(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.
