The five questions from Thursday, August 13, 2026, with their answers. This puzzle is
no longer playable; today's game is on the home page, and
the last seven days can still be played in the
practice archive.
1 Over the course of a frantic weekend in March 2023 Swiss regulators brokered a 3.2 billion dollar rescue deal where a major banking institution acquired its 167 year old domestic rival to prevent a global banking crisis after the failing bank suffered massive deposit outflows exceeding 100 billion dollars in a single quarter.
Answer: UBS(3 letters)
2 In September 1992 a prominent hedge fund manager famously broke the Bank of England by short selling more than 10 billion dollars worth of a specific European currency forcing the central bank to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and instantly generating an estimated profit of 1 billion dollars in a single day.
Answer: SOROS(5 letters)
3 Once valued at an astonishing 32 billion dollars in early 2022 a prominent cryptocurrency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection just months later in November after a leaked balance sheet revealed that its affiliated trading firm held massive amounts of highly illiquid proprietary tokens sparking a catastrophic bank run of 6 billion dollars in just 72 hours.
Answer: FTX(3 letters)
4 During sovereign debt restructurings and corporate bankruptcy proceedings this specific financial term describes the exact percentage reduction applied to the face value of a bond or loan meaning that creditors holding 100 million dollars in distressed debt might only recover 60 million dollars after taking a 40 percent loss on their initial principal.
Answer: HAIRCUT(7 letters)
The discount applied to an asset's market value when it is pledged as collateral, protecting the lender against price falls.
5 Often referred to as the fear gauge of global equity markets this prominent index tracks the 30 day implied volatility of the Standard and Poors 500 through the pricing of options contracts and historically spikes above a reading of 40 during severe financial panics like the 2008 credit crisis and the early 2020 global market crash.
Answer: VIX(3 letters)
An index of expected 30-day volatility in the S&P 500, derived from option prices.