A feminist chooses between two beaux by asking them each to identify the one-syllable middle name that every schoolchild knows but doesn’t know.

Blech. This is one of those Black Widower stories I remember vividly because I don’t like it. The solution turns on the fact that everybody is forced to read Silas Marner in school, everybody knows it’s by George Eliot, and everybody forgets that George Eliot is a pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans—only I wasn’t forced to read Silas Marner in school, nor was anybody of my personal acquaintance, so the whole thing collapses like a giant lead baloon thunk on the floor.

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