FREAK QUESTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 17084, 1 July 1919, Page 6

FREAK QUESTIONS

At a recent scholarship examination at Sheffield tbs following question was set in the ‘English’ paper for cgndidat-cs 111 to 12] years of aga : A number of boys are playing football. They hav© thrown their clothes down in heaps about th© ground. You wont to find the order in which the boys reached the playing hold without asking them or disturbing the game. How would you set about it? Could you be quite sure of th© result? Say why. Question No. 5 on the same paper is still more original. “Road the following Instructions through very carefully, then carry them out as accurately as you can ” ; If 6 multiplied by 7 equals 43. put three crosses on your answer sheet ■ but if 6 multiplied by 7 is not equal lo 43, put ono cross. Under the crosses (nr the crossi write your surname, unless, it begins with either B or F, in which -case write your Christian name (the first, if you have more than one) ; but "whether yon write vour Christian name or your surname, instead of the vowels writ© I for a, 2 for e, 3 for i, 4 for o, 5 for u, ami 6 for y. ' ” Now think of a -word beginning with tho second letter of your stun a me, and write it. on the same line a.s the ones, unless there are twenty shillings in the pound. If you do not write that word, make a small tnanuilo where tho word would have been, and after the triangle, and on tbo same lino, write tho sixth, the first, and -the fourth letter of the alphabet. Four Irons below what you have already written, and about the middle of tho line, thaw a semi-circle with its diameter on th© line. Do not draw the diameter, but whore the diameter wrold havo been writ© in figures twenty thousand and ninety. Tho questions sound a bib mad, but they are not qii-ito as mad as they seem, and, anywa-v. they defy the crammer, while they are a line ©xcrciso for the pupil in clear thinking.