Thursday, January 8, 2009

Trivia Day - The Word Edition

(First, a public service announcement from our friends bringing you the Bloggerational Ball on January 18. Read all about it and sign up here. It promises to be a good time for all!)


All right, due to the overwhelming success of my last trivia quiz, which a grand total of two people attempted, I've decided to try again. This time, with something that may be a little less obscure: English. Specifically, words. In response to the feedback from the previous quiz, I will make this one shorter and, I hope easier. As always, I'd appreciate it if you didn't go to the web to look these up. If anybody can come up with examples of other words that prove I'm wrong about any of the assertions below, I'd love to know them.

Also, since I can never be counted on to follow Sean's example and publish on Tuesday, I just decided to arbitrarily call this "Trivia Day".

So here goes:

1) What's the longest word in the English language that contains only one vowel?

2) What are the two words in the English language that contain all the vowels, including "y", in alphabetical order?

3) What's the shortest non-capitalized word in the English language that contains all the vowels, not including "y"? (The word "Iouea" is a genus of sea sponges, but as such is capitalized. Knew you'd want to know.)

4) There is one word (and its variants) in the English language that contains 3 doubled letters (like "tt", "rr", etc.) in a row. What is it? I'll take any form.

5) What's the original plural of the word "opus"? Today, people use "opuses", but that's a relatively new form.

6) Linguists refer to a word in which no letter is used more than once as an isogram. What's the longest isogram in English?

7) What's the only common English word (plus any derivatives) that ends in the letters "mt"?

8) There are only two common words (and their derivatives) that end in the letters "shion". What are they?

9) There are no common English words that contain all the letters "a" through "g". What are the two shortest English words that contain all the letters "a" through "f"?

10) There is only one common English word that has 5 vowels in a row. What is it?

11) What's the longest word with only one syllable? This applies to American English only, as the English English and most other English-speaking countries would pronounce it with two syllables, and in fact I suspect that some would argue about it even in America. It's my quiz, and this is pretty widely accepted, so don't fight me on it.

Good luck.

19 comments:

Ash said...

I'm going to play fair and not Google a thing - I'm amazed I got one (I think).

#8: fashion and cushion

I need to go lie (lay? lounge?) down now.

P.S. Pepe LePew!?!? Sorry. Major oversight.

rachaelgking said...

Your quizzes make my brain hurt, but your shameless plugging of my event makes my heart warm. :-)

Can't wait!!!

lacochran said...

No clue on these but I'm in for the Blog Ball. :)

Gilahi said...

Eudia-Mamia: Right on #8! One down, ten to go. How could one forget Pepe?

LiLu: I'm shameless in so many ways. Sorry about your brain.

la: Me too! About the ball. I have clues on all of these.

fiona said...

Here goes...
1. ?
2. Adventitiously
3. ?
4.possess (only 2 sorry)
cappuccino ( 2 again and is it english?)
5. Opi
6.ambidextrous?
7.dreamt
8.cushion,fashion
9?
10.?
11. Maine?
I did my best and now i have brain issues, going to have a lie down...

Bilbo said...

I believe #5 is "opera." This is depressing...for a Linguistics major, I did a pretty lousy job on this...

Gilahi said...

fiona: 2) Sorry.
4) Sorry. Yes, it's English.
5) Sorry.
6) Sorry.
7) Right!
8) Right again!
11) Sorry.

I really don't mean to be having adverse impacts on all those brains out there.

Two down, nine to go!

Gilahi said...

Bilbo: That's right! Three down and 8 to go.

Just to recap, so far we have:

5 - opera
7 - dreamt
8 - cushion, fashion

Mike said...

So I Googled the first question. I got one hit. Here's the link.
gilahi-blog.blogspot.com/2009/01/trivia-day-word-edition.html

Gilahi said...

Mike - That's right. I'm making this up as I go along.

Sean said...

I love trivia and really want to answer these questions, but I have no idea. Sorry.

Is #4 Tenneessee? (Yes, I know that I spelled the state incorrectly.)

Mike said...

1 strengthlessness

2 facetiously, abstemiously

3 sequioa

4 bookkeeper, subbookkeeper

5 opera

6 uncopyrightables

7 dreamt

8 fashion, cushion

9 fabricated, feedback

10 queueing

11 broughammed (pronounced as broomed)

Gilahi said...

Sean - Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I can't even begin any of your sports trivia quizzes.

Mike - 1) Maybe I phrased that wrong, but I was actually looking for only one occurrence of one vowel. While this word has only one vowel, it occurs three times.
2) Right!
3) Nope. Sorry.
4) Right! Never heard of "subbookkeeper", but "bookkeeper" ("bookkeeping", etc.) was what I had in mind.
5) Right!
6) Right!
7) Right!
8) Right!
9) Half right. There's another 8-letter word that contains all the letters a through f. "Feedback" is one of them, though.
10) Right, although you misspelled "queuing", which has 5 vowels in a row.
11) That wasn't what I was looking for, and I've never heard of that word. Can you provide a definition? The word I had in mind is the same length, though.

Did you cheat?

I'll publish the answers on Monday.

Herb said...

After failing the first time on this quiz, I took it again substituting the word "bowels" for "vowels". I did much better although I needed to take some Move Free afterwards.

Gilahi said...

Herb - Which one caused you the most effort: The longest word with only one bowel, or the word with 5 bowels in a row?

Mike said...

Did I cheat?! Depends on your definition of cheating. Actually 8 was obvious for some reason. But after Bilbo the linguist only got one I knew I didn't have a ghost of a chance. So I did research. Which is what you do when you don't know the answer. Most of these came from wiki answers or wikipedia.

Gilahi said...

Mike - Sorry, didn't mean to be casting aspersions. I wouldn't intentionally call someone a cheater unless I actually saw the ace sticking out of their sleeve. Thanks for playing!

Mike said...

I didn't feel any aspersions coming my way. I was just pointing out that if there were any wrong answers it wasn't my fault. It's the internets' fault.

Gilahi said...

Mike - The internet is notoriously stupid, yeah.

 
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