Regular readers of this blog will know that I run a regular feature called 'ten things i didn't know until last week.'
However, what most regular readers may not know is that this feature is
only one half of a tandem project - the other half being a quiz
entitled (aptly, I think) 'The Ignoramus' Quiz' which is featured in a
few quiz forums, most prominently Quiznet.
The Ignoramus' Quiz consists of five questions - and the first five items on each 'ten things...' column
turn out to be the answers to the questions in the corresponding
edition of the quiz. If you want to see how that works, you can have a
go at the past editions of The Ignoramus' Quiz here. (Over at the archive you can also subscribe to the quiz either by RSS or email, if you so desire.)
I
have been doing this 'ten things-Ignoramus Quiz' combination for over 2
years with no incident. But earlier this week, I received an e-mail
from a regular reader of the quiz. It posed a simple question - "I
have a small problem with the Ignoramus Quiz despatches that you send.
The email shows only 5 questions. But when I go to Misentropy.com, I
get to see 10 answers (but not the 10 questions that would have made
the answers meaningful). Would you be able to let me know how I can
view all the 10 questions and their answers."
Now, the
truth is that there are only 5 questions. So, why are there 10 answers?
I thot I might as well solve the mystery and put it down in one place,
so I can point any future queries to it.
The reason there are 10 answers is that the ten things column began first. It was inspired by a BBC column (10 things we didn't know last week)
which I found myself drawn to reading regularly. Subsequently I began
creating my own list of ten things I learned every week and featuring
it on my blog.
After a few weeks of doing so, I realised that I
could use these discoveries to create a quiz - I have been an on-off
quizzer all my life and have also been a member of quiz forums, but
only as a passive participant. But here was an opportunity to create
and present a regular quiz of my own. I created the moniker 'The
Ignoramus' Quiz' and I was ready to go.
But one question gnawed
at me. How many questions will it feature? I was painfully aware that
by making it a 10 question quiz I would rule out the joy of learning
and sharing several things that simply don't fit into a quiz
question/answer format. Or at least not without being an inelegant
force-fit - a square question to a round answer.
Stuff like, recipes aren't copyrightable in the US. Or that Earth has an asteroid named Cruithne orbitting around it. Or that Pluto is smaller in size than our own moon. Or that ducks quacks do echo - contrary to popular e-mail fuelled belief. Or that water is as likely to whirlpool clockwise as well as anti-clockwise, the direction being dictated by the sink's shape and not by the earth's hemisphere.
How
would that stuff look contorted to fit the corsetting demands of a quiz
question? If you would ask me, it wouldn't be a joy to behold. And in
some cases a quiz question would downright meddle with the joy of
discovering something fascinating and out of this world. Like an
Earth-orbitting asteroid named Cruithne, for instance.
So right
from the outset, it was obvious to me that I didn't want to fall into
the trap of learning only things that would be satisfying answers to a
quiz question. I wanted to leave room in my learning for things that
just seemed random, fascinating and pointless - beyond the pleasure
they brought of unearthing and sharing them. Which to me, was the whole
point of finding 'ten things i didn't know until last week.'
So
when The Ignoramus' Quiz was conceived, it's scope was intentionally
limited - and will continue to be limited - to only 5 questions.
So what of the remaining 5 answers, those numbered 6 to 10?
If
it helps, think of all of them as different possible answers to one
single iterated question - 'Tell me something I didn't know.'
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