Foney FunTrivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.
If you can think back a few years (young'uns ask your parents) or if you happen to own an old one (not a parent, but something else), you can solve the riddle and tell us WHERE The American English alphabet appeared this way.
HintCall an older person who lived in the USA or visited here years ago and ask them. The title is also a hint.
AnswerThese are the letters of the alphabet as they appeared on older USA dial-phone (and some early touch-tone) faces.
Years ago phone numbers had letter-prefixes, such as ADams 4577, BErkley 3322, etc. These represented (usually) streets or sections of town and were called *exchanges*. An *exchange* was one of several locations in the phone-company area that used (at first) a mechanical switching device to connect the caller and the called. One exchange (ADams, for example) could also forward the call on to another exchange (BErkley) where the connection would be completed, or even sent on to ANOTHER exchange if appropriate.
The phone companies, for space-economy and, I suppose, visual consistency, decided to use twenty-four letters only. So they dropped the two least-used ones; Q and Z.
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