Questions

It's Day 17 of the  Blogging from A to Z  April 2015 Challenge

Regular visitors to my blog will be familiar with My Friend Rosey. She's an accident prone, witty, confused yet highly intelligent thirty-something and I've written over 100 stories about her since 2008.  This is the latest!

Last week my friend Rosey and I along with a couple of other mates took part in a pub quiz. We were up against a team of nurses called Bedside Manners, some lawyers called Brief Encounter and six other assorted teams. We are known as The Baffled Boffins.

We had an inauspicious start; useless at music, hopeless at history and clueless with general knowledge. Then we had a round of word questions, my friend Rosey’s pet subject.

Question – what is the longest word in the English dictionary?

The idea is that you whisper the answer to the team leader who writes it on the answer sheet. But not Rosey! No, she leapt to her feet and yelled ‘antidisestablishmentarian’ thereby giving the correct answer to every other team in the pub!

Someone called out ‘Tell us what it means Rosey!’ to which she replied ‘Someone opposed to removing the Church of England as the official religion of the realm’ That wiped the smiles off their faces! She then told her audience that the longest word in the English language has 1906 letters, but being a technical expression it’s not include in the dictionary.

Question – Spell millennium.

This time Rosey remembered to whisper her answer. I said she was wrong, but actually she was right.

Question – What’s at the top of the left column on page 168 of the Oxford English Dictionary? 

‘One six eight’ she hissed. A trick question, but she spotted it straight away.

And so it went on. Ten word questions and ten correct answers from Rosey. Then it was Current Affairs and Rosey’s moment of glory was over.

Question – What is the King of Swaziland called? Rosey suggested ‘Your Majesty’. Actually it’s King Mswati the Third (Hey, get me!)

We didn’t win; we never do. But at least we were consistent and came last!

Rosey’s final word on words was that the shortened form of World Wide Web has three times the number of syllables. And she's right!

To read 70 of my most popular Rosey stories go to My Friend Rosey

Rosey also has her own blog simply called  Rosey Pinkerton

Tomorrow's breathless tale is called The Race