When the Tail Wags the Search

1. Long (5-7 words) . . .

   how do i pronounce uqaq?

   Send me a sound clip and I’ll tell you.

   Q.: Why would someone need or want to pronounce “uqaq”? A.: Because you can’t get far in Inuktitut without it. The literal meaning is “tongue”, and it’s got all the secondary meanings you would expect.

   Now, if you really meant “How do you pronounce uqaq (ᐅᖃᖅ)?” the answer is: with extreme reluctance.

   what does obscure font mean??

   It means you need to stop futzing around on the Internet and go buy a dictionary.

   English is very important Subget esey

   Important, yes. Esey, maybe not so much. Or are they looking for an esey on the subget?

   whow to love the ferst time

   Whow, what a question. I will tentatively suggest that if you paid a little more attention to your spelling, you might not have ended up in the Paston letters.

   what microsoft font looks like euphemia?

   That would be . . . uhmm . . . Euphemia?

   what happens when font substitution occur

   How much time have you got?

   mac keyboard suddenly switched to greek

   Well, switch it back. I can’t do it for you.

   tell me original swagrat with pic

   Hang on. I know I’ve got the answer to that somewhere.

   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \.(in|pk)/
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \b(q\w*|text)(=|%3D)([%\w]*)swag(\+|%2[0B])*rat
   RewriteRule ^paintings/singrats/swagrat\.html http://fiftywordsforsnow.com/paintings/singrats/swagrat_marriage.html [R=302,L]

   (Just kidding. Since the chances of someone arriving at this page via a query that did not contain some form of the word “swagrat” are vanishingly remote, I dropped the second Condition long ago.)

   By the way, it’s spelled suhagraat.

   how to tape up your friend

   This seems to be a recurring fad. Every now and then, the Duct Tape Is Your Friend page is hit with a spurt of variations on this question.

   what is unavailavility [sic] of basic commodities

   You’re in India. You’re asking me?

   random words that no one ever says

   You mean like “dictionary”?

   do we have worms in the nastril [sic]

   I thought I had a page that detailed the differences between humans and caribou, but I guess I’ve misplaced it. No, wait, I’m thinking of the one where I say an Inuk hunter can tell the difference between a caribou and a geophysicist. No help there.

   what fonts were on computers in 1999

   Ooh, I love questions like this. If you’d given some really useful information—like what platform you’re talking about, and whether you mean specifically the built-in system fonts—you might even get an answer. Not from me, though. I can’t remember that far back.

   always pillage before you burn adventure game

   Good heavens, what a memory. Slogan of APBB, the Adventurers’ Protective and Benevolent Brotherhood. You want the /games/ directory of our sister site.

   color by number game Mac registration code

   You betcha. Want me to pay your car insurance too?

   you should never tangle [sic] with an eskimo

   Tangle, tango, same difference.

   tHE yARN OF THE nANCY bELL-GILBERT

   As it happens, I do have the text they were looking for; it’s one of W. S. Gilbert’s Bab Ballads. But that won’t answer the fascinating question of how and why this particular searcher chose to iNVERT oRDINARY cAPITAL­IZATION.

2. Longer (8-10 words) . . .

   morphophonemic derivation for the words meaning “to dig,”

   I don’t believe there is such a thing.

   lion statant guardant tail coward over back gules

   This is all one lion we’re talking about? “Coward” in heraldic animals is reguardant with the tail between the legs.

   why do eels have difficulty with inflected endings

   Y’know, I can kind of see where this question would lead people to my site. But if the answer involves one of those obscure conundrums told only in college linguistics departments, I am going to be awfully disappointed.

   if it aint broke dont fix it red green

   i have fonts others don t how can they read

   i type and see what the font would look like

   how did fonts get on computers in the first place

   why some font installed but certain word cant show

   unicode problem while typing malayalam fonts in windows xp

   i need four letter after ceterain pattern in regular expresision

   I do believe I have the answer to every single one of those questions—although not necessarily on the page the search engine sent you to.

   www.farezermbole ihav hande work but athont hav mony to sterta

   Say what now?

   girl sitting on tree branch in png format transparent

   It’s a good thing you specified .png format. If you’d been looking for a trans­parent .jpg, you would have had a long wait.

   a preyer on how to get my ex lover back

   I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the Paston letters, but I’m pretty sure they do not contain the text of a prayer on this particular subject. Pity.

3. Still longer (over 10 words) . . .

   Can a lawyer sommon a accused to his office for inquiry

   Funny you should ask that. Only yesterday I was watching a cheesy Tex Ritter singing-cowboy movie. Its final courtroom scene featured—wait for it—the prosecution calling the defendant as a witness. The defense lawyer uttered not a peep; the judge showed mild surprise but raised no other objection.

   Thanks, perhaps, to that “sommon” misspelling, the question was sent to one of the Paston letters.

   which of the following words contains a greek root that mens [sic] straight

   The search engine decided the inquiry would best be served by an article under “A” in William Savage’s Printing Dictionary. I was all set to open the page and look for technical terms beginning in ortho-—obscure ones, of course, or they’d have an entry under O—and then realized that that wasn’t part of the cut-and-pasted question. It does worry me a bit that the student didn’t have the brains to figure out that it would be faster to search for the individual words, since the search engine would then have provided a capsule dictionary entry.

   The misspelling is a problem, though, as I do not think there was a Greek word that meant “straight men”. Insert ROFLMFAO emoticon of your choice.

   is you should never do a tango with an Eskimo racist

   That’s an awfully interesting question. I would say: No, not intrinsically, unless you consider it racist to suggest that people who live in cold climates are cold to the touch all the time, even indoors on the dance floor. Sometimes a silly notion is just a silly notion. If you’re looking for racism, you’ll have to seek out the assorted video versions that I stumbled across—and now can’t unsee—while investigating the song Never Tango with an Eskimo.

   Hamany times does a letter A apere from one to hundret

   Something tells me this originated with an extra-credit homework assign­ment. The problem with not being able to spell—and, more to the point, not understanding what a search-engine snippet is for—is that you are all too likely to be sent to some randomly selected Paston letter. And, if your question involves spelling in any way whatsoever, this is not where you want to be.

   In any case, assuming the question is “In the English words for the numbers one through one hundred, how many times does the letter ‘a’ appear?” I believe the answer is zero.

   what kind of font should i use to make it look greek

   “A Greek one” is the answer that comes to mind.

   No, wait, this is about your Greek restaurant’s sidewalk sign, isn’t it? You’re planning to render all A’s as Δ or Λ, confusing the heck out of anyone who actually knows Greek. Same principle as making things look Russian by repla­cing all the N’s and R’s with И and Я and, above all, selecting a wonton font for your Chinese restaurant’s signage.

   what should i do if my keyboard inputs a different letter from what i typed

   Chase away the cat.

   the first use of your computer what does Keyboard layout mean?

   joomla if a person dosent have fon installed what does it revert

   Oddly enough, I may know where to find that out.

   what was that game on the old mac computers that you were a bug

   Search me. But let me know if you find out. It sounds fun.

   how did the three blind mice run after the farmer's wife if they were blind

   Y’know, that’s a darn good question.

4. And longer yet (over 15 words) . . .

   what is the interpretation of dream when one sees a keg of palm oil being overflow

   Do I look like Carl Jung? Answer: No, I don’t—and neither did Jean Webster, author of Dear Enemy, where the search engine sent this particular asker.

   I think I cannot find ’fonts’ on this machine . . . anyone know where they are supposed to be?

   Did you look under the couch cushions?

   WHY MY MAC KEYBOARD NOT WRITING ARABIC IN WINDOWS XP AND THE LETTERS NOT IN THE SAME PLACE

   If you’re trying to run Windows XP with Mac hardware, writing Arabic may be the least of your problems.

   what does it mean when someone says i thought you found the whole tool shed not just the screwdriver

   I have no idea—and, sadly, neither did the creator of “Coming Home”, which is where the search engine sent the asker. Some supple­mentary investi­gation of my own leaves me no wiser, though it does send me to pages about the sonic screwdriver and making jewelry from a dead piano. Those alone made the question worth asking.

5. Off the map (over 20 words)

   a picture of a Terrier sitting in a chair with his paws out and head bowed with a prayer under the picture

   This wouldn’t be one of those poker-playing dogs, would it? I guess the terrier lost the hand.

   is there another nme for the eskimos letra a)yes,there are b)no,there aren't c)maybe ,i don't no d)yes,are there

   An intriguing detail is that this question originated in Brazil. Surely you don’t see many eskimos letras down there? Is this, in fact, a meta-question intended to identify which of the two forms “yes, there are” and “yes, are there” is correct English?

   is it considered burglary when you break into a family home afer [sic] you have moved out and locks have been changed

   Hmm . . .

   Wait, let me think . . .

   On the whole, weighing one thing and another, I think I would have to say: YES. But don’t take my word for it; tell it to the judge.

   is my man gay if there is no sex between us for 2 years and he would rathere be in boys company than mine even thow wee have been togetherevfor 19 years

   So many possible answers, so little time . . .

   One thing I can say for sure, though: The answer will not be found in Volume III of the Paston Letters, no matter how fervently uk.search.yahoo.com may believe otherwise. Or rather, uk.search.yahoo.com/mobile, because somebody typed that whole query on a cell phone. I expect that explains why the spelling falls apart toward the end.

   Dear lady, I do wish I could help you.

   SOMEWHERE, LODGED DEEP IN THE AMERICAN CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE MYTH OF THE TRAVELING VAGABOND WHO STUMBLES ACROSS A FRIENDLY FARMERS LAND, ONLY TO BE TAKEN IN AND CARED FOR BY THE KIND MAN

   Maybe if you’d stop SHOUTING the search engine could hear itself think, and would not send you to a page that does not contain anything even close to the cited text. And why are you looking for it, anyway? The passage seems to occur only on Pure Spam sites, whose content is generally limited to very old public-domain material.

   “The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower—suitable for every occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.”

   I can always tell when someone has an oldies film festival, because there’s a flurry of visits to Referential Rats. Incidentally, the em dash and the curly quotes are in the original query.

   california fires delibertly started to destroy the wine fields by {misspelled} they hate {misspelled} and they need the land to build more {redacted} to house all heir [sic] weapons so they can {redacted} {redacted} {redacted}

   Thanks, Bing Search. But, on second thought, no thanks. I don’t normally edit these queries, but for ### sake, enough is enough.

   The fires in question had consequences ranging from an unspecified number of deaths, to huge numbers of people losing power and even drinking water, to people hundreds of miles away—including me—being without internet access for two days. Let’s stick with the literal meaning of “inflammatory” for the time being.

   homerThe Iliad of Homer, Prince of Poets, Never Before in Any Language Truly Translated, with a Comment on Some of His Chief Places. Done According to the Greek by George Chapman with Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. Richard Hooper, M.A., Vicar of

   the well-bred swedes of the capital1 are formed on the ancient french model, and they in general speak that language; for they have a knack at acquiring languages with tolerable fluency. this may be reckoned an advantage in some respects; but it prevents the cultivation of their own, and any considerable advance in literary pursuits.

   I will concede that, in both the above cases, the search engine sent the visitor to the correct page . . . but how many shorter searches did they try first? I feel certain that a quarter of the word count would have done it.

   melissa's baby goes missing. melissa finds that an alligator has taken the child. melissa asks the alligator to give the child back. the alligator tells her that he will return the child if she answers a question correctly, but he will eat the child if she answers incorrectly. his question is thus: will i eat your baby? melissa replies, "yes." what will the alligator do?

   I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure you will not find the answer in Alonzo and Melissa, since alligators are conspi­cuous by their absence from the book. It’s probably got something to do with their similarly conspi­cuous absence from 19th-century Connecticut.

   3.The place of our retreat was in a little neighbourhood, consisting of farmers, who tilled their own grounds, and were equal strangers to opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of superfluities. Remote from the polite, they still retained the primeval simplicity of manners; and frugal by habit, they scarcely knew that temperance was a virtue.”

   By this time, I can’t absolutely swear that a given passage either does or does not occur in a text on this site. This one happens to be from The Vicar of Wakefield. Yup, I guess I do have it.

   'What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?' asked Meg one snowyafternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other.
   'Going out for exercise,' answered Jo with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
   'I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! It's cold and dull out, and I advise you to stay warm and dry by the fire, as I do,' said Meg with a shiver.
   'Never take advice! Can't keep still all day, and not being a pussycat, I don't like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I'm going to find some.'
   Why does Alcott most likely begin the chapter with character dialogue?

   For more of this kind of thing, see “Be this Assignment Completyd in Hast” on the sister page, ”Seek and You shall Find”.

6. The winner is was . . .

   There had been a great deal of moving about in the warehouse during the day, running of trucks, and rolling of casks. Brisk, the liveliest of my brothers, had sat watching in a hole from noon until dusk, and now hurried through our little passage into the shed, where we were all nestling behind some old canvas. He brought us news of a coming feast.
   ‘A ship has arrived from India,’ said he, ‘and we’ll have a glance at the cargo. They’ve been busy stowing it away next door. There’s rice–’
   The brotherhood of rats whisked their tails for joy.
   ‘Sugar–’
   There was a universal squeak of approbation.
   ‘Indigo–’
   ‘That’s nothing but a blue dye obtained from a plant,’ observed Furry, an old, blind rat, who in his days had travelled far, and seen much of the world, and had reflected upon what he had viewed far more than is common with a rat. Indeed, he passed amongst us for a philosopher, and I had learned not a little from his experience; for he delighted in talking over his travels, and, but for a little testiness of temper, would have been a very agreeable companion. He very frequently joined our party; indeed, his infirmities obliged him to do so, as he could not have lived without assistance.

   All right, come clean. You’re already on the page, aren’t you? Just one quibble: my version of The Rambles of a Rat has got em dashes and double quotes, while you’re using en dashes and single quotes. Either way, the text is in the public domain.

   For many years, this held the record for all-time longest query; I make it 210 words. All things come to an end, though.

7. And the winner is . . .

   'If I die.'

   If I die,

   Will the world mourn on my death?

   Will the world ever remember the date?

   Will the world remember what I once said?

   [seven stanzas snipped]

   Before I die,

   I'm sorry,

   I suffered,

   I chose this.

   I’ve snipped most of the query—totaling nine four-line stanzas, about 280 words—because I tend to doubt the text is in the public domain. It definitely doesn’t sound pre-1928.

   Unlike the previous winner, this query did not lead the searcher to a page containing the quoted text. Not even close. You could hardly expect it to, what with the not-in-the-public-domain aspect.

   Wait, there’s a punchline. The request came in from a smartphone. How the bleep did the whole thing even fit in the viewer window?