Brain teaser of the day

[sammyg2]

Here's a good one.
The story goes, a 5th grade girl came up with it and gave it to her teacher. The teacher couldn't come up with the answer and gave up. The girl told her the answer, the teacher thought it was so good he sent it to a college professor he knew.
The professor didn't get it so he had one of this classes work on it, no one came up with the answer.


A EF HI KLMN T VWXYZ
BCD G J OPQRS U

What is the difference between the first line and the second line?

[Tyson Schmidt]

The second line has a gap between letters that are adjacent in the alphabet. (BC D) The first line has them grouped together.

That, and the obvious. The number of letters.

[sammyg2]

LOL, you are correct but that's not what we are looking for. The spacing is just a formatting deal. I tried to keep it even but it changed a little when I hit post.

[kstar]

Letters have all straight lines on top, curved on bottom.

Also, no "G"!

Kurt

[svandamme]

G is missing from the bottom line

[sammyg2]

kstarnes nailed it. (and I just forgot to put in the G) I'll edit it and put it in there.

Curved lines vs. straight lines. I know when I was working on this I was looking for complex patterns, reapearing themes, codes, all sorts of stuff that were way too complicated for the question.

[svandamme]

dammed, should ave posted sooner, was looking for more logic as to where it should be line 1 or 2

[MRM]

I got it. No points for second place. Rats. Just goes to show I don't have much gray matter to get in the way of a simple solution.

[svandamme]

if a professor can't find this... it's the first thing to check when you see the alfabet mangled up... it's to obvious to miss, you see the question, start counting, bang, it's there

whole class of university students couldn't find it either??

these guys are payed to think hard and be precise about things
less then 15 minutes on this board and it's found... are we that smart???

[on-ramp]

Originally posted by svandamme
are we that smart???

yep, that's why teachers make minimum wage and you guys are multi-millionaires who can afford 20 Porsches .

[sammyg2]

I have to clarify, I was told the story behind this quiz by a co-worker. I can't vouch for the accuracy, for all I know it could be an urban legend. that's how they get started, right?

[cstreit]

Curved lines vs. straight lines?

Edit: oops, was so happy to figure one out finally and someone else got it... *sigh*

[Tyson Schmidt]

I knew it was going to be really simple, so I went for the simplest answer.

Probably would be really easy if you were to write them out for yourself.

[svandamme]

Originally posted by on-ramp
yep, that's why teachers make minimum wage and you guys are multi-millionaires who can afford 20 Porsches .

teacher, ok , professors and a class full of uni students, and none of them figured it out...

i'm no multi millionaire, don't even have high school degree