*exhausted, the audiience can do nothing but sigh in pleasure* We have a winner - it is THE GRAND CANYON! Purely mineral? Not sure about irach's argument, but I'll think about it.
Anyway, the baton finally gets passed on - take it away, irach!

Here goes. Well, its MINERAL once again.

[irach] hmmmm - hope it's snappier than the last one :-)
[Iroulé] GCanyon - classification, perhaps Mineral with Vegetable [and possibly Animal] connections?

I have never seen a more self-indulgent and comprehensively misleading set of comments as in the last AVMA. The Grand Canyon has no more to do with the earth's crust than has the Vale of Evesham. It's a surface feature FFS. So why did the audience wet themselves, generally an indication that one has very nearly hit the bull?

Sorry.. [Inkspot] Not man made.

Call me pedantic, but I would argue that the Grand Canyon is composed entirely of air.

Chalky] Possibly - but then you'd have to apply that to practically every place or geological formation. Would that definition help you to get Everest, for instance?

Rosie] I may have misunderstood what I Googled - I'm no scientist. But this is from the GC National Park's website: The Canyon’s mile-high walls display a largely undisturbed cross section of the Earth’s crust extending back some two billion years.
from http://www.nps.gov/grca/pphtml/subnaturalfeatures14.html
and lots of sites talk about the GC being made by upheavals in the earth's crust, so that was the basis of my reaction. I'm sorry if it was misleading, and you're right about the self-indulgent bit - sorry again.

Kim] Well, that was why I was unsure about the answers to "solid" and "object". But it can't be all air - what about the floor or the sides of the canyon?

move] Is there just one of it?

[Kim} No. Not a geographical feature. [Irouleguy] There are more than one of these.

(Irouléguy) Talk of the earth's crust made me think the answer was something to do with the material of the earth well below the surface whereas the Grand Canyon (and Cheddar Gorge) were gouged out by running water, i.e. surface erosion. Not to worry. :-)

[Rosie] No.

[Irouléguy] Yes!

[Chalky] Not metallic per se, though there may sometimes be metal salts or ions embedded within it.

Chalky] OK2

[Irouleguy] Generally it is considerably larger than an elephant.

[Rosie] No, it's not possible to make any man-made object from it/them using any known contemporary technology.

FWIW, I'll come to Irouléguy's defence here: (i) I think the categorization of the GC as mineral is entirely reasonable, since the flora and fauna are not an essential part of the Canyon; (ii) I think the positive response to the earth's crust was also reasonable (although I agree that the audience went a bit over the top), since a "no" would have been a more misleading answer; (iii) "self-indulgent" is an unfairly harsh term, given that he was just injecting some humor.

(CdM) Agree on (i), not on (ii); (iii) is more a matter of taste. BTW a meteor the size of an elephant would fall to earth and cause a lot of damage and would then be classed as a meteorite. Can't be that, but we'll see.

[Rosie] Not an asteroid or meteorite [CdM] Not a meteor, Perseid or otherwise. (However, the audience sits up in rapt attention, biting its nails in great anticipation of the next guess. Not quite cigar yet, but close).

[Rosie] You are absolutely right about the elephant, of course.

[CdM} A Comet ? YES!!! Congratulations! How spatial! What a brilliant win! The tail end of this guessing game was great! Here's to many more, the sky is the limit! The baton is passed, so take it away...

[CdM} A Comet ? YES!!! Congratulations! How spatial! What a brilliant win! The tail end of this guessing game was great! Here's to many more wins, the sky is the limit! The baton is passed, so take it away...

[Irouleguy] Wouldn't that be like saying that a hole in the ground comprises not only the hole but also the ground around the hole? I think the GC is just a big hole.

---

All right, let's get back into the ethereal world of the ABSTRACT.

(with ANIMAL connections)

(or should I move that apostrophe?)

Nope. Nor the cat's pyjamas, or a dog's dinner. However, the audience applauds for the fact that the answer is indeed of the form: Definite article + 2 words.