Quizzes, plumbers, Scrambe

[slemslempike]

I really enjoyed this quiz about the most common words in the English Language. I found myself running through quotes I knew, the opening to Pride and Prejudice, some hymns, a bit of Shakespeare. I got 70 out of 100. It didn't have my top-used word according to lj archive, which is "actually". I really enjoy the whole site, especially the geography quizzes, though I am not very good at them. I always forget Wyoming, Timor-Leste, and I can't spell Kyrgystan.

A plumber came to the house today and fixed my radiator. It's warm in my room! We called a plumber because last night, on the suggestion of a friend, we took the thermostat control off the radiator, and got the pin moving again. This did not have the desired effect, so (on the suggestion of my dad) I loosened what I thought was the valve on the other end of the radiator. This came off. There was only a tiny amount of leak, because the thermostat control was still broken, but it was a bit alarming to wonder what if my books would be in Jen's room in the morning. More for her than me, I imagine. I got very grumpy about having to call plumbers, and this wasn't helped when the first one I tried insisted that it wouldn't be the thermostat, and he would have to power thingy the entire system for at least £400. Luckily the next one I tried seemed much more laidback, and arrived quite quickly with the spare parts, and then made perfectly reasonably small-talk (unlike the builder, who has so far jovially threatened violence and made sexually suggestive remarks), fixed things quickly and drained some of it.

It makes me quite cross that Scramble on Facebook organises your "top friends" by total number of points scored and not, say, word IQ, or average score, or percentage won, all of which would be much fairer and interesting and, coincidentally, put me at the top more often. I only have about five people to play with! I can't get the huge scores going!

Comments

[whatho.livejournal.com]

I liked that quiz. I found myself listening to the newsreader and typing in things she said. I got 76 of them. Surprised that 'work' was there and not 'home' and intrigued that 'no' was there and not 'yes'.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Yes, that surprised me too! I thought man/woman might be there (though perhaps that's subsumed under "people"). Love missing too.

And please. You never once said please!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I suspect that 'no' beats 'yes' because of its use in phrases like 'There's no chance I'll get 100% in this quiz.'

I only got 65, and was appalled at the number of prepositions and conjunctions I missed when I thought I'd been through all the common ones. Most embarrassing omission: 'and'.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I only got "and" at the very end, after I'd been trying for ages to think what else I would mean when I hold my fingers up close together in charades.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Yes, I took ages to get 'and' as well. And probably only then because Matthew Amroliwala happened to say it.

[jinty]

Well done! I only got 56. I resorted to looking in books nearby and was constantly surprised with little tiny words that were in it.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I got quite a few by trying to type in something else and being surprised when it cut me off!

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Ha, likewise! I got only 65, though. And I typed "person" and it lit up "people", so there is some subsuming going on. Which seems wrong when "is" and "was" are different.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It accepts both "could" and "can" (and "would" and "will"), which seem quite similar to me. It does say about merging, but the example of run/ran/runs/running seems much more logical than the others.