Word triplet problems

The pace of reviews will slow over the next few weeks. It’s not that I’m being lazy. I continue to read and write reviews. But some of the books that I’ve written about won’t be published for some time, and most publishers want reviews to appear close to the book launch date. Right now I have posts scheduled for August, September, even October.

In the meantime, I’ll try to fill the gap with some random thoughts, bits of trivia, and brain teasers. Today’s post belongs to the last category.

From Innovating Minds, a book that will see the light of day only in October (so stay tuned for the review), two word triplet problems. In these problems you are given three apparently unrelated words and are asked to think of a fourth word that is related to all three words and that can form a phrase with each of them. For example, the words “age,” “mile,” and “sand” all are associated with “stone”: “Stone Age,” “milestone,” and “sandstone.”

Okay, ready? Here are two sets of words. See if you can find the missing fourth word in each case.

reading, service, stick

baby, spring, cap

I’ll post the answers tomorrow.