More Brilliant Answers

By AQA 63336

Five years, two million customers, twenty million questions, and now this, the fourth book of texts from AQA 63336, the UK's most accurate text question and answer service. More Brilliant Answers highlights the weirdest, most difficult, strangest and funniest as well as revealing the most popular questions texted by the British public to 63336 over the last year.

It includes prime Q&As including: Q. What was Noah's wife called? A. Noah's wife is not named in the Bible, but according to Jewish tradition her name was Naamah. 10% of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah's wife; Q. What's smellier than an anchovy? A: Far smellier than an anchovy is titan arum, the world's smelliest plant, stinking of rotting flesh. Don't use in a bouquet, unless you want to break up; Q. How much does a ghost weigh? A. The average ghost weighs just 544g (1.2lb). Coincidentally, this is the exact same weight as the average white cotton bedsheet, minus 2 eye holes.

AQA is enduringly popular, as customers' and readers' comments show: 'You should be congratulated on hiring such humorous people'; 'AQA's word is now gospel in our lives'; 'Do you have any remedies for being addicted to AQA?'; 'I love AQA. You are like a big fat person who is all jolly and soft and I just want to hug you.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Release date: Aug 6, 2010
• ISBN: 9781847652713

AQA 63336

The company behind AQA is IssueBits Ltd. which was set up by Colly Myers, former CEO of Symbian and MD of Psion PLC, together with Bill Batchelor and Paul Cockerton. They are assisted by more than 600 researchers who answer the question texted to AQA

Book preview

a005

AQA

63336

More Brilliant

Answers

111411538

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

3a Exmouth House

Pine Street

London EC1R 0JH

www.profilebooks.com

This eBook edition first published in 2009

Copyright © IssueBits Ltd, 2008

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

Text design by Sue Lamble

Typeset by MacGuru Ltd

[e-mail]

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978-1-84765-271-3

Answers are provided in good faith by IssueBits Ltd, but the accuracy of the information in them cannot be guaranteed by IssueBits or the publisher. No responsibility for any loss, injury or disappointment arising as a result of any information provided in this book, accurate or otherwise, can be accepted by IssueBits or the publisher. Sure, read about dangerous or daft stuff – just don’t try and do it.

contents

Foreword

1 Life, sex and bodily functions

2 Eat to live, live to eat

3 The sound of music

4 Infamy – the world of celebrity

5 Athletic and sporting endeavours

6 Chick lit and trash tv

7 The animal kingdom

8 Planet Earth

9 Everything in numbers

10 A study of language

11 You couldn’t make it up

12 Top 10 q&as

Can you answer these?

foreword

This is no ordinary book – and although it says AQA 63336 on the cover, really we can only claim to have written half of it.

Now you’re wondering about the other half. Well, that’s been written by people like you. Smart people who’ve had the initiative to text 63336 and ask us their imponderables.

In our five years of existence we’ve seen 20 million questions come and go. We’re justly proud of our answers; some have even saved lives! We’ve had bands base songs on answers, celebs twitter that they’re using us to solve family arguments, and now we’re even on TV, with Auntie Beeb basing its We Need Answers BBC4 comedy show on our questions and answers.

We hope that sharing some jewels with you, in this, our fourth book, encourages you to stick 63336 in your phone. That way, next time you’re trying to get home after staying out too late, or arguing about how many goats there are in Morocco,* you can text us, joining 2.2 million other clued-up citizens who’ve already asked questions.

More Brilliant Answers. Is that more answers that are brilliant, or answers that are more brilliant than any others? Both, of course.

Want to be in next year’s book? Text ‘BOOK’ and your question to 63336 (costs £1). Get in, and you’ll get a brilliant T-shirt.

*4.8 million, actually.

acknowledgements

After five years of answering questions, we now have more than two million customers to thank for whipping out their phones to text their important, essential and need-to-know-right-now questions to AQA 63336. It would take us 5 months, 17 days, 21 hours and 20 minutes (if we didn’t sleep) to thank all of you individually, so we hope you don’t mind us just saying THANK YOU here.

It is of course our researchers who are the life and blood of AQA 63336. We help them a little bit with smart algorithms, and a database full of 20 million answers, but it’s the human touch, and attention to detail provided by researchers, that really makes a difference. The founders of AQA 63336 thank you for all your continuing hard work and brilliant answers.

To catch up on even more brilliant answers, go to www.aqa.63336.com.

1

life, sex and bodily functions

AQA 63336 knows everything, won’t tell anyone what you asked, and can’t blush. It’s the go-to number, then, for those things you daren’t ask anyone who knows you in case they go away and start making fun of you on Facebook. Let’s face it, we’re all pretty weird, but it’s always good to know that a) your weirdnesses are actually quite interesting, and b) there’s someone way, way further along the weirdness scale than you.

qs what’s a good dating headline that stands out for me, that’s good and funny – i’m tall, pack a few extra pounds, love films, singing, kind hearted: help

The Tall Guy would Definitely, Maybe like to meet Little Miss Sunshine for a bit of Mamma Mia! In the Heat of the Night, & hopefully some Love Actually.

qs what happens to human hair once it has left the hairdresser’s

Hair clippings are often discarded, but can be recycled to make absorbent mats for cleaning up oil spills. The oily mats can be used to grow fungi after.

qs need technical sounding medical terms for some common ailments that i can use to get off work, the more pathetic the better

Hiccups are medically known as synchronous diaphragmatic flutters. A sore throat is pharyngitis. Stitch is exercise-related transient abdominal pain.

qs how much does a tear weigh and how many tears would i (a 34 year old male) have to cry to lose 3 stone

A tear weighs 0.025g. To shed 3 stone, you’d have to cry 760,000 tears. Crying for an hour, you’d need to shed 211 tears a second. There there.

qs what was once known as sex in a box by its rivals 2 get it removed from shelves in the 60s

Denounced by competitors as ‘sex in a box’, Twister became a popular party game after Johnny Carson played Eva Gabor on the Tonight Show on3 May 1966.

qs is it possible to lick your own forehead

No, it is not possible to lick your own forehead. Not even Stephen Taylor, with the longest recorded tongue (9.8cm) could manage such a feat.

qs in 1893 what was