Which year did the Second World War start?

In an attempt to discourage spam-bots on this forum we've started asking the aforementioned question of new members. Even though a majority of people get it approximately right, answers still range from 1760 to 1986*. For someone whose parents were born over a decade after WWII ended, I still find this an unsettling outcome.

I do have to admit the question is fairly irrelevant in the context of a Grasshopper Ning group, so my challenge this week to all of you is to come up with a better question. The constraints are such:

It must be answerable by someone with a fleeting grasp of the English language
It must successfully differentiate between people and bots
It must not carry political or religious bias (i.e. "What is the One True God?" is not allowed)

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Seattle, WA

* I don't know to what extend these answers are facetious of course.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Charles C Vincent on November 8, 2010 at 4:25am

Which year did Space Odyssey take place?

Permalink Reply by Shawn Fernandez on November 8, 2010 at 7:43am

You could ask any question and direct them to Wikipedia or Google to do a quick search for the results. Questions may be like, "What was the capitol of Assyria."

An additional perk to that particular question is that at least all your new subscribers wouldn't be killed by the Bridgekeeper.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 8, 2010 at 9:42am

Oh, that's freaky. I just watched The Holy Grail last night for the first time in years...

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David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on November 8, 2010 at 7:50am

Who's bad ?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 8, 2010 at 9:44am

Ah, when answered incorrectly it will be too difficult to see whether it's an honest mistake or a programmed mistake. I think.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on November 8, 2010 at 9:49am

How about:
"On which planet do we live?"
That's sort of a common thing for all of us and even more famous than MJ...

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 8, 2010 at 12:00pm

I picked this one for now. Let's see what answers people come up with.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Peter Mehrtens on November 8, 2010 at 1:15pm

I heard world ear-th of course ;-)

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Chertok on November 8, 2010 at 9:49am

Can you do something like "How many letters are in this sentence?"

Regards,

Jonathan

Permalink Reply by Jacek Jaskólski on November 8, 2010 at 11:10am

Nice...
"How many words are in this sentence?" would be a less tedious alternative.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Chertok on November 8, 2010 at 11:30am

agreed. thanks.

Permalink Reply by taz on November 8, 2010 at 11:12am

What is the 3 character file extension of a Rhino file (like jpg, pdf, or zip)?

That would demonstrate a basic familiarity with something... And it's a short answer.

What's wrong with captchas by the way? Not secure enough?