Confused? You Will Be! Trivia Quiz

Answer: She's your mother

Let us break this up so we can slowly unfold the family tree, and see who is who.

Your mother's brother is your uncle, his only nephew would be your mother's child, which would be you (assuming you're male, you're a niece if you're female), your father is, well, your father, his mother-in-law is your mother's mother, her husband is your grandfather, and your grandfather's daughter would be your mother, since it is his only daughter, there cannot be another. Therefore, it cannot be your aunt; rather, it is your mother.

Did that make sense? I hope not. It was supposed to be tricky!

Answer: James

Let's begin by ignoring all except 'while John had had "had"'. This means that John wrote "had", say, on an essay. Now, take that out, and we see 'James had had "had had"'. This means that James wrote "had had" on his essay. The second half, after the semicolon, says that '"had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.' This means that the person who wrote "had had" impressed the teacher the most. We now know that James wrote "had had" on his essay, so we know that he is the favored student.

The sentence can be written a bit differently to make a little more sense:

James, while John wrote "had", wrote "had had"; "had had" impressed the teacher more.

The names and the last phrase can be changed to many different sentences, but the "hads" remain the same in every case. This version came from Wikipedia, as did the information about it.

Other grammatically correct pairs, besides had had, are: is is, that that, do do, her her, was was, in in, it it, out out, and that that that that.

For even more confusion, try this sentence with the word "and" instead of "had".

Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before "Fish", and between "Fish" and "and", and "and" and "And", and "And" and "and", and "and" and "And", and "And" and "and", and "and" and "Chips", as well as after "Chips"?

Answer: Buffalo has three different meanings

The word "buffalo" can have three meanings. In this case, the obvious choice is that buffalo are bison. Buffalo can also mean to bully, and when capitalized, it can mean a city in New York. Therefore, to understand the sentence, I will replace the words with bison, bully, and New York.

"New York bison bully New York bison."

So, bison from Buffalo bully other bison from Buffalo. Confusing, isn't it?

Answer: Vancouver

You can break up the two sentences I wrote by reading every other character (spaces included). When you separate every other character, you get two phrases. Here is what they look like:

Where did the two thousand ten Winter Olympics take place?
-and-
IwillgiveyouahintthecityisinthecountryabovetheUnitedStates

The second stream of letters, when spaces and punctuation are added, reads:

I will give you a hint: the city is in the country above the United States. That means it is in Canada, so Vancouver is the only answer possible.

Sydney hosted the Summer Olympics in 2000, Athens in 2004, and Beijing in 2008. Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics in 2010.

Answer: 20

At first this looks complicated, but in the end, it is rather quite simple. Remember that PEMDAS is the order of operations; Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction. Starting with the parentheses, we have 2-2+2+2, which is 4. Now we multiply. We now have, multiplying, 2+2+2+2-8+2-2-16+2+2-2-2-2-2. Now we can add and subtract, left to right. The first four twos and the 8 cancel each other out, so we have now 2-2-16+2+2-2-2-2-2. This gives us -20. But did you notice the ││ around the entire equation? This means you have to find the absolute value. Absolute value is how many digits a number is from zero. This means that the absolute value of 4, written as │4│, would be 4, as it is 4 digits away from zero. This also means that the absolute value of -4, written as │-4│, would be 4 as well, NOT -4. -4 is 4 digits away from 0. Therefore, although our answer to the problem is -20, its absolute value, │-20│, is 20.

My apologies if you do not see the lines used to represent absolute value. They may become different symbols. The site does not recognize all symbols, so it may not show up as two straight lines.

Confusing, isn't it?

Answer: It was "and" I said, not "are"; and "and" and "are" are different.

This is an example of a sentence that would be better understood with quotation marks. Therefore, the sentence should read:

It was "and", I said, not "are"; and "and" and "are" are different.

The words "and" and "are" can be replaced with any two words. For example, "It was 'pig', I said, not 'big'; and 'pig' and 'big' are different."

A similar, and much less complex, sentence, with a similar spin is "It is pronounced 'zed', not 'zee'". Therefore, the sentence above could also read: "It was 'zed', I said, not 'zee'; and 'zed' and 'zee' are different.

Confused? You will be!

Answer: One Week

"One Week" was released on the Barenaked Ladies' 1998 album "Stunt". "If I Had $1,000,000" was released on their 1992 album "Gordon". "Pinch Me" was released in 2000 on the album "Maroon", and "Big Bang Theory Theme" was released as a single in 2007. It is, of course, the theme to "Big Bang Theory".

Answer: Cat

This sentence can be better understood backwards.

The dog bit the cat that chased the rat that escaped. (Remind you of the house that Jack built? Same thing!)

It can also be read:

The rat, the cat, the dog bit, chased, escaped. This sentence should be broken up into several parts. To start, ignore the rat. The cat, that the dog bit, chased. What did he chase? The rat, of course. You can say that the rat that the cat chased had escaped. So, the rat, the cat (who the dog bit), chased, escaped. The rat escaped, the cat chased, the dog bit. Combining the entire thing together, we get the rat, the cat, the dog bit, chased, escaped.

Confused? Good. I'm doing my job.

Answer: Paraprosdokian

A garden path sentence is one that sounds accurate until you reach a final word, but can be understood if given more thought. For instance, "The horse raced past the barn fell", doesn't make much sense, until you add commas and a few extra words. "The horse raced past the barn, that fell." You could also misinterpret this as the horse falling. "The horse, who raced past the barn, fell".

A syllepsis is a sentence in which the two clauses both fit grammatically with the sentence structure, but not with each other. For instance, "he lifted a rock and his spirit." Both make sense, he lifted a rock, and he lifted his spirit, but they do not work together.

Paraprosdokians are sentences and phrases in which the first part of the sentence seems normal, but the second part makes you rethink the first part. Examples are below:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." (Groucho Marx) [also a syllepsis]

"I want to die like my father; quietly, in his sleep; not screaming and terrified like his passengers." (Bob Monkhouse)

"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too." (Mitch Hedberg)

"I like going to the park and watching the children run and jump around, because you see, they don't know I'm using blanks." (Emo Philips)

"It's too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs." (Jack Handey)

Answer: Kokko, gather up a full bonfire. A full bonfire? A full bonfire!

This sentence in Finnish is similar to that of two people talking about the Muffin Man.

Imagine two people, one named Kokko, and, one named, say, Bob. Bob says "Kokko, gather up a full bonfire." Kokko then asks "A full bonfire?" Bob, instead of saying yes, repeats himself, saying "A full bonfire!"