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This test only has one question, but it’s a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have (more…)
April 1st is called April Fool’s Day in English, and it’s a day when people play jokes on other people. They can be small, personal jokes or tricks, or big “industrial-size” hoaxes by newspapers or television channels like the BBC. (more…)
Below is probably the most classic April Fool’s Day hoax of all time. On April 1st, 1957 the BBC ran a short programme about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland, showing spaghetti growing on trees. Many people believed the programme and phoned in to ask how they could grow their own “spaghetti tree”.
Riddles are short poems or texts that ask a question that seems difficult to answer. The following famous riddle by Catherine Fanshawe is talking about something, but what is it? (more…)
What’s the most times you can repeat the same word consecutively in a sentence and still retain meaning? Here’s a sentence with 7 words in a row. (more…)
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
What is special about the following sentence?
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
This sentence contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet and is (was?) used by typists to test their keyboards. Such a sentence is called a “pangram”.
Normally, every syllable in English must have at least one vowel (or vowel sound). So it’s quite surprising to think that there are words with 5 or more consonants in a row.
Here are a few words with 5-letter consonant strings:
BIRTHPLACE, BREASTSTROKE, DOWNSTREAM, EIGHTHS, MATCHSTICK, NIGHTCLOTHES, NIGHTCLUB, NIGHTDRESS, STRENGTHS, THOUSANDTHS
Here are two words with 6 consonants in a row:
CATCHPHRASE, KNIGHTSBRIDGE
Can you think of any more? There are quite a few.
Here’s a common puzzle:
Think of words ending in “-gry”. “Angry” and “hungry” are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.
The publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary quote “loccinaucinihilipilification” (29 letters) as the longest genuine word, followed by “antidisestablishmentarianism“ (28 letters). According to Oxford, although there are a few other words that are longer, they are mainly technical words or invented for the purpose.
I can now reveal that in fact “smiles” is the longest genuine word in the English language because there is a mile between its first and last letters.
