Think you can beat this? Quick: Who has more experience placing letters in circles than anyone on Earth? We’ve done our share of playing around testing at Spell the Beans, but let’s think outside our own bubble for the moment. The @ sign doesn’t count, because that’s not a full circle, so forget email servers. We all fill oval text balloons, but that’s with words (those of us over a certain age, at least). Copyright marks are reprinted all over, but the letters are limited, to say the least. And the letters and circles are carved from a single block, as it were.
No, we think for sheer quantity as well as skill (such as it is) in placing letters inside actual circles, the honor may well go to the iconic candy-covered chocolate ellipsoid, M & M’s, made by Mars, Inc. since 1941. Over 400 million of the morsels roll off the assembly line every day, each stamped with a lone lowercase m. But that’s not the broken record we’re looking for here.
M & M lore is legendary, but the recent Guinness world record crossing the newswires is not for production, marketing, or consumption. It’s for construction, and British civil engineer Will Cutbill is the Mars mastermind, Smarties loyalty and Elon Musk notwithstanding. So what was this impressive feat of delectable derring-do? A confectionery jet-coaster rolling through the London skyline on multicolored wheels? A chocochunnel? An edible bridge across a toy Thames or cardboard Kwai? A candy-coated chocolate likeness of Lord Nelson or Sir Alec Guinness? Would you believe a small stack of candies on Cutbill’s living room table?
Who knew?
What’s most astounding about the whole thing is what’s most underwhelming: The grand total of stories in Cutbill’s soaring tower is… five. Oh my Guinness. In what will undoubtedly become a new challenge taken up by anyone who can afford a bag of the spheroid sweets (and doesn’t eat them up first), we have a new poster child for “it’s harder than it looks.” Only time will tell what new heights may be reached, or what new frontiers of physics may be forded in the quest. If you think you can beat this sweet stacking stunt, by all means try. In the meantime, Spell the Beans is easier, has 2500% more letters, and poses no risk of coloring your hand green or orange on one of these record hot days. So when you give up on Guinness, give us a go.
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