[INJ/Rosie] I apologise. I thought Jeffrey Dahmer was as well known as, say, Peter Sutcliffe, Myra Hindley, Harold Shipman et al. I didn't expect anyone to need to search the web to find the answer. It appears that I know a dangerously disproportionate amount about serial killers, and I did not intend that one to be so hard. My thought process was "Umm...what to do? I think I'll make it simple by just doing a person. Who shall I do? How about someone infamous rather than famous. Oh, I know...Jeffrey Dahmer." I even had a mental image of his photo in my head. Soz!

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[Phil] You are obviously the person to have on one's pub quiz team - or are you the one who sets them?

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(Phil) A generous apology. The thing is that it is very frustrating, having scratched one's head throughout over what the answer could be, to find that you could never have got it in the first place. It's not as if I lack general knowledge, or was born, er, yesterday. On with the show, then.

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Well, I certainly had heard of Jeffrey Dahmer. I only resorted to google to get the fact about his being killed by another prisoner (which I didn't know). I certainly think of him as sufficiently infamous to be on the tip of people's tongues.

That said, I'm one of those who's happy to google and isn't disappointed to discover the answer was something I couldn't have guessed. For then I learn something new I did not know before and my life is just that bit brighter... and sometimes I still get to win the round despite only pretending to have known all along about the obscure answer. :-)

Anyway, my turn. This is something players may or may not have in mind already. ABSTRACT

[Software] Both, actually - I write a quiz every week for the pub, so I tend to have a scant knowledge of a wide range of not terribly useful subjects.

[Phil] And when dey met, it wuz... NO
[Rosie] Grass is riz? NO

[Raak] Terminates here? NO

Just a thought.

[Dujon] Filthy Prancing Shirtlifters? NO

[Phil] No apology required - my comment read as more critical than I intended. I was trying to agree with Rosie's general point rather than criticising your choice of subject, which may well have met my criteria for reasonableness. Casting my mind back, some of my subjects were probably not justifiable by those criteria anyway.

[Software] Linguistic trope? NO
[INJ] Artful? NO (only very tangentially and unhelpfully)

I know we keep having the same discussions over and over again in the morniverse. It may be one of its defining features. Still, this one is a more than a bit tiresome, because the discussion really is identical each time. Someone (usually Rosie, to be honest) complains that the chosen subject was unsuitable because they hadn't heard of it, and they conjecture that most others have not heard of it either. Someone else (often me, to be honest :-) ) observes that there is no requirement for this game to follow the "spirit of the original game", because this game is on the internets, where we have search engines. Can we just agree to disagree on this one, and accept that people have different standards for what makes a reasonable/good subject?

I'd add two points. First, I think Rosie may have actually misjudged Dahmer's notoriety. I certainly knew of him, and I suspect the majority here have heard of him as well (which probably says something good about Rosie and bad about the rest of us, come to think of it). Second, this is an international community, so I don't think the trivia of "this country" should be privileged: in the global scheme of things, I expect that Dahmer is much better known than Sutcliffe, Shipman or Hindley.

[CdM] Point taken - and I think my lack of knowledge about Dahmer probably reflects on me (I do tend to avoid that sort of story). That said; to me, googling to get the answer feels like cheating.

I'd never heard of him but I did Google-up 5 US serial killers wiped out in jail. I do, however, suspect that Shipman and Hindley are much better known this side of the pond.

[CdM] Scientific? IN BROAD TERMS
[INJ] Specific to a single culture? NO
[Software] A human concept? YES *some discontented muttering from epistemologists*

[INJ] To be clear, if something can't be guessed with good questioning and a little googling, then I too would judge it a bad subject. I gave up on my experiment of using randomly generated topics from Wikipedia because they too often failed that test (an Estonian province comes to mind...).
[Software] Well, for some definitions of "this side" and "pond", yes. Very possibly not for my current definitions of those terms. Which was my point.

[CdM] Numbery? NO

Could we please cease to comment on the previous challenge? Thanks.

[Dujon] Learning? NO *a ripple of interest in the audience*
[Rosie] Connectivity? NO

[Chalky] Medical? KIND OF *a couple of claps from the audience*

[SW] An idea? YES, a sort of idea.

Sorry Dujon!

[Biggsy] Related to the Internet vs. Rosie's general knowledge, and which is better debate? Thankfully, NO.

Hm. Rosie's General Knowledge and The Internet. They're both rather marvellous bases for games... but which is better? There's only one way to find out!

[Rosie] Mental processes? YES! *applause*

[Dujon] Dreamtime? NO
[Rosie] Risk aversion? NO