, Bach soon. 

4: a, b, and c.

The Cello Suites were championed in the early 20th-century by famous cellist Pablo Casals; the Brandenburg Concertos were recovered from a private library, where they had been gathering dust, in 1849 (one hundred years after Bach’s death); Felix Mendelssohn revived St. Matthew’s Passion one hundred years after its failed premiere in Leipzig. But the Well-Tempered Clavier circulated in manuscript both during Bach’s lifetime and throughout the 18th century, and was known to both Mozart and Haydn.