Monday, January 14, 2008

Well considering the crystalline structure...

Question on Jeopardy! tonight in a category asking for numbers as responses:

Number of sides on the typical snowflake

Correct response: What is six?

That's an ambiguous clue. Would Alex have accepted it if the contestant had responded with 'What is two?'

7 comments:

  1. I won two hundred dollars once answering that question.

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  2. You could make a good case that what a snowflake has 6 of isn't sides. It isn't a hexagon; it has hexagonal symmetry. I like the answer 2.

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  3. I don't like this side of you, Snowflake.

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  4. What about those fancy snowflakes with all the points and what not? like this one? You'd be hard-pressed to say it had six sides, I think. "Two" is obviously the better answer.

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  5. Yeah but -- you knew what they meant, right? Six seems a pretty obvious answer to me.

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  6. This reminds me of when I listened to a storyteller for the kids at the Harry Potter VII release party at a bookstore. She was talking about unicorns and asked, "Now, what do unicorns have one of?" I said, "A tail. A mouth."

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  7. And I'll bet most kids there were saying he's silly! and one or two saying thats what I was thinking! Let's hope the latter few will grow up to be teachers.

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