Someone asked us recently if, with all the advances in technology and the incredible amount of information available at our fingertips, we thought people were getting any smarter. Our theory is that the intelligence of the universe is a constant. The population is growing.

1.) Go fish.

Einstein supposedly came up with this riddle (also known as the Zebra Puzzle) and said that 98% of the population wouldn't be able to solve it. To our readers, of course, it's a trivial challenge of inferential logic. Since anyone can easily get the answer on the internet, we aren't going to make this a contest per se — but we would like to hear what you think. Send your take on it to: "Einstein's Fish."

There are no tricks or gimmicks, just 1,2,3...

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.

2. In each house lives a person of different nationality.

3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke a different brand of cigarette, and keep a different pet.

The question: who owns the fish?

Fish Illustration copyright © 2009 Michael Manomivibul.

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house. 2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets. 3. The Dane drinks tea. 4. The green house is next to, and on the left of the white house. 5. The owner of the green house drinks coffee. 6. The person who smokes Pall Malls rears birds. 7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills. 8. The man living in the center house drinks milk. 9. The Norwegian lives in the first house. 10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats. 11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhills. 12. The man who smokes Blue Masters drinks beer. 13. The German smokes Prince. 14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. 15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

2.) Use your head.

When I was growing up my dad would always ask us (me, my brothers and our friends) "Dollar Questions" and if we got the answer right he'd give us a buck, which back then wasn't nothing. I always thought this was a great idea, separating the wheat from the chaff pretty quickly, especially when it came to girlfriends, so I've kept up the tradition in my house. Over the years I've honed my own list down to a few dozen or so, and thought I would turn 10 of them into an Uppityshirts contest, which I'm calling "10 Common Cents Questions".

Most are straightforward and easy; some are tricky; a few are painful.

1. What was the largest island in the world before Australia was discovered?

2. Who was the only man to play for the Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics?

3. If you go directly south from Detroit, MI what is the first country you run into?

4. Solve this simple equation: Ba + 2Na = ?

5. Who was the only man to have his number retired by his team, as well as every other team in his sport?

6. When a person is executed for a capital crime, what is written on his death certificate as the 'cause of death'?

7. What is the fewest number of pitches a pitcher can throw in a 9-inning Major League Baseball game and win?

8. Who is the only U.S. President whose first language was not English?

9. Why has there never been a Blue Moon in Saudi Arabia?

10. 'Head' as a slang word for cattle, and 'wheels' to describe a car are examples of what figure of speech?

The 10th person to send the correct answer to "The Answers are Obvious" will receive a perfect 10 Uppityshirt, and some (unneeded) Smart Pills.

3.) What's in a name?

From the Johnny Mustard (our parent company's) website:

My folks bought a house in 1964 from the Cruikshank's, an old couple who left their dog Mustard with us since they were moving to a condo and couldn't take him. Because my middle name is John, my porn name is Johnny Mustard, according to the old-school rules. I always thought it had a certain ring to it, and decided to use it as the name of my company if I ever had one. Which is kind of ironic because I used my real name when I was actually making X-rated movies back in the early 1980's. Not.

Anyway, despite trying to be respectable, and distancing ourselves from the low and dirty, we keep getting emails from people who want to tell us what their porn names are, and some of them have cracked us up. So we thought we'd turn it into a jokey contest and ask you to send in your real (or a made-up) XXX-film star name and we'd share the best ones.

The rules are simple: first name is your real middle name; last name is your first pet (or the street you grew up on), hence "Johnny Mustard". Let's try to keep it as clean and clever as possible, subject matter notwithstanding!

4.) Give a damn.

How about a quick no-brainer contest: tell us which films these classic lines come from and no cheating, Ebert!

Here goes:

"Into the garbage chute, flyboy!"

"You know what's wrong with you? Nothing!"

"That'll be the day."

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine. "

"You look so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter."

5.) Express question.

Impromptu mathy test— send us the next number in this series "14, 34, 42, 72..." asap via email to Number Serious and win cool points, kudos, and a pat on the back?