[INJ] European, NO...
[CdM] Phantom Tollbooth? YES!! *collects checkpoint fee and hands baton back to CdM*

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Never heard of it, nor will many others, thus excluding them from the game. Google it? What do you type into Google? "Something I have never heard of". Go! This is by no means the worst example of an inappropriate subject, there being many of them so arcane that you just give up, bored, knowing that eventually some clever clogs will winkle out the answer. I could retaliate, of course, if I ever win again. It will be a steam engine. Not just any old steam engine. Oh dear me no. A particular type and not only that, a particular class. And not just any old loco of that class but a particular engine. And will it be notable in any way? Not necessarily. Wouldn't that be clever? The point I am making is that this game has departed a long way from the original concept, which was conducted live and necessarily needed maybe unusual but universally-known subjects. It needs to stop being a research project or a showcase for clever boys and return to its more modest origins.

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Ditto, never heard of it :-(

[Rosie] Oh, rubbish. If we stuck to obvious stuff, this game would have run out of steam much earlier. I enjoyed finding out about, for example, Bobrikov, set by Néa earlier in the game. I'd never heard of him, but that hardly excluded me from the game (in fact it was me who dug up the answer after about 20 minutes' research).

Besides, anyone who hasn't heard of the Phantom Tollbooth has just had the good fortune to discover it. It is one of the classics of literature and they should read it at once (preferably in an edition with the original Jules Feiffer cartoons).

Bobrikov, and Bluebeard (which I found through Google) were good - difficult, and involved learning something new, but they were relatively "googlable". Luckily, the Phantom Bluetooth appears to be well enough known for someone to get it, it's just us grumpy old men that have never heard of it ;-)
Lets move on and work the next one out :-)

(Projoy) There is an absolutely huge number of subjects that are universally known. The skill is in picking one that is a little off-beat and needs a little imagination to guess. That's what the original Animal, Vegetable and Mineral was about. Turning it into a research project is a negation of the original idea. I have no interest whatever in which particular species of South American lizard, or which character from some science fiction novel the questioner is thinking of. That is just so nerdy. And boring! It's meant to be a game. Time for another extended absence from this one, I feel.

[Rosie] Please don't deprive us of your presence from this game. Surely now your opinions have been aired and taken into account by the rest of us there should be less of a problem? I'm in the "never heard of it" camp for the last one, but that happens every now and then - and I'm sure it does for everyone. Trying to come up with subjects every single time that every member of a multi-national group of people from a fair age range have heard of wouldn't be too easy. Yes, if there happens to be another subject soon that the majority of people consider inappropriate we can have this kind of discussion, but shall we just get on with things for now?
[CdM] By the way, no pressure on choosing the next topic ;)

(Tuj) That's very kind, and I actually enjoy the game, yes really, but only up to the point where I reckon the answer must be something I've never heard of, at which I just switch off and hope for something better next time. OK, I'll put in some questions then, if you insist. :-)

[Tuj] Well, I was thinking about picking a particular steam engine...
[Rosie] I understand where you are coming from -- halfway through the last AVMA I remember thinking "well, if this is from a Philip Pullman book I might as well give up now." At the same time this game, like so many that we play, is different from its antecedent, and I think this is a good thing, not a bad thing. This online version is played using google from time to time, and that does open us up to more obscure topics. As to whether Projoy's particular choice was too obscure, I am inclined to think not (but then, I did know the answer). The answer was the title to the book, not something from within the book, and I do think the book is acknowledged as at least a minor classic of children's literature -- maybe not in the A.A. Milne or Lewis Carroll or C.S. Lewis league, but comparable to perhaps the works of Roald Dahl or Arthur Ransome. Like Tuj, though, I would urge you to keep playing. On which note,

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ABSTRACT