Here’s a puzzle. What do these words have in common: bother, favorite, mistake, pastry, portable, product?
—Bill Shaw, Burke, Va.
If you want to ponder this on your own, readers, stop here. The answer appears in the next paragraph.
Each term contains two adjacent words if you allow the last letter of the first word to be the first letter of the last word. Confused? These are the words: bother = both + her; favorite = favor + rite; mistake = mist + take;
pastry = past + try; portable = port + table; product = prod + duct. For good brain exercise, try thinking of more, such as threshold = thresh + hold and pastime = past + time.