--- title: Olympiad: mixed brain-teasers ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: mixed brain-teasers ★★★», a lesson of the french course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: This last lesson mixes everything from the whole course - sounds, spelling, numbers, days, time, agreement and the French-speaking world --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/) / Olympiad: mixed brain-teasers ★★★ # Olympiad: mixed brain-teasers ★★★ Lesson 40 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/0/) — This last lesson mixes everything from the whole course - sounds, spelling, numbers, days, time, agreement and the French-speaking world - into puzzles where one sharp idea cracks each one. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/1/) — Some puzzles play with sound: "Un ver vert va vers un verre vert" says "vair" five times but uses four different words, and only the spelling tells them apart. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/2/) — Some play with history: the little hat on forêt, hôpital and île often marks an s that dropped out long ago - put it back and you get forest, hospital and isle. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/3/) — Picture a puzzle card in a French club: "Aujourd'hui, c'est mardi. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/4/) — Quel jour sera-t-il dans dix jours ?" - the trick is to jump a whole week first (mardi again) and then count three more. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/5/) — If you can solve these, you have travelled the whole course: you can hear French, read it, count in it and spot its traps - bravo, et à bientôt ! - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/7/) — The accent circonflexe often marks a lost s: forêt (forest), hôpital (hospital), fête (feast), île (isle), bête (beast), côte (coast). - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/8/) — The letters of CHIEN can be rearranged into NICHE, and une niche is a dog's kennel. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/9/) — Ten days after mardi (Tuesday) is vendredi (Friday): seven days bring you back to mardi, then three more. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/11/) — In "Les petits chats sont gris" there are 7 written but silent final consonants: les (s), petits (t, s), chats (t, s), sont (t), gris (s). - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/12/) — A silent s or x is said as z only before a vowel sound: "Nous avons six oranges" has 2 z sounds, nous\_avons and six\_oranges. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/13/) — In "Les \_\_\_ sont vertes", vertes is feminine plural, so only a feminine plural noun fits: les pommes. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/14/) — Numbering the alphabet (A = 1, B = 2...), trois, huit, un, vingt spells C, H, A, T: CHAT, a cat. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/15/) — Swapping the colours in un chat noir and une souris blanche gives un chat blanc and une souris noire: each colour changes to match its noun. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/40-olympiad-mixed-brain-teasers/16/) — Local words: septante (70) is Belgian and Swiss, chocolatine (a chocolate pastry) is from south-west France, tuque (woolly hat) is from Quebec, and "On dit quoi ?" (what's up?) is from Côte d'Ivoire. - ← previous: [Olympiad: decoding a short French text ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/39-olympiad-decoding-a-short-french-text/) - ↑ back to [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/)