venta | I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

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I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

Someone just passed me a copy of the Daily Telegraph's Guide to Almost Everything, complaining that they couldn't understand the first question on the cover.

The back cover does indeed have a few general-knowledge questions on it, presumably with the implication that you can find the answers inside. The question in, er, question was:

"What can be Big Boy, Early or Supersonic ?"

He claimed it didn't make sense as a question. Being a veteran of quizzes, I'm used to the syntax, and could explain: you're looking for some noun which can be prefixed (or occasionally suffixed) by each of the words in the question. (My rather poor off the cuff example was "What can be Wind, Dartmouth or Railway?" to which the answer is "tunnel".)

We still couldn't work it out, though. I tried to look it up, but the tome (which claims to be a compendium of general knowledge) has dispensed with such tedious pagewasters as, say, an index. So, not knowing the answer, I'm completely unable to work out what section I should look it up in. So while the book may well contain the answer, I have no way of finding it.

While various solutions were suggested, we fell to arguing over what one of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima was called - Fat Boy, or Fat Man. I tried looking it up in the Military section, but failed to find it. I remain unimpressed with the Telegraph's efforts at a usable reference book.

If anyone can tell me, without googling, what can be Big Boy, Early or Supersonic, I'd like to know.

Oh, and I'll probably post up the results of the lyrics quiz tonight, so if anyone else wants to have a guess, get on with it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The bombs were fat man and little boy (dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, if memory serves). However the answer to the question evades me.

Bah. I was wrong, then.

(A quick google suggests that your names are correct, though they were dropped the other way round. Fat Boy was the test bomb which was detonated in a desert in Mew Mexico somewhere.)

There's a spare casing for one of these bombs in the Imperial War Museum. It is frighteningly crude in appearance, especially next to Werner von Braun's elegant proto-ICBM the V2, which stands nearby with part of the fuselage removed so you can see the rocket engine.

Apparently a problem with German military production in the period was the insistence on finishing everything very nicely, including the parts where this was superfluous. Having said that, of course, a V-2 actually had to be smooth and aerodynamic in a way that a parachute-retarded bomb didn't.

Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down ? That's not my department...

In German and English I know how to count down...
And I'm learning Chinese!

Well quite. When you're working on the technological building blocks for space travel, such concerns are comparatively pretty small potatoes.

Well, I googled, so I know.

I think that your analysis of the structure of the question is incomplete. If someone says to me "What can be X, Y or Z", then I tend to think of things where X, Y and Z are instances of an object of type Answer.

I couldn't possibly comment as to whether I was correct in this case ;-)

X, Y and Z are instances of an object of type Answer

You'll be one of them programmer things, then :)

Yes, I guess you're right about the phrasing. Though there is actually q bit of crossover sometimes as well (eg Dartmouth Tunnel is a phrase, but Dartmouth is also (more or less :) an instance of a tunnel).

<pendantic>

Last time I was in Dartmouth it didn't have a tunnel. A couple of ferries, perhaps - but no tunnel. Do you, perchance, mean Dartford?!

</pendantic>

;-)

Er, yeah. I meant the Dartford tunnel.

Definitely not the top-secret tunnel in Dartmouth which no one knows about, on account of it not existing. Definitely not.

They're varieties of tomato.

Isn't it Early Girl though?

Supersonic tomatoes ?

Mrph, are you feeling ok ?

Check out this page... which I Googled for...

Actually, no [I'm fuelled by lemsip right now]. But I'm not sure that's relevant. I'm fairly sure it's tomatoes, but they're certainly varieties of something of a vegetable nature.

[and I'm suddenly reminded of the days when

casilda worked for the HDRA and assorted Coventry people used to exchange obscure vegetable varieties as birthday presents - I think

godgirl got an endangered aubergine one year (the adoption certificate promptly vanished in Birmingham's Edwards nightclub, never to be seen again...) and I know

dmh got the 'WallaWalla Sweet' onion because the certificate is still somewhere here...]

What a fantastic idea for a present.

We thought so. And

godgirl has always been very much in favour of aubergines.

Details are here: http://www.hdra.org.uk/support_us/adoptaveg_varieties.htm

I see someone named a variety of french bean "District Nurse". Well, that just proves my point about the choice of names (see other comment), now doesn't it? ;)

I was going to say tomatoes as I know early and bigboy are varieties and wouldn't put it past the breeders to call one that's fast growing supersonic. My grandad used to grow Big boy one's - they're a beefsteak variety but they're fabulous. In other tomato related trivia they are also know as love apples and their latin name is the earliest bit of Latin I learnt when I was about 5 IIRC. I have my granded to thank for this info and you to thank for reminding me of him, he was a truly great man.

Tomatoes are clearly a very family thing -

mrph is blaming his family too, and I also used to help out with growing tomatoes when I was little. (Technically I helped someone who wasn't a relative, but they were one of the extended family I co-opted to make up for my shocking lack of real relations.)

I was about to guess potato.

Why ? Why ? I don't understand.

Why is that that when I say "supersonic", everyone immediately thinks of vegetables which, I think you'll find, famously don't move really quickly.

Admittedly, tomatoes was correct. But why all this vegetable-based guessing ?

Well, 'Supersonic' didn't seem to fit, but 'Big Boy' and 'Early' are certain varieties of something growable.

vegetables which, I think you'll find, famously don't move really quickly.

Depends what you strap 'em to, baby!

It's not just "supersonic", it's the set of three. They're just the sort of names that people do give to vegetables. Possibly in an attempt to prove that, honest, being the sort of person who names vegetables isn't actually a bad thing...

Ick, tomatoes.
If they'd mentioned 'cream sausage' I'd have got it.

Er, do I want to ask about that one ?

I just remembered it because someone was advertising the seeds on the noticeboard at work.

Goodness. Google confirms there is indeed a yellow tomato called "cream sausage", whose seeds were briefly sent out free by Marshalls.

As one writer on the GoneGardening forum asks: Who on earth thinks up these names ?

The Carry On team, by the sound of it.

has dispensed with an index.

Thus illustrating its own title: it has a guide to almost everything. One of the things it doesn't have a guide to is itself.

Which is engagingly meta of it, but doesn't prevent it being bloody useless :)

Don't get too upset.

After all, it doesn't really meta.

Are you wearing a hat with corks suspended?

More importantly, is he about to get suspended if he doesn't put a cork in it and stop talking through his hat ?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

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Blame the family, 'cos I do know this one...

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Both of the above people are right!

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An endangered aubergine ?

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There, there.

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