A Quiz For People Who Know Everything

mickeyd

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Difficult to ace this, but it can be done. Good Luck!

"A Quiz For People Who Know Everything"

(1) There's one "sport" in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends. What is it?

(2) What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

(3) Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

(4) Name the only sport in which the ball is always in possession of the team on defense, and the offensive team can score without touching the ball?

(5) What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

(6) In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

(7) Only three words in standard English begin with the letters "dw." They are all common. Name two of them.

(8) There are fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name half of them?

(9) Where are the lakes that are referred to in the "Los Angeles Lakers?"

(10) There are seven ways a baseball player can legally reach first base without getting a hit. Taking a base on balls-a walk-is one way. Name the other six.

(11) It's the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh. What is it?

(12) Name six or more things that you can wear on your feet that begin with the letter "S."




"Answers To Quiz"


1. Boxing.

2. Niagara Falls. The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.

3. Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. Baseball.

5. Strawberry.

6. The pear grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the whole growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.

7. Dwarf, dwell, and dwindle.

8. Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

9. In Minnesota. The team was originally known as the Minneapolis Lakers and kept the name when they moved west.

10. Batter hit by a pitch; passed ball; catcher interference; catcher drops third strike; fielder's choice; and being designated as a pinch runner.

11. Lettuce.

12. Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, snowshoes, stockings.
..Well, now you know! Feel any smarter?
 
Funny list. Thanks for posting it.

Dweeb isn't a word? The lettuce at our local supermarket is definitely not fresh. Wilted is a better description...
 
Less than 50%. Maybe if I'd thought on it a while longer I could have done better.

However, I w*rked with a guy who I would bet could get 90 if not 100%. One of those guys who had read everything, heard everything, remembered everything. Not at all a know-it-all or show-off type. As nice as you could ever hope to meet. Yet, any subject brought up at the lunch table, he knew more than anyone else there. He was my go-to guy when ever I had a question I couldn't answer in our field or anything else. It never did him much good in his c*reer as he was never motivated by achievement - if you know what I mean. In the kindest way I could say it, I always called him "World's Foremost Authority" - because he certainly seemed to be. Too bad he couldn't harness that for an ER. Last I heard, he was still PT at a university lab in his mid 60's. Guess knowledge isn't everything. YMMV.
 
I got 3 answers right. Obviously not great. I took this quizz for fun, and not because I am under the impression that I am one of those "who know everything" :)
 
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Wait, #10, passed ball? Only as a dropped third strike, which is already covered. In baseball scoring, a passed ball is when the base runners advance due to the fault of the catcher letting a ball get by.

I was thinking of the Mendenhall glacier as something moving backwards, though maybe in winter they don't.

I thought of dweeb as well, but I'm not surprised it's not considered a word.
 
Nice. Thanks for posting.
The cashew fruit also has the seed on the outside.
Cashew-Fruit-200x300.jpg
 
#10 Concerning the passed ball, is incorrect. All a passed ball does is advance the runners already on base. If no runners are on base,a passed ball is meaningless, and not even defined as a passed ball. In fact, with the bases empty, the catcher won't even bother retrieving the ball. The play is dead.
 
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Wait, #10, passed ball? Only as a dropped third strike, which is already covered. In baseball scoring, a passed ball is when the base runners advance due to the fault of the catcher letting a ball get by.

I was thinking of the Mendenhall glacier as something moving backwards, though maybe in winter they don't.

I thought of dweeb as well, but I'm not surprised it's not considered a word.
Dweeb is a word according to:

Merriam-Webster: Dweeb - an unattractive, insignificant, or inept person
Dweeb - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Macmillan Dictionaries Thesaurus: Dweeb - someone who you think is boring or weak and who wears clothes that are not fashionable
dweeb - synonyms or related words for dweeb - Macmillan Dictionary and Thesaurus

And the ultimate judge of words: - scrabble (no definition, but it is an entry and acceptable word)
Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary, 4th Edition.
 
Not sure about Niagara Falls. Obviously it's moving northward, but I just don't think of that as backward.

Dweeb was the first one I thought of, too. I think it's safe to say that it's now standard English, although maybe not when this quiz was written.

I would argue for the interrobang as a valid punctuation mark. It was very popular back in the 70s and 80s, not so much now, but I always thought it should be made standard. I would also argue for the em dash as a standard mark, and possibly the pilcrow (paragraph marker).

I guessed luckily on the Lakers.

I got the S words for the feet. Had all of them except snowshoes.

Missed all the others. Surely we can quibble about these for at least a few pages in this thread! :D
 
Nice. Thanks for posting.
The cashew fruit also has the seed on the outside.
Cashew-Fruit-200x300.jpg

This is sooooooo weird--not the cashew, but the fact that just two hours ago I had to translate maranon (tilde over the first 'n') and saw a similar photo. Cue Twilight Zone music!
 
Re #10 -- the batter can also reach first base on a fielding error, which is not scored as a hit even though the batter physically struck the ball.
 
I am definitely not a know it all and that is all that I am saying!
 
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The answer to #3 is also incorrect. Artichokes are a vegetable and my Sunset Garden book says they are reliably perennial in several climate zones, basically the warmer parts of the west coast. They will sometimes produce a crop from seed the first year in climates that are too cold for the plant to overwinter. Horseradish is also perennial. And according to this book, there are many more perennial vegetables than just those few.
 
1) Ali-Liston 1965, (for example).... "Get up and fight, sucker!" The match wasn't declared 'over' but Ali and the crowd knew who'd won.
 
9 ways...

There are actually 9ways to reach base without a hit:

  1. Base on balls
  2. An error (as noted by another poster)
  3. Hit by a pitch
  4. Interference by the catcher
  5. Fielder's choice
  6. Dropped 3rd strike by the catcher
  7. Batted ball that hits a runner
  8. Batted ball that hits the base umpire before passing a fielder
  9. As a pinch runner
:)
 
(1) There's one "sport" in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends. What is it?

Boxing? Aren't some boat races scored 'after the fact'? I know almost nothing about sports, so if I can get that one with a different answer than what they claim is the only correct answer, it casts some doubt on just how smart the quiz author is.

http://www.cycracetomackinac.com/faq/

How can big boats and small boats race against each other?
Boats are handicapped by a series of mathematical rating systems which predict how fast they should be capable of sailing under a variety of conditions. Applying these ratings to each boat’s elapsed time on the racecourse determines which boat sailed the best relative to their rating, and therefore determines the winner. This allows the entire fleet to compete against each other.

-ERD50
 
(1) There's one "sport" in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends. What is it?



I will disagree with this just based on the wording... even in boxing a good number of people know the 'leader' of a match... they might not know the score, or the final winner (you know, that last minute knockout)... but saying nobody knows the leader is just wrong...
 
Since we are bashing the answers, then the answer to #5 is also wrong. A strawberry is actually a false fruit and what appear to be seeds on the surface are actually individual fruits, each containing a seed inside. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday but some O-Level Biology still sticks in mind from age 16 :facepalm:

The type of fruits on the outside of a strawberry are called achenes.

Achenes contain a single seed that nearly fills the pericarp, but does not adhere to it. In many species, what we think of as the "seed" is actually an achene, a fruit containing the seed. The seed-like appearance arises from the fact that the wall of the seed-vessel hardens and encloses the solitary seed so closely as to seem like an outer coat.

The achenes of the strawberry are familiar, where the "seeds" are achenes. Technically, the strawberry is an aggregate fruit with an aggregate of achenes, and what is eaten is accessory tissue, so this is an aggregate accessory fruit.

PS
I didn't do very well on the test.
 
The answer to #3 is also incorrect. Artichokes are a vegetable and my Sunset Garden book says they are reliably perennial in several climate zones, basically the warmer parts of the west coast. They will sometimes produce a crop from seed the first year in climates that are too cold for the plant to overwinter. Horseradish is also perennial. And according to this book, there are many more perennial vegetables than just those few.

Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes come to mind too.
 
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