This year the crossword has turned off 100 candles in Italy: what better way to celebrate than with the CruciPop? We have created the first Geopop scheme to test your scientific culture. But before leaving you with the definitions, let’s take a step back: did you know that it all started on December 21, 1913 in the United States? From there, the game crossed the ocean to land on the Domenica del Corriere in 1925 with the first Italian crossword. In reality, the history of these riddles is much older, from the enigmas of the Sphinx to Leonardo da Vinci’s rebuses, up to Cicero’s word games, puzzles have always been considered a real art for training the mind. A tradition that has always combined logic, culture and a pinch of creativity.
How much do you know about Geopop: test yourself with CruciPop
And now it’s your turn! To celebrate this centenary we have created for you the CruciPopa new scheme where you will not find the usual definitions but the answers to the scientific curiosities that we deal with every day in our articles and videos, with also some curiosities about our team. From the secrets of chocolate to the fathers of IT, passing through tattoos and the ancient Sumerians: how knowledgeable are you about the Geopop world? He recommends me, don’t cheat and good luck!
The solutions at CruciPop
How did it go? Did you manage to get everything together on the first try or did you get stuck on the cells that eat tattoos? Don’t worry, here are the correct answers to check your preparation.
For them horizontal:
2. HANS – Clever Hans was a horse who seemed to be able to perform arithmetic, interpret the calendar, read and recognize musical notes. To do this, it used snout movements or stamped hooves. It was a psychologist who then understood that the horse’s intelligence was not so much arithmetic, but rather interpretative.
5. TEMPERATE – To obtain a chocolate bar with a shiny appearance and perfect consistency, it is not enough to simply melt and cool some chocolate. There is a real science behind it: that of tempering.
6. NEURON – neurons are the fundamental cells of the nervous system, they can be considered as the basic units of the brain that coordinate the functioning of the organism. They are highly specialized cells with a specific purpose: to receive, process and transmit signals (nerve impulses) throughout the body.
8. SAND – quicksand is a mix of sand, clay and water with a reduced capacity to support weight. Although they can form in many different types of environments, we can say that most quicksand is found near natural springs, rivers, in swamps or on beaches during low tide. What makes them dangerous is their appearance: on the surface they seem like solid ground but as soon as you walk on them you start to sink, as if everything had become liquid.
9. TURING – Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, logician, cryptographer and philosopher. He is remembered for having used his genius to end the Second World War earlier than expected, for having thought and implemented some of the foundations for the computers we use today and for having opened the reflection on artificial intelligence, representing one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century.
Going down into the vertical:
1. BOOK – “Pausa Libro” is the new book by Andrea Moccia published by Ciaopeople, it contains 101 pills of science and culture to read in 3 minutes, to nourish the mind and ignite curiosity.
3. SUMERIANS – the Sumerians, who flourished in Mesopotamia in the 6th-3rd millennium BC, made an enormous contribution to the development of civilization, inventing or advancing agriculture, writing, mathematics and many other knowledge.
4. MACROPHAGES – the permanence of tattoo ink is due to macrophages: immune cells which, in an attempt to engulf and eliminate the pigment, remain saturated with it and stabilize in the dermis, making the drawing indelible.
7. SPAM – unwanted messages and calls often have promotional or malicious purposes. For messages (SMS or chat), the alarm bell must go off in the presence of suspicious linksgrammatical errors or urgent requests. Phone filters help block them.
10. DD – behind these initials is Giorgia Giulia Evangelista: mathematician, neuroscientist and new entry in the Geopop team. Watch his video here in which he explains graph theory to us.
