Bracket City
In today’s Bracket City puzzle, one of the first clues available is “[first year it made sense to make new year's glasses 🤓🎉]”.
Now, I know what answer they wanted, and I got Rank: 🔮 (Puppet Master) as I desired, but I still have several objections — and I found a few more while researching for this article:
First, Richard E. Sclafani and Peter S. Cicero’s patent, USD335134S Novelty eyeglass frames, was filed in July 1992 and granted in April 1993. It shows 1991 through 2004 as possibilities, so the answer can’t possibly be later than 1990. (The patent was issued for a term of 14 years, so it is now expired - go wild!)
Second, as @CheeseParade points out, the digits 0 4 6 8 and 9 really lend themselves to glasses. Therefore any year number with a pair of these digits will work. So, AD 44 would be the “first year it made sense to make new year’s glasses.”
However, the “Ano Domini” year designation wasn’t invented until AD 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, so we’d have to wait until then.
Fourth, Arabic numerals weren’t even introduced in the Western world until the 10th century, and only really left northern Italy in the 15th century, after the invention of the printing press. So, really, this pushes up the lower bound to around AD 1500, or AD 1640 if you want the eyes centered in the year number.
But this all gets a little confusing, once you remember that other cultures exist and have New Years celebrations, with their own calendar systems. It’s certainly possible that there were people using vaguely circular digits and a date system that would have allowed for novelty glasses to have been made thousands of years ago.
Finally, as my mom pointed out, the glasses must be manufactured prior to the new year, so the answer cannot possibly be what Ben Gross wanted us to write.
In conclusion, new year’s glasses are stupid and it [never] made sense to make them.