Wednesday, 11 August 2004

Mystery of the day

Why does the bread I buy seem to come in loaves with an odd number of slices?

4 comments:

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Brock,

This sounds suspiciously like selling packs of hot dogs in sixes while selling the buns in packs of eight, or vice versa.

 

Hot dogs in 10s, usually, though occasionally you see jumbo dogs in packs of 8. I’ve never seen dogs in packs of 6, though I’ve not been buying dogs for home comsumption lately since I don’t have access to a grill anymore. Besides, a hot dog just doesn’t taste right without a ballpark in front of it.

And hot dog buns can be found in packs of 10 if you know where to look. I’ve read somewhere (Cecil Adams’s “The Straight Dope”, I believe) that this tends to be a regional thing; Cecil notes (and as a St. Louis native I can verify this from personal experience) that 10 packs of hot dog buns are pretty common in St. Louis (I actually had to move out of the STL area to discover that buns are sold in 8 packs).

 

The real mystery: why did you decide to count the slices in your loaves of bread? ;)

 

I haven’t counted them. It’s just that I always eat two slices at a time, in the form of a sandwich. And I always end up with one slice left.

 
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