BPsite Forums

Here's an interesting one.  A local radio station runs a competition whereby people have to answer a trivia question, and then set one of their own.  The winner is the person who has an unanswered question at the end of the show, and various prizes are provided.  Typically, I can find the answer to a question within a minute; usually much less.  

If I were to ring in near the end, then I'd only need a question that could last for a few minutes.  But as of yet I can't think of a question that can't be solved using the same method (fast typing and salient Google searches).

Examples of past questions include finding the name of a male ferret (a jill).  Another was to find a word that had three consecutive pairs of letters (bookkeeper, or even subbookkeeper for four pairs).

I think the best approach is to find a question that's misleading, so that if someone were to google it, they wouldn't find much - for example, asking someone to name the type of gun used in a certain assassination, when in actuality a pistol was used (as any article able to identify the weapon would refer to it correctly).

Or, ask something that a lot of people would think they know the answer to, but actually they don't, so the studio's phone lines will be swamped by people who have the wrong answer, thus preventing those who do from connecting.  Currently, the only one of this type that I can think of is 'which animal can survive without water for the longest duration?' which sounds rather awkwardly phrased, and the 'answer' is so commonly known that people would realise that it wouldn't be that obvious.  Common rats can survive without water for longer than camels can, but the answer is the kangaroo rat (http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/long225.html). (And that is a very strange URL. :blink: )

*draws breath*

Anyway.  Can anyone think of any suitable questions?  :)


[Edit:]
Apparently the invisible space character is converted into the HTML code by Invision, so please pardon the highly unusual name.  :miffed: [/Edit]

Fixed your topic.

What's wrong with the Kangaroo Rat one?

It can be found very rapidly indeed via Google. :(

can you have riddles?

That's occurred to me as well.  I wouldn't have thought so, but it might be worth a try; if they won't accept it then I can always revert to a normal question.  But that requires both a good riddle and a strong question.

Riddles are a minefield of wrong answers; one of the things you said you were looking for. Even a poor one will draw out a fair amount of idiots.

Assuming you don't live in a super-smart area, anyway =p.

True, that.  But they might not accept a riddle as a question, so I need a decent back-up one on standby.  I'm currently trying to find one based around common misconceptions (again, via Google searches), as the 'flood-their-phonelines' option seems the best bet.

erm sorry, wrong post

how about finding something involving a long, obscure word that's difficult to spell so that they can't just google it because they'd have to spell it right first?  It'd have to be something obscure so that the google spell check doesn't pick it up, but it seems to be worth a try.

Eep, wrong topic.  :sheep:  

Thanks, but I've thought of that. :(  Either Google'll correct them, or they'll find results containing misspellings that other people have made of the same word, which would put them on the right track.  Or more mundanely, they'd realise that it'd be hard to spell, and use a dictionary.