Answers.

[tablesaw]

Yesterday's brainteaser #1 went unanswered.

The ninetieth birthday cake, in the shape of the number 90, turned out to be a graduation cake for the class of '06.

I was looking for some "Best of E3" wrapups, and at one point, I landed at IGN severely confused about their characterization of Sony's press conference. I simply couldn't figure out what was going on with the sarcasm when I read this under "Biggest Surprise":

To doubt this award is to admit being unfairly clairvoyant.

Oh no, man. Of course we weren't surprised when Sony announced the PlayStation 3 at its annual pre-E3 press conference. We totally expected exactly what we got -- a finalized piece of hardware complete with a new Spider-Man logo, a sleek George Foreman design, a new boomerang controller Mitch Dundee would be proud of, about 20 kicking game demos that may or may not have been real, and the promise that it would all release by the spring of 2006 (in at least some reaches on this planet Earth, anyway).

Turns out I was on the page for the Best of E3 for 2005. Ah, those were heady days for Sony supporters; too bad all of those things disappeared a year later (except for the Spider-Man thing). Of course, Sony earned the "Biggest Surprise" award from IGN in 2006 too, specifically for "Sony's Underwhelming Press Conference":

From the extreme boredom that set in when the Gran Turismo HD demo ran too long to showing lackluster titles at their press conference, Sony let the momentum they built up from last year literally fade away.

ThuSunX: 15:30. FriSunX: 29. SatNYTX: 29:30. SatLATX: 10.

Comments

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Well, it just seemed heartless to guess "because the intended recipient keeled over dead sometime between the ordering and the picking-up".

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

I was going to say something stupid about a Harold Robbins festival, actually.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

The ninetieth birthday cake, in the shape of the number 90, turned out to be a graduation cake for the class of '06.

I'm morbid... I figured the 90 year old had died, and the store was trying to sell the cake! oops!

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I wondered why you were labelling that a "brain teaser". I thought it was just an idle question. Why shouldn't a store have a 90th birthday cake? Aren't people allowed to turn 90?

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

I'd wager that turning 90 is a sufficiently uncommon occurrence that it would be unlikely for such a cake to sell before it went stale, unless it were made to order, in which case it would not be being offered to the general public.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but I'd say the precise workings of a cake store are obscure enough that the should have been described better in the puzzle presentation. Maybe cakes that have been made and not yet picked up are displayed in the front so that passers-by can see them. Or maybe the store never actually sells the cakes in their window, they're just for display - I don't know how these things work, I've never bought a cake.

[tablesaw]

Well, it wasn't much of a brainteaser, but I should have clarified that this wasn't an independent bakery, it was the bakery section of a local supermarket.