I wanna make a supersonic man out of you
Oct. 21st, 2004 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaSomeone 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.
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.
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Re: Blame the family, 'cos I do know this one...
Date: 2004-10-21 08:13 am (UTC)As one writer on the GoneGardening forum asks: Who on earth thinks up these names ?
Re: Blame the family, 'cos I do know this one...
Date: 2004-10-21 08:16 am (UTC)