Kept 'Hanson'? Eight of the ten readers we tried this on put his name in, which makes it comfortably the strongest word in the sentence that is not in the answer, and it is easy to defend, because somebody had to carry the thing through the door. It stays out because he is not what happened here. He had not borrowed it, he did not know who had, and he could not say where it had come from, so his part in this is the walk from the pavement to the desk. What happened is that something lent out in 1894 came back, and the five keeps that.
This one really happened. Earlier this month the Concord Public Library in New Hampshire said it would stop charging overdue fines for a year, through September 2027, and not long afterwards a man named John Hanson came in and told the archivist on the desk that he thought he had something to return that might be the oldest thing they had ever taken back. It was an issue of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine from September 1894, more than two hundred pages under a marbled hard cover, with the library's own bookplate inside and a line printed in capitals saying it MAY BE KEPT FOR ONE WEEK. Jennifer Needham, the archivist who took it in, worked out that at twenty five cents a day the fine would have come to more than twelve thousand dollars, and she said a circulation desk gives you a lot of surprises but that this was a pleasant one. She is keeping it as library history, because it records both a magazine the library once circulated and what people in Concord were reading at the end of the nineteenth century.
Every word, accounted for
JohnHis first name. A paper would use the surname, and neither one is in the five.
HansonThe man who carried it through the door. He had not borrowed it and did not know who had, so the walk to the desk is his whole part in this.
hasA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
nowA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
returnedWhat happened. Something went back to the place it came from, and that is the whole of the news.
anA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
illustratedWhat kind of magazine it was. Take it out and a magazine still came back.
magazineThe thing itself. Not a book, not a ledger, a magazine somebody once sat down with.
thatA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
wasA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
borrowedThe word that makes it a loan rather than an old thing in an attic. Without it nobody owes anybody anything.
fromA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
ConcordWhere the library is. The place loses to what happened in it.
PublicPart of the library's name. It changes nothing you could check.
LibraryWho lent it out. Say returned and borrowed together and a reader supplies the library without being told.
inSmall, and the answer will not stand up without it. Borrowed 1894 is not a sentence.
1894The year it went out. This is the word that makes anyone stop and read it twice.
soonA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
afterA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
aA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
yearlongHow long the amnesty runs. It sets the scene and it is not the event.
freezeWhat the library did first. It explains why he came in, but he is the one who came in.
onA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
overdueThe condition, and a fair guess. The five keeps the date instead, because 1894 says overdue better than overdue does.
finesThe money nobody had to pay. It is the reason, not the thing that happened.
beganA little word. It only holds the sentence together.