Dear Ann Landers,
Thanks for your kind words and the enclosure. I liked it a lot and want to share it with my readers. Here it is: The Rest hi Ann Landers / 219 You Can Bank on It Imagine you had a bank that each morning credited your account with $1,440

Dear Readers,
A Boston student wrote to me and asked, "Here's a brainbuster for you. Four words in the English language end in 'gry.' Two are 'angry' and 'hungry.' What are the other two?" Responses poured in by the thousands. After checking a mind- boggling number of words submitted by readers from all over the globe, I decided that William Safire, one of the premier wordsmiths of our time, was right when he described word games as "a hoax de-signed to provoke hours of useless brain-racking." I am ashamed to tell you how many hours I spent chasing down words in seven dic-tionaries. Laurence Seits of North Aurora, 111., wrote to say that the best au-thority on words in the United States is George Scheetz, head of the public library in my old hometown, Sioux City, Iowa. I telephoned George, who assured me that there were more than four words in the English language that ended in "gry"-48 to be exact. He promised to send the list pronto, which he did. On George Scheetz's list were old English words such as ahungry, unhungry, hongry, dog-hungry, meat-hungry, wind-hungry, ever- angry, fire-angry, half-angry, heat-angry, self-angry and tear-angry. Sorry, George, those words were not in any of the four dictionaries I have at home or the three dictionaries in my office. I'm sure they ap-peared in some musty old English dictionary, but if I can't find them, I don't count 'em. Nor can I count the words of French origin whose endings were changed from "e" to "y." George, dear, if you are still reading this, I also can't count Rallingry, a town in Scotland, nor can I count Hungry-Bungry, a sandwich that was served in a restaurant that is no longer in business in Champaign, 2 2 li i ANN LANDERS I also am not counting Wigry, a lake in Poland, or Schchigry, a river in the U.S.S.R. The original writer was off by one when he said there are four words in the English language that end in "gry." Actually, there are five, ac-cording to The Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to the two he named, angry and hungry, there is aggry, a glass bead found buried in the earth in Ghana (try to work that into a conversation, kids); puggry, a light scarf wound around a hat or helmet to protect the head from the sun; and meagry, of meager appearance. I don't know about you, folks, but I have had enough of word games for a while. A reader once wrote and asked me an off-the-wall question: uTell me, Ann, if I run from one building to another in the rain, will I be wetter than if I walked?" The question was raised by a Notre Dame gradmte who said he and his buddies had tried to work it out mathematically but never quite made it. He concluded, however, that the faster you run, the wetter you get because the more space you sweep per unit of time. Then, the graphics editor of The Washington Post got into the act with a mind-bending equation, which I was unable to challenge because I can't keep a checkbook straight, much less follow a double-dome equation. I was stunned by the number of readers who wrote to dispute the graphics editor. Here is a sampling, none of which I comprehend, but which I'm print- ing for you math buffs. I had no idea so many people cared. Dear Ann: My husband, who teaches physics, plans to use that rain question in his next exam. Here's his mathematical shortcut for solving the problem: "If you run twice as fast, you cover the distance in half the time. If the rain is falling at an angle, think of it as having a vertical component that affects how much rain you get on your head and shoulders and a hori-zontal component that affects how wet you get on your front or back. The faster you run, the less rain you will get on your head. If the rain is falling toward you, the faster you run, the less rain you will get on your front. If the rain is coming from behind, the optimal speed to run in order to reduce the amount of rain on your front or back is the horizon-tal component of the rain's speed, in which case, you won't get any rain The Rest he Ann Laniieiis 2 2 I on your back. If you run slower than this, you'll get rain on your back. If you run faster, you'll get rain on your front. So run-no matter what." -JMH From Redding, Calif.: Here's a simplified way to figure out who gets wetter, the guy who walks or runs: Take Container A with an opening equal to the area exposed by a man from the overhead position. Take Container B, with an opening equal to the area exposed by a man from front view. Have George and Bill each carry one Container A and one Container B. Container A should have an opening to the top. Con-tainer B, an opening to the front. George moves forward at twice the speed of Bill, arriving in half the time. Bill's Container A will contain twice as much water as George's Container A. But George's Container B will contain more than twice as much as Bill's Container B. The containers should be designed to approximate the curvature of the body in running form. Visualize the problem by supporting a string of spaghetti in vertical position. Then, you can take 10 lashes with the wet spaghetti for jumping to a conclusion without the facts. -Wet Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio: The solution of the raindrop problem depends on the size and shape of the man, the speed at which he runs and the direction of the falling raindrops. A fat man will get wetter than a thin man. Also one will get wetter running into the wind than if he runs with the wind. The faster the rain fells, the fester the man should run. -H. C. Larsen, professor and director, Aerospace Design Center Chatham, Mass.: Who needs all that math? The fester you run, the quicker you'll get there and the drier you'll be. -John L. Rowland Dear John: Thanks, buddy. Your letter was the easiest to under-stand. I'm with you. Dear Ann: Remember the rain problem-whether to run or walk to get less soaked? Well, we seniors at the Missouri School for the Deaf were challenged by our science and math teachers to solve it. So we rigged up some empty cartons, lined the sides with paper towels and gave one carton to a runner and one to a walker. 2 2 2 / ANN LANDERS The two experimenters held the boxes over their heads, left the building at the same moment and went the same distance-240 feet. It took the runner 20 seconds to reach his destination. The walker took 60 seconds. We wrung out the paper towels and discovered that the walker ab-sorbed nearly twice as much moisture as the runner. The exact mea-sure was 10.1 grams to the runner's 5.2 grams. -MIT, Here We Come! My very first editor, back in 1953, was Larry Fanning (rest his beautiful soul)-a patient mentor and a marvelous teacher. He told me, "You can deal with any subject so long as you use the right words-with one caveat: Never take your readers into the bathroom. " Twenty-five years later, I departed from his advice and printed a letter from a woman who was having an argument with her cousins. Should the toilet paper be hung so that it goes over the roll and hangs down in front-or should it go in the opposite direction and hang close to the wall? When I received more than 15,000 letters from readers with opinions, I knew it was an OK subject. Although 1 still harbor a twinge of guiltforgoing against Larry's admoni-tion, here's the letter that started it all, from 1977: