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First published 2025 001

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INTRODUCTION

I can’t believe that over half a million people now have a copy of Kay’s Anatomy!

So I thought to myself, What do all these children want now?

I enjoyed them as much as my last tooth extraction. A refund?

Nor can I. They probably thought they were buying a Wimpy Kid book instead. Prunella

That’s right – a book full of hundreds of activities, thousands of puzzles and millions of quizzes!

With help from my robot butler and my dog, Pippin, I’ve been working hard for the last year to create my most poo-tastic book yet.

I hope you enjoy doing the puzzles as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Finally, a huge thank you to my Great Aunt Prunella for her helpful comments throughout.

Adam Kay

Not a word. I can tell you studied medicine rather than maths.

You’re almost welcome.

WARM -UP EXERCISE

It’s very important to warm up. Before I go on a run I always do a few stretches first, and before I write a book I always jot down a quick poem. Here’s one:

There was a great aunt called Prunella Who told me, ‘Now listen up, fella, I’ve taken one look

At your terrible book

And I’d rather eat rats in my cellar.’

Now, before you embark on hundreds of pages of bamboozling brain-teasers, I thought we should start with a few quick puzzles. Each of these pictures represents a medical phrase that you need to decode. How many can you decipher?

O U R

AID AID AID AID

HEADACHE

Heart attack

First aid

sX-ray

Splitting headache

Blood bank

Ear drum

Upset stomah

ChApTER 1 SKIn

TRUE OR POO?

A GROWn-UP’S skin weighs more than a pug.

An average grown-up’s skin weighs around 9 kilograms, about 25 per cent more than a pug. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you don’t scrape off a grown-up’s skin using a potato peeler to check this.

The thinnest part of your skin is on your ears. Your eyelids actually have the thinnest skin on your body. And the thickest part is on the soles of your feet, which is why it’s extremely important to walk using your feet rather than your eyes.

There’s a medical condition that means you have no fingerprints.

There certainly is, and it’s called adermatoglyphia. It’s extremely rare, only affecting around five families in the world, and I imagine most of them are bank robbers.

You have enough skin on your body to cover an armchair.

Pah, there’s barely enough on you to cover a footstool! And I’m not sure it would even be a particularly nice footstool (no offence).

PIp’s POOzLEs

What a nightmare: Pippin has pooed all over this page. Can you replace her poos with the missing letters to reveal various skin-based sayings? To double your points, match each saying with its meaning on the opposite page. Poo-d luck!

Th sK

By TH s n f R T h

A. If you did what this phrase suggests, you’d be a pile of bones, muscles and organs on the floor. It actually means you’ve had a fright. Like if you saw a big pile of bones, muscles and organs on the floor.

B. This phrase means you’re happy just how you are. Your actual skin can become uncomfortable though – if you’re allergic to something, have an itchy skin condition such as eczema or get into a bath full of ants.

C. This phrase is often used to describe a narrow escape, like when I thought I’d lost my keys but it turned out that Pippin had just eaten them.

D. This means something creeps you out. Like when I discovered we each have millions of creepy crawlies called Demodex mites living on our skin. Oh, sorry, were you eating?

E. This phrase means that you don’t get upset when people are rude to you. Let’s try it: you smell so bad that skunks tell jokes about you. It definitely doesn’t mean that your skin is stupid. Your skin is actually very clever. For example, it can change your body temperature depending on the weather.

F. This means you care about how something turns out, like when I entered Pippin into a dog competition to win a lifetime’s supply of sweets. (She came thirty-ninth.)

ARE YOU SmARTER ThAn A sEnIOR?

Find your nearest grown-up – it could be a parent, a teacher or the lady at the checkout at Morrisons – and test their knowledge with this quickfire quiz. (Apologies to the people behind you in the queue at the supermarket.)

1. Which of these means a bruise?

A) Cyanosis B) Ecchymosis

C) Halitosis D) Waroftherosis

2. Which vitamin does the sun help our skin produce?

A) D B) C C) B D) A

3. What is the name given to the tiny tubes that hairs grow from?

A) Follicles B) Molecules C) Popsicles D) Hair tubes

4. What is the natural oil that your skin produces called?

A) Propane B) Mucus C) Sebum D) Suet

5. What does the pilomotor effect cause?

A) Hair growth B) Goosebumps

C) Sweating D) Electric shocks

SKIn cELL

The evil bacterium is in prison. Crack the code to break him out!

Hmm. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all. I do hope you haven’t started a pandemic . . .

wARTsEARcH

Can you spot the various words used to describe spotty skin in the grid below?

ACNE BLEMISH BLISTER BOIL FRECKLE PAPULE PIMPLE PUSTULE WART ZIT

AnswERs On pAgE 28

ADAm’S ExPEDITIOUS ExPERIMENTS

Want to see your fingerprint but really, really massive? No? Well, ignore this experiment then . . . But if you change your mind, dip your finger in washable ink, press it onto an uninflated balloon, then blow it up. Ta-da! Massive fingerprint! Does it look any different to your friends’ ones? (Yes, it does –because everyone’s fingerprints are totally unique.)

DETECTIvE TIME

Disaster! Somebody has broken into my house and stolen my BEST AUTHOR IN THE WORLD trophy! But I’ve found a fingerprint and, as no one fingerprint in the world is the same, we can identify the culprit. Can you work out who stole my very well-deserved trophy?

I know for a fact that you bought it on eBay. Prunella

D. B. A.

FINgERPRInT MAZE

Your skin is covered in billions of bacteria (ugh), and after using the toilet, the number of bacteria on your fingertips doubles (ugh). Follow the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium as it makes its way through my fingerprint (ugh).

FINISH

START

wART’s THE DIfFERENcE?

Find all six differences on the warty images of this person who my lawyer, Nigel, insists I say is a character I totally made up and isn’t stolen from any other book.

You’re such a Wally. Prunella

TRUE OR POO?

Ten per cent of the dust in your house is the skin of people who live there.

I’m afraid the truth is even more disgusting than that. Almost half the dust that you sweep up (well, a grown-up does this, let’s be honest) has flaked off of your family’s bodies. So if you lick the skirting board, then you’re technically a cannibal.

THeRe’s a cOndiTiOn tHaT MaKeS YoUr sKin rEaLlY StReTcHy.

People with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome have extraelastic skin due to an abnormality in collagen, which is basically the skin’s scaffolding. The world record for the stretchiest skin (there’s a record for pretty much everything) is held by Garry Turner, who can stretch out the skin on his abdomen to about the length of a shoe.

THeRe iS A Condition ThAt aFfEcTs fisH CaLlEd

hUmAn sKin diSeAsE.

But there is a condition that affects humans called fish scale disease, or ichthyosis, where the skin becomes thick and scaly. I don’t think it makes you swim any better though.

THe aVeRaGe pErSon SwEaTs oUt aBoUt tWo fizzy

dRink cAnS ’ WoRtH Of liqUid EvErY daY.

And that’s if you lie around in bed all day doing nothing, like me. If you exercise, you can sweat that amount in just half an hour. Sweating’s a lot better than the alternative – storks, for instance, cool off by pooing down their legs.