Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The more F's the better, plus a little mystery


Here's a business-card-sized brain teaser that I found in my great-grandparents' desk.

Follow the directions -- no cheating -- and see what you come up with. Then scroll down to the bottom of today's entry for the reverse side of the card.

Meanwhile, it's not so easy to find is any evidence of the company that printed this card many decades ago:

The P.J. Mann Printery
5345 Calumet Avenue
Hammond, Ind.


If you plug that address into Google, you find that there's now an overpass at the location. Here's what you see in Google's Street View:


View Larger Map

Meanwhile:
  • "P.J. Mann Printery" gets no hits in a Google search
  • "P.J. Mann Printery" is mentioned in the 1925 volumes of American Printer and Lithographer and The Inland Printer. It is also mentioned in a 1937 edition of The Typographical Journal.

Beyond that, I have nothing. So we can file this one under "Mystery", and if anyone out there has any leads on this former company and its products, send them my way!

OK, so here's the back of the card. Did you get all six F's?1


Footnotes
1. This brain/eye trick is quite common. Here's an online version.

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