I have long thought that the reason I am so good at games like Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy is because I picked up so many tidbits of information from reading Nancy Drew and other series books when I was a kid. Those books were packed with esoteric information. Every now and again, I pick up a Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden or Dana Girls book and spend a couple of hours reading and reliving those lazy afternoons of reading of my youth. I did just that a couple days ago, when I curled up with The Mystery of Lilac Inn. As I read, I came to a paragraph about lilacs, in which Nancy finds a note saying something like “Meet me at midnight by the blue pipes.” Turns out “blue pipes” is another name for lilacs. Who knew?