h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The 'New Day In The Quiz That Is' thread has passed 5,000 postings .

Maybe there is room for a second such thread.
Same sorta rules.
I'll go first.

QUESTION 1:

There are 26.
Only four can face OATS.
Others may may sound like they do,
but they are under a different spell.


peace
~jwf~

letters in the english alphabet?

btw i think thats a great idea more quiz YEEEEEEEEE

Thats what I thought but I dont get the OATS bit

I think there are only 4 individual letters that can start words that end in OATS:

boats
coats
goats
moats

Now it makes sense!

We have some enthusiasm!
And we have a winner!

There are but four possible letters to preface OATS.
Two of those same letters, C and M, also begin the homonyms COTE and MOTE which are under 'under a different spell'. There's are also DOTE, TOTE and VOTE, but that's about all she ROTE.


Congrats to Witty Moniker.

peace,
~jwf~

......~jwf~...

This new quiz thread is great...but if the idea is to avoid the monotony of waiting for an absent setter, don't you think that we ought to have some kind of follow-on question rule that avoids the monotony of waiting for an : ?

Rules? Schmules!

Hopefully, the fact of a second quiz thread will effectively halve all the possibilities of 'down time' and double the chances for all to participate.

A third would....


~jwf~

Good point, ~jwf~

I'll defer as soon as the legitimate setter turns up, but in the meantime, what's the answer to this sum :

(Lowest number in French in which all the letters are in alphabetical order)
+
(Lowest number in English in which all the letters are in alphabetical order)

?

Pin

deux

forty?

OOps didnt see the sum!
42!

If I time this right, I'll bag the lucky numbered post...

Great idea ~jwf~,

At 5,000+ posts already, the other thread is approaching the point where it will be quite slow to load (for those of us still on antiquated dial-ups) and all too often answers/clues etc are even slower

<>

Indeed, so if we have 256 threads, maybe there'll be no waiting at all

six7s

I got it? I thought it was deeper than that and I only had a piece!

Yep Witty, you got it.
*whispers to Witty Moniker*
I was also hoping to make the questions a little less complex.
I haven't been able to answer any in the other thread for weeks and the one I asked here has been burning a hole in my head.
But you got it, so go for it.


And Six7s has a good point about the old thread taking too long to load. I have a cable connection, but when I was away for a few days recently visiting friends, I tried to go online there with their dial-up and got a very rude awakening about load up times . I had no idea how long most h2g2 threads take if you don't have a highspeed connection. And knowing it costs per minute of use, I just couldn't enjoy my daily round of h2g2 on their machine.

So maybe we should get another couple of these quiz threads going.
Watcha tink, eh?

peace
jwf

I ~tink~ it's a great idea. I unsubscribed from the other thread because I really couldn't grok it, but I'm still subscribed to new threads. So what do you mean by 'go for it'? Do I have an obligation here?

I know load times were a big issue in the pre-ripley days. I have a cable connection, too, so I didn't realize that load time is still an issue.

Maybe we should see how well two threads fare side by side before launching any more


<< Do I have an obligation here? >>

Absolutely WM It's down to you (as the succesful answerererer of the previous question) to pose the next one

>> So what do you mean by 'go for it'? Do I have an obligation here? <<

Oh yes.
As the winner you have the obligation to post the next question and then sorta be around to monitor the answers and offer clues if needed and then declare the next winner. Same rules as the 'new day quiz' thread.



I suppose I shoulda spelled that out a bit for new folks and those like yourself who may have wandered off the old one and forgotten how it works.

Once someone answers your question, you declare them 'next up', and you are 'free' from 'obligation'. Unless you answer another one correctly and the burden falls upon thee again!

So fair warning here folks; don't get the answer right unless you have another question to offer us.

That was one of things slowing down the other thread (sometimes for days). It has lately settled into very long, complex and original questions that take days to solve and it's currently only getting about two questions per week completed.

Don't get me wrong, I believe there is definitely a need and a place for that kind of quiz thread and I for one will still be involved in it (even though I may not know any of the answers lately) because the people there are quite clever and it's educational.

I just thought we could do with a snappier quiz thread.
So snap to it!

~jwf~

May I make a supplementary suggestion?

Please, always alter the Subject line
to reflect the theme of the current question


At least with all this correspondence cluttering up the bottom of the first page, it is unlikely that newcomers will reply to Post #20 any time after today (12 Feb, 2003)

Good idea ~jwf~
I tried to encourage a fast moving thread - everyone gets my questions right in no time