Confederacy of a Dunce - A beard of burnt up black

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

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Q Who had a beard of burnt up black?
A Blackbeard.

I've spent most of the holiday break away from the computer, so it's been a while since I've posted anything. So imagine my surprise when I checked my access logs and found zillions of referrals from internet searches for beards. Not only beards but specifically, those of burnt up black. I immediately discarded the possibility that the bear community had launched some sort of major Christmas publicity effort, and followed the referrals to their target. Actually, the beard in question is mentioned only in this entry, referring to a particular literary work. To which I refer obliquely at the moment for reasons that will become clear in a bit.

So where did all these references to this literary work come from? I googled the phrase myself, and quickly found the answer. It's a question in this year's King William's College Quiz (PDF link from King William's College site; html link from the Guardian). Quizzes like these are quite a British tradition (and Mannish as well, if that's not covered by the term "British"); this time of year it's nearly impossible to get through a newspaper without a year-in-review quiz of some sort, never mind all the pub quizzes out there. But it seems the gentle art of quizzery has suffered a serious blow thanks to the readily available mountain of information out there (here!) these days. I've been quite a fan of trivia in my day, and have a great appreciation for those who are able to retain vast amounts of inconsequential information (myself included to a limited extent, much more limited when it comes to British pop culture predating my arrival here [though I have made up ground when it comes to pop culture of the 21st century]). But now answering quiz-type questions is very different. Answering a question like the one above now requires little more than typing it into your friendly search engine (Google, that is: referrals from Google are occurring more than 30 times as often as all other search engines combined) and seeing what comes up. Unless, of course, this particular entry appears on your search results. For Blackbeard is not the correct answer at all, but Svengali (also mentioned in KWC's 2000 quiz). Even if a question is written in a manner that prevents searching for the exact quotation, clever use of search terms (usually not the norm, if my referral logs are anything to go by) can still often get the answer quite readily. Never mind people who start compiling their own lists of answers. I was tempted to start compiling such a list, all with incorrect but acceptable-sounding answers. But then I figured that having all the wrong answers in one place might be too obvious. So I'll stick with my old friend alone: Blackbeard and his beard of burnt up black.

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Wednesday, January 03, 2007 1:36:31 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)