Kept 'wooden' or 'car'? That is the thing in his hands, and the strongest wrong word here, but the five had to say what they are for rather than what they are made of. Kept 'losing' or 'sight'? He is going blind and has not stopped, which is the saddest and best fact in the sentence, and it still is not what happened. Kept 'still' or 'makes'? 'Handmade' already says he made them. Kept 'hundred'? That is how many, not what he did.
This one really happened. Bill Covington is 100 and lives at Sulphur in Louisiana. He has spent the last ten years in his workshop tracing, cutting, sanding and gluing small wooden cars, one board at a time, and has made more than a hundred of them this year. They go into shoeboxes sent abroad by Operation Christmas Child, so he never meets a single child who gets one. He taught Sunday school until he was 98. His eyesight is going. 'I just like to build it and give it away,' he told KPLC. 'Just keep working. Don't quit. You quit, you die.' His wife Earlene was asked about him and said: 'He's handsome. He's handsome.'
Every word, accounted for
AA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
100-year-oldHis age. Nothing else here would be news without it.
inA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
LouisianaWhere he lives. A place, and places are not what happened.
losingGoes with sight. The hardest fact in the sentence, and not the answer.
hisA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
sightGoes with losing. He is going blind and still at the bench, which is why the story is worth telling. The five has no room for it.
givesWhat he does with them. Not sells, not keeps.
awayGoes with gives. The small word that says nobody pays him.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
handmadeHe made them himself. One word doing the work of a whole clause.
toysWhat they are. Children get them, and he never meets the children.
heA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
stillHe has not stopped, at a hundred. A strong wrong word.
makesGoes with still. True, but handmade already carries it, and the five cannot say the same thing twice.
moreA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
thanA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
aA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
hundredHow many this year, and a second number fighting his age for the same slot.
thisA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
yearGoes with hundred.
eachA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
aA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
littleGoes with wooden car. The size of it.
woodenGoes with car. What they are made of.
carThe thing itself, and the best wrong word in the sentence. A car is what it is; a toy is what it is for.