As it happens, the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is broadcast around the time that I'm preparing and eating my noon meal, so I've been watching it rather more often than I might otherwise. In probably half the games, I know the correct answers and would do much better than the contestant, but in the other half, there is some inconvenient question that I either don't know or, worse, think I know but get it wrong.
Contrary to what Meredith and the contestants keep claiming, doing well on that show has little to do with being "smart", but all to do with knowing and being able to recall certain specific facts. It often boils down to you either know it or you don't.
But sometimes there are questions to which you can apply a bit of reason to arrive at the correct answer. Case in point, today one of the questions involved the meaning of "petrology", a word that off-hand I didn't recall. But I reasoned like so: "Hmmm, petrology sounds like it comes from the Greek word for rock, as in "petrified forest" or "Peter". Ah, one of the proposed answers is the study of "rocks", so...oh, wait. One of the other answers is "forests", could it...? No, rocks. It's the study of rocks. Final answer."
Interestingly, the contestant went through a similar mental exercise, and via a slightly different path wound up with the same answer. "Petrology must refer to petrol which is oil and that comes from rocks. Rocks. Oh, wait. I'm not sure. I think I'll do a 50/50." The computer removed two answers leaving "rocks" and "sunshine". The contestant smiled and said, "Rocks. Final answer."
Posted by jt at June 14, 2006 12:28 PM