ABOUT TEST PATTERN

Don't touch that dial: Test Pattern tunes into television, movie, music and pop culture links, as well as gossip and idle chat from around the Web.

Every week, msnbc.com entertainment producers Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, Denise Hazlick, Paige Newman, Kurt Schlosser and Anna Chan weigh in on topics ranging from TV commercials to movie hype to the latest celebrity blunder. We're not ashamed to admit our love for bad TV or reveal what's on our iPods, and invite you to join the conversation via your comments.



Multi-link Monday: 24 H in a D

Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007 6:00 AM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Filed Under:

I was gone for much of Labor Day week, but now I'm back. Let's get back to our time-wasting Multi-link Mondays.

• Have I linked to this Intelligence Test before? It offers up an abbreviated phrase, such as "24 H in a D," and you have to figure out that it is short for "24 hours in a day." Warning: I wouldn't consider this a fair "intelligence" test -- some of the phrases are really out there -- but it's fun anyway.

• There are plenty of sites out there that will tell you what events happened on the day you were born, but Kakorama added a twist I hadn't seen before. Select your birthdate and the site will show you what the moon looked like that day. (On mine, it was a waxing gibbous moon.) The site also tells you your astrology sign in Celtic, Aztec, Egyptian and Chinese astrology, how old you are on Mars, and other fun tidbits. (Via Tech Space.)

• Think it must be hard to explain Einstein's theory of relativity? Now try explaining it in words of four letters or less.  (Via Metafilter.)

• I love randomly discovered notes -- I sent a note in to Found Magazine once, and they included it on their site. There's now a site that gets even more specific, sharing only passive-aggressive notes. Dirty dishes in shared apartments bring out a good number of the notes, but I also love this roommate fight over some placemats featuring jolly chefs.

• Reader-submitted link o' the week: Cinbad sends Despair, Inc., that fun site parodying the so-called motivational posters that are found in too many offices these days. Cinbad writes: "There are really great. The sad thing is, I had to give serious thought to which of my friends would really 'get' the posters. I hope you enjoy them!" I think this one, Ambition, is my favorite.

MAIN PAGE

Email this EMAIL THIS

Comments

I know it's not a very exact test, but I got my 19!  I wish there was a place that showed the answers, though, I really want to know what some of these others are.  Fun link, thanks.

Laura, Missouri (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 10:24 AM)

i think those placemats are cute.  in fact, i have the matching kitchen rug, cutting board & potholder if annie ever wants to get rid of them.

tealv8 (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 10:46 AM)

CORRECT ANSWERS: 19 / 33  <<<< wooo hooo...I have a headache now.  I need to go lay down

smartypants in ky (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 12:47 PM)

Gael...hehe have you read the comments from your "lost note" Someone said they thought you were a doctor!! Pretty impressive. But my fave comment was this one: "deanna in maryland said:
at first i thought it was a list about annoying attributes her boyfriend has, but you're right, she is critiquing herself." How funny! Anyway...great multi-link monday!!

told_ya (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 12:59 PM)

I loved the intelligence quiz and actually did pretty well (29 without help). If you get frustrated and want the answers, click here: http://www.chesskit.com/miscellaneous/quiz.php

Jolita, Annapolis, MD (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 6:37 PM)

Loved the demotivators! They would make great greeting cards.

Bill McGovern,Hoosick Falls,N.Y. (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 9:05 PM)

Despair.com also has a Do-It-Yourself demotivation generator where you can make your own demotivational posters. I've made over 20 of the things myself...

Rebecca, Georgia (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 10:12 PM)

29/33.  And three of the four I missed were ones most people from the United States aren't likely to know.  There was only one "well, duh" when I looked up the answers!  Fun way to kill 15 minutes.

Jill, Ohio (Sent Monday, September 10, 2007 11:45 PM)

Wow! Fun quiz. Got the first 24 but found out I was not proficient on the sports items. Glad I found the answers or I would be bald by now.

Francene Brooke Lamar, CO (Sent Tuesday, September 11, 2007 1:16 AM)

i never thought i'd score 31.

ana, manila philippnes (Sent Tuesday, September 11, 2007 6:32 AM)

I got 20 before I gave up.   (Had to make sure I was a genius first, though.)  I did, however, think I was too stupid to find the answers.  Thanks for posting the link Jolita.

Laurah in NY (Sent Tuesday, September 11, 2007 2:34 PM)

That intelligence test has a second part as well, and it's a good deal harder. Link:
http://intelligence-test.net/part2/

Rose, Columbus, Ohio (Sent Wednesday, September 12, 2007 1:10 AM)

the official answers are actually here:

http://intelligence-test.net/part1/the33answers/

Chuk, Peev (Sent Wednesday, September 12, 2007 5:35 AM)

Some of those sports ones were additionally difficult by the weird choice of grammar.  "Players *IN* a Rugby team?"  Even if you knew how many players are *ON* a Rugby team, you would be unlikely to guess that the question was referring to that with *IN* in there instead.  Same for the Football (Soccer) Team one.  And, yeah, most people outside of England are unlikely to know how many balls to an over in cricket!

I Got Twenty-Nine, Seattle, Wash. (Sent Wednesday, September 12, 2007 3:12 PM)

That intelligence test has always annoyed me.  I can get around 20 or so if I work at it, but shortly after I answer "13 stripes on the United States Flag" I realize that there's going to be a cultural bias in it.  I'm Canadian, I shouldn't need to know how many stripes the American flag has to prove my intelligence.  There's two questions about the bible which I would never be able to get, having never read the bible.  There's questions on sports team sizes, and I'm not a sports fan.  Nor would I assume F (S) T would list Football and then put soccer in brackets, in Canada/America the assumption would be the other way around.  And water freezing at 32 Farenhuit is harder to get when you use Celcius.  I count at least 10 with obvious cultural bias, and then there's the ones like chromosones, right angles and chess board where it stops being common knowledge and starts being something briefly mentioned in 10th grade math/science.

Well, maybe you didn't learn there were 64 squares on a chessboard in class, but most people don't have that knowledge offhand unless they play alot of chess and/or logic puzzles.  Overall, there's a good amount of cultural bias there that makes this test pretty silly.

Alex (Sent Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:06 AM)

Oka-a-ay... I thought the Kakorama thing was interesting until I saw their astrological sign for me (Cancer) was the... lobster! huh??

jasper ruben, Spokane, WA (Sent Thursday, September 13, 2007 7:43 PM)

So is there an answer list for the second part of that intelligence test? I could only get one of those, and I consider myself pretty intelligent.

Molly, NOLA (Sent Friday, September 14, 2007 1:40 AM)

In the darkness of a melody.

There’s a leak
at the end of a distant
delight, and often,
when a delicate
line arrives in the
fear of a blackbird,
a tender profile
invents, in a moment,
the light of a
sunrise, the luminous
charm recalling
the past.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Francesco Sinibaldi (Sent Saturday, September 15, 2007 3:39 PM)

I did this in class today as a class we got more then a genuis. i remebered the answwers so thats how i have all the answers because he went over the answers in class

1.)26 letters in the Alphabet
2.)7 days of the week
3.)7 wonders of the world
4.)12 signs of the zodiac
5.)66 books of the Bible
6.)52 cards in a pack (without jokers)
7.) 13 Stripes in the United States Flag
8.) 18 holes on a golf course
9.)39 books in the old testament
10.)   5 Toes on a Foot
11.)  90 Degrees in a Right Angle
12.)3 blind mice (see how they run
13.)32 is the temperature in degrees fahrenheit  that water freezes
14.)15 Players in a Rugby Team
15.)  3 Wheels on a Tricycle
16.)100 Cents in a Rand
17.) 11 Players in a Football (Soccer) Team
18.)12 months in year
20.)8 tentacles on an octopus
21.) 29 days in Febuary in a leap year
22.)27 books in the New Testament
23.)365 days in a year
24.)13 loafs in a bakers dozen
25.) 25 Weeks in a year
26.)9 Lives of a Cat
27.)60 minutes in a hour
28.)23 Pairs of Chromosomes in the Human Body
29.)64 Squares on a Chess Board
30.)    9 Provinces in South Africa
31.)6 Balls to an Over in Cricket
32.)1000 years in a millenium
33.)15 Men on a Dead Mans Chest

Brittany (Sent Tuesday, April 22, 2008 5:01 PM)



SEND A COMMENT

PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to the blog, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.

Message (please, no HTML tags. Web addresses will be hyperlinked):

Your name, city and state (John Doe, Seattle, Wash.): 

 Your e-mail address (jdoe@msnbc.com):

Your website (it's okay if you don't have one):

Remember me? (We'll keep it private)

TRACKBACKS

Trackbacks are links to weblogs that reference this post. Like comments, trackbacks do not appear until approved by us. The trackback URL for this post is: http://testpattern.msnbc.msn.com/trackback.aspx?PostID=351531