May 11, 2009 question - Trick or Trivia

I Tricked You
And I feel really bad/good about it, too
I ask trick questions all the time. Not all the time, I mean, not every question is a trick question. But I like throwing them in there from time to time. Friday's was a trick. It was so tricky, in fact, that I've been debating all weekend whether to award credit to the people who knew the non-trick question but failed to spot the trick.

Because, you see, nobody guessed the trick answer. If you suspect a trick question's coming, you can employ a trick guess without even reading the question. Any of these are very likely to garner a correct answer to a trick question: zero, one, none of them, all of them, himself, herself, never.

But if you get tricked by a trick question and you knew the non-trick answer, whew . . . the only genuine responses seem to be @#!&, &#!^, &@#$, and #$##&@^ &!^%#@*. As you can see from the answer below, I'll have to accept any of these. Sorry.

Today's Question
Animals
Which of the following is not a mollusk:

A. Crab
B. Cuttlefish
C. Giant Squid
D. Slug
E. Snail

Friday's Answer
And the people who knew it
None of King Henry VIII's marriages ended in beheading. The two ex-wives who were beheaded became just that—EX wives—shortly before becoming ex-living. King Henry Ocho was a big fan of annulling marriages that didn't work out, the tricky little bloke.

March 25, 2009 question

Get Over It
Making it through weeks one hump at a time
It's hump day. But why do they call them Speed Humps when you're supposed to go slow over them? Shouldn't they be Slow Humps? Or Slow Bumps?

Today's Question
Science
What element has the highest melting point?

Tuesday's Answer
And the people who knew it
Nobody got this one exactly right ($15,140) but Nancy K (the K stands for Kinda Close) was within 1K with her guess of $15,700. And since I didn't stipulate Price Is Right rules, she's our winner.

March 5, 2009 question

If you play the tune in your head, you might come up with an educated guess of the time allotted in Final Jeopardy. But if you can search your memory for the sound of Alex Trebek's voice saying, "30 seconds," that might help even more. Here's who knew:

Charles
Cindy
Maridee
Nancy K (the K stands for Knot Really, But Credit Was Overdue)
Steve J (the J stands for Jeopardizing Trivia Safety)
Karen H (the H stands for How Ya Like Me Now, Trebek?)

Now it's on to today's news, which sees the . . . wait . . . it's warm outside! Forget the news. Let's just soak in the sun and enjoy a little free nutrition. Here's today's question:

Exposure to sunlight on the skin triggers the production of what vitamin (although the use of sunscreen reduces that production by 95%)?

February 19, 2008 question

Planters is a really old company launched by a really Italian guy. Nobody guessed that, but I understand. The clue was really obscure: Presidents Day, Planters . . . two proper nouns everyone thinks should have an apostrophe but don't. Not seeing the connection? Okay. Let's try again. Here's today's question:

Are all shamrocks clovers?

February 12, 2009 question

If you've stolen a cat or a dog whose name you do not know and someone asks you to verify that it's yours by calling out the pet's name, your best bet is Max. And if you have a pet named Max that's gone missing recently, Maridee and Heidi may have been smart enough to get away with the petnapping.

Um, congrats.

On to bigger news. A Russian satellite and an American satellite collided at high speed about 500 miles above Siberia. It was the first ever high-speed collision of man-made objects in space, which makes it officially awesome. Said Lee Minors, chief ballistics engineer at NASA, "We've blown stuff up and smashed stuff up in a lot of places. But doing it in space has forever been the dream. Now, by accident, we've stumbled into uncharted awesomeness. I mean, look at it!"

Now here's a completely unrelated question that I didn't make up--for real, my son just asked me (I got it wrong):

Do river otters have webbed feet?