OddThinking

My father, Joe, was fond of trivia questions – back before Google rendered such activities futile.

He had a few favourites. Probably his top two were: “What is the name of the bump at the bottom of a wine bottle?” and “What is the name of the tip of a shoelace?”

One day, I received a strange phone call. It was Amanda, a friend of Joe; she whispered down the phone, “Quick! Julian, I am ringing from your father’s house. What is the name of the tip of a shoelace?”

I laughed, “Oh, he’s asking trivia questions again, is he?”

“Yes!” she said conspiratorially, “So what’s it called? Tell me before he comes back and notices I am calling you!”

“A punt,” I explained, “P-U-N-T, punt. That’s what the tip of a shoelace is called.”

Amanda thanked me, and quickly hung up.

A few minutes later, Joe called me, laughing profusely. He had been somewhat surprised by the confidence in Amanda’s answer, especially as it was wrong. A punt is, of course, the wine bottle bump. It didn’t take him long to figure out what had happened, and that it was I who had played a cruel prank on her.

Another question Joe would ask, back in the late 70s, is “How many non-decimal currencies are there in the world?” Given Australia had only converted to decimal currency in 1966, people were very surprised that the answer was zero – much less than their estimates.

I was equally surprised today to discover that, according to Wikipedia, the answer is not zero, but two, at least notionally!

That brought into doubt another similar question he would ask: “How many tigers are there in the wild?”

Again, his answer was zero. Again, when I checked today, the number wasn’t zero; several thousand tigers are still in the wild.

So it turns out Amanda isn’t the only person who was answering Joe’s trivia questions wrongly!