Here are text descriptions of the contents of Uncle Mefi's Big Book of Beans activity book, as well as transcriptions where possible:

Contents

Page 0. Cover: "Uncle Mefi's Big Book of Beans" with a cartoon image of a plate of beans

Page 1. Visual puzzle: spot ten differences between two almost-identical pictures of an idyllic crouton farm

Page 2. Crossword puzzle (clues listed below)

Page 3. Maze: help cortex get to his donut (the maze path is a Hilbert curve fractal, which makes for a very boring maze but cortex can't get enough of those things)

Page 4. Word puzzle: Metafilter Jumble (clues below)

Page 5. Coloring page: large letters "MF" with fancy designs inside them

Page 6. Word puzzle: Word Wasp (description below)

Page 7. Rebus puzzle: various emoji combined with added or subtracted letters to "spell" words and phrases

Page 8. Coloring page: fill in your choice of image in a fake USA million dollar bill

Page 9. Visual puzzle: word search (find the MeFi-related words in a letter grid)

Page 10. Logic LSAT puzzle: (description below)

Page 11. Coloring page: cartoon plate of beans, the same image as the book cover

Page 12. Answers page

Clues for the word and logic puzzles

Crossword puzzle clues:

Across:

  1. Hurf durf ___ eater
  2. The color of Pepsi
  3. Everybody ___ (3 wds)
  4. We overthink this (3 wds)
  5. Single link to this often carries a warning
  6. He was the midnight mod
  7. We have ____
  8. A userscript replaced post/preview buttons with a unicorn and what?
  9. How mathowie spells his last name
  10. Oft-promised subsite that never arrived

Down:

  1. Lengthy treaty
  2. Policy allowing banned users to come back (3 wds)
  3. 9/19 is talk like who day?
  4. Avoid posting these in Fanfare
  5. Sleep is where you are this
  6. Hoppita ___
  7. What this broom does
  8. First website on MeFi (2 wds)

Metafilter Jumble - a.k.a. If Jet Met Umbrella

Instructions: Each jumble starts with five sets of scrambled letters. Unscramble the letters of each to make a word. Each new word has certain letters circled (the positions of the circled letters are listed in parentheses). All the letters in the circled spaces together form a new jumble, which you can unscramble to find the answer to the main clue.

Jumble I:

N Y N E P (circled letters of the new word are letters 2, 3, 4); C U Q I K (circled letters are 3, 4, 5), S O F E X (circled letters are 1 and 5), R H A P G (circled letter is 1), L I L C H (circled letters are 3,4,5).

The main clue is: "When a spammer drinks a toast to their successful spamming, just before getting banned, it's...". The answer to the main clue is two words; the first word has four letters, then there's a dash, then the second word has eight letters.

Jumble 2:

E Q E U U (circled letters of the new word are letters 1,3,4), L Y T E S (circled letters are 2,3), R E P O A (circled letters are 1,2), S L U B B (circled letters are 4,5), N E X V I (circled letters are 4,5).

The main clue is: "When your rich relative leaves you a precious family Metatalk in their will, it's a..." The answer to the main clue is two words, the first has four letters and the second has seven letters.

Jumble 3:

G A H U L (circled letters of the new word are letters 2,4), G F U I N (circled letters are 1,3,4), S T E R K (circled letters are 2,3,5), P A T Z O (circled letters are 1,2,3), T O N H M (circled letters are 2,4,5).

The main clue is: "When a deleted link comes back from the great beyond on Metafilter, it's a..." The answer to the main clue is three words, the first has five letters, the second has four letters, the third has five letters.

Word Wasp TM (please don't mention this extremely original idea to the NYT puzzle folks)

This is a game of making anagrams from this collection of seven letters: F, I, L, T, E, R, S. The game is to make as many words as possible from them. You can use letters more than once, but every word must include the letter I.

Logic puzzle - Help Uncle Mefi pass the LSAT

Cortex is assigning 5 mods (LM, taz, EM, loup, thyme) to shifts numbered consecutively 1 through 5. Each mod will also be responsible for testing mod note redesigns on one subsite (Main, Ask, Talk, FanFare, and Music). The following restrictions apply:

Given those restrictions, answer each of the following questions:

  1. The shift to which loup is assigned must be a shift that is:
    1. Immediately before or after LM's
    2. Immediately before or after taz's
    3. Separated by exactly one shift from taz
    4. Separated by exactly one shift from EM
    5. Separated by exactly one shift from thyme
  2. If EM is assigned to shift 2, which one of the following assignments must be made?
    1. Testing Main on shift 1
    2. Testing Ask on shift 5
    3. Testing Talk on shift 1
    4. Testing Talk on shift 3
    5. Testing FanFare on shift 5
  3. Which one of the following is a complete and accurate list of which mod could be testing Main?
    1. LM, taz
    2. loup, thyme
    3. LM, taz, EM
    4. LM, taz, thyme
    5. taz, loup, thyme
  4. If taz is testing FanFare, then it must be true that:
    1. Ask is tested during shift 1
    2. Talk is tested during shift 2
    3. LM tests Music
    4. EM tests Main
    5. loup tests Talk
  5. If LM tests FanFare, which one could be the mod assignments, from shift 1 to shift 5:
    1. LM EM taz loup thyme
    2. LM taz EM thyme loup
    3. LM thyme loup taz EM
    4. taz EM LM loup thyme
    5. taz thyme EM loup LM

Answers to these puzzles can be found here.