During our summer holidays, we went to a tiny village in France. There is a tiny, very familiar street festival every year on the evening of the 14th of August, and we went there with our whole family.

This year they had a competition. You had to fill out a questionnaire with really hard French history questions to enter. The prizes were a big food basket, a whole ham or different boxes with regional wine.
The boys were really excited, how great it would be to win that basket. So I decided that we will, even though I had no idea how I could ever even answer all those questions.

My sister was challenged by the questionnaire but she found a way to uncover the solving word by using the letters like a puzzle. Then, in the end, there was a mathematical riddle. We had been discussing it at the table, and in the end, my dad, being a computer scientist, convinced us to fill in 15 instead of 8, the number we wanted to answer first.

Well, my younger son put the paper in the winning box, my sister filled out a second paper (which I knew would not be needed, but she did it anyway) and then the night came and the speaker got up. She told everyone that because of the last mathematical riddle there were only ten valid submissions. How exciting! A little girl then drew a piece of paper out of the box for the third prize, the second prize and when she drew the first one I was already grinning, just knowing that we had won. The lady had trouble pronouncing our German name because surely, we had won the main price!

The boys flipped out, danced around and we had a gorgeous time looking at, eating and drinking all the specialities there were in the basket for us. We had a great time and the kids still tell everyone excitedly that we are real winners. I remember it each time I go shopping with that basket.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with all of us, Rhonda and The Secret team!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!