Re: [Embedded troll] Easy Questions

From: David Brown (david_at_no.westcontrol.spam.com)
Date: 05/05/04 

Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 16:36:59 +0200

"Hans-Bernhard Broeker" <broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de> wrote in message
news:c7ar4e$1p9aq$1@ID-231750.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com> wrote:
> > [07] Which U.S. State is the farthest north? South? East? West?
>
> This ones is nation-centric, and a good deal too difficult in
> comparison to most of the rest, except the ones I kept below.

Actually, a fair number of the original questions have non-obivious answers.
A few of them are:

> [01] How long did the Hundred Years War last?

116 years

> [06] From which animal do we get Catgut?

Sheep

> [11] The Canary Islands are named after what animal?

Dogs (from the Latin for dogs - just like your pointy canine teeth)

> [19] What color are White Rhinos?

Grey (but lighter grey than Black Rhinos, which are also grey).

> [21a] What color is the bear?
White

> [21b] What direction is the wind blowing from at the
> starting/ending point?
To the north

(The directions only work out at the north pole.)

>
> > [08] In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
>
> Not in the one you might think they do. Aren't calendars wonderfully
> silly contraptions? ;-P
>
> > [21] A man travels due south for one kilometer. He turns
> > left 90 degrees and travels due east for one kilometer, at
> > which point he shoots a bear. He then turns left 90 degrees
> > and travels due north for one kilometer, returning to the
> > exact spot he left from.
>
> Impossible to tell, because the actual question ("where did he
> start?") doesn't have quite as well-determined an answer as you might
> think. There are actually a discrete infinity of possible solutions,
> if you allow our hunter to become very dizzy during the kilometer
> "walked" due east. ;-P
>
> The only think actually deducible from the above is that the rifle
> probably isn't a water-gun.
>
> > [21a] What color is the bear?
>
> Only one of the infinitely many solutions to [21] has bears living
> anywhere in the vicinity these days. I.e. unless our hunter happens
> to be walking around with an ICBM or Cruise Missile in his backpack,
> the bear in question must have been a teddy, and could thus be of any
> colour whatsoever.
>
> > [21b] What direction is the wind blowing from at the
> > starting/ending point?
>
> Again, only one of the infinitely many answers to [21] sports a
> self-evident wind direction.
>
>
> --
> Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
> Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.