Trick Questions and Answers

[Kyng]

Okay, here's a little thread which I'm hoping will be educational and fun at the same time .

Simply post a trick question (which can be about any subject you want, since this is just a "general knowledge" thread). Then, provide the answer to the question, so that the rest of us know not to fall for it next time we encounter it . I'll be posting my answers in spoilers (so that people can have a go at answering the questions themselves first), and I would encourage other people to do the same. However, this isn't a requirement: it's just a suggestion to make things a bit more fun!

I'll start with:

1) Who won the 1977 Australian Open?

Answer to #1

There were two 1977 Australian Opens!

During 1977, the tournament moved from January to December, so it was held twice this year: once at the beginning, and once at the end.

At the January 1977 Australian Open, Roscoe Tanner won the Men's Singles, while Kerry Melville Reid won the Women's Singles (in both cases, it was the only Grand Slam tournament they won during their career). After that, in December 1977, Vitas Gerulaitis won the Men's Singles, while Evonne Goolagong Cawley won the Women's Singles (Gerulaitis's victory was his only Grand Slam, while Cawley's was the sixth out of seven)

2) Who won the 1986 Australian Open?

Answer to #2

Nobody, because it wasn't held!

The tournament switched back to January - so, it went straight from December 1985 to January 1987, skipping over 1986 entirely.

Do you have any more?

[Kyng]

3) Australia has three main time zones: Australian Western Standard Time, Australian Central Standard Time, and Australian Eastern Standard time.

The Western time zone is 8 hours ahead of GMT, and the Eastern time zone is 10 hours ahead of GMT. How far ahead is Central Standard time?

Answer to #3

9 hours and 30 minutes.

Originally, it was 9 hours, like you'd expect. However, it was moved by half an hour, because businesses wanted to be closer to the time in Melbourne (i.e. the Eastern time zone), and because cricketers and footballers wanted more daylight in which to practise.

Also, some Australian states observe DST, and others do not - so, this gets screwed up even further when DST is active !

[Moonshroom]

Who won the 1994 World Series? 

Spoiler

There was no 1994 World Series! However, MLB awarded an unofficial title to the Montreal Expos for having the best record on the majors at the time of the lockout.

This banner (awarded in 2004) only hung for one game at Olympic Stadium, however, because the team moved to Washington D.C. the following season.

[Kyng]

On today's episode of The Chase, one of the questions was:

When was the first year in which the Winter Olympics were NOT held in a leap year?

A) 1986 B) 1990 C) 1994

I knew that the answer was 1994, in Lillehammer. That wasn't a trick question... but you can turn it into one, by asking the same question about the Summer Olympics :

Spoiler

1900, because of the way in which the Gregorian Calendar works. Years ending in '00' are not leap years unless they are divisible by 400 (so: 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600 and 2000 were)

[Jarkko]

Canada has six timezones - Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, Atlantic, and Newfoundland. What is the time difference between Victoria and St. John's, Canada's westernmost and easternmost cities of over 100K people?

Answer

You'd expect five hours, but it's actually only four and a half, as the Newfoundland Time Zone is only half an hour ahead of the Atlantic Time Zone.

[Kyng]

Now for a picture round... which Formula One team is this?


(Source: Lothar Spurzem; View licence terms)

Answer

It's not a Benetton .

That Italian fashion brand obsessed with marketing did indeed have its own Formula One team, which ran from 1986 to 2001 - but they sponsored a couple of other teams prior to that. They sponsored the Tyrrell team in 1983, then sponsored Alfa Romeo in 1984-85 - and this car is a 1985 Alfa Romeo carrying Benetton sponsorship.

[Kyng]

Here's another one:

A tetrahedron and a pyramid have edges of equal length. If they are glued together on a triangular face with the vertices aligned, how many faces will the new shape have?

This was set as an exam question... but, the examiners managed to trick themselves . The explanation is in the following video:



I'm ashamed to admit, I fell for it, and got the wrong answer !

[Terminotter]

I got it right, (for the actual answer, not the exam answer) but I feel like people who have different ways of solving problems have different chances of solving it. I would create examples in my head or imagine what the shape would look like and go from there, but people who do stuff on paper might not get that.

[Kyng]

I got it right, (for the actual answer, not the exam answer) but I feel like people who have different ways of solving problems have different chances of solving it. I would create examples in my head or imagine what the shape would look like and go from there, but people who do stuff on paper might not get that.

Yeah, I think it depends how you approach problems. I think you need to have good spatial awareness in order to see what's going on with the pyramid/tetrahedron puzzle - and some people have that, and some don't.

(Of course, it also helps to know in advance that there's a trick going on here - which people taking the exam wouldn't have known !!!)