Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Wednesday Quiz I:5 -- Human Achievement


The Wednesday Quiz -- Season I -- Quiz 5

Human Achievement

The Wednesday Quiz is a test of knowledge and intuition. Looking up answers or asking your buddy is way not cool. Questions about the rules are answered here.

This week's Quiz is in the traditional IS IT or ISN'T IT format. The question is:

Is it, or isn't it, an accurate all-time world record (as of December 2009)?

It's all about the plausibility. The wrong answers are all very, very wrong.

1. The 100 Meter Dash
Men: 19.58 seconds
Women: 20.49 seconds

2. The 1500 Meter Run
Men: 3 minutes, 26 seconds
Women: 3 minutes, 50.46 seconds

3. The Marathon (26 miles, 385 yards)
Men: 2 hours, 3 minutes, 59 seconds
Women: 2 hours, 15 minutes, 25 seconds

4. 48-Hour Running "Ultramarathon"
Men: 473.495 Kilometers
Womens: 382.777 Kilometers

5. Discus
Men: 74.08 Meters
Women: 76.8 Meters

6. Bicycling One-Hour Record
Men: 190.598 Kilometers
Women: 184.020 Kilometers

7. 1500 Meter freestyle (Swimming)
Men: 4 minutes, 34.56 seconds
Women: 5 minutes, 42.54 seconds

8. Tournament Chess
Tournament games with consecutive wins: 325
Tournament games without a loss (ie. all wins or draws): 395

9. Points Scored, Career (American Football)
Professional: 2,544 -- Morten Andersen, 1982-2007 New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons
College: 468 -- Travis Prentice, 1996-99, Miami (Ohio)

10. Olympic Weight Lifting
Men: Snatch 512.5 kg, Clean and Jerk 363.5 kg
Women: Snatch 440.0 kg, Clean and Jerk 286.0 kg


Submit your answers in the comments!

14 comments:

DrSchnell said...

There's not a single one here that's not a guess....
1. yes
2. no
3. yes
4. no
5. no
6. yes
7. yes
8. yes
9. yes
10. no

Christine M. said...

sheeesh.

1. no
2. yes
3. yes
4. no
5. yes
6. yes
7. no
8. yes
9. no
10. yes

The Calico Cat said...

Gee since I never got graded for last weeks quize, I'll guess all Yes for this one. (If they are all yes, then the quiz is easy to grade!)

Cartophiliac said...

Total guesswork:

1. is
2. is
3. isn't
4. isn't
5. is
6. isn't
7. isn't
8. is
9. is
10. is

Elaine said...

1. NO
2. sure
3. yes
4. NYET
5. Nein
6. why not?
7. hmmm NAE
8. NON
9. Hmm..OUI
10. Certainly....like I would know

I seem to have felt negatively about most of the claims....but overall....didn't care. You made this up to torture us! Admit it!

Elaine said...

Wait-- we still don't even know the answers to LAST week's puzzle!

Elizabeth said...

I am going to win the gold in multiple guessing events.

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Yes.
4. No.
5. No.
6. Yes.
7. Yes.
8. No.
9. Yes.
10. No.

[the "Star-Spangled Banner" starts playing in the background]

mrs.5000 said...

1 no
2 yes
3 yes
4 no
5 no
6 no
7 no
8 no
9 no
10 yes
Wow, that's some pretty rampant skepticism from someone so ignorant of the topic.

Ben said...

1. Isn't
2. Is
3. Is
4. Is
5. Isn't
6. Isn't
7. Isn't
8. Is
9. Is
10. Is

Yeah, not so good at metric conversions...

Michael5000 said...

All right! As you may have intuited, the ol' blog has been running on autopilot during the holiday season. Here I am, however, to enlighten you pursuant to the Human Achievement quiz. Then I'll go clear things up regarding the monarchs.

1. NO, those are the 100m times with ten seconds tacked on, making it the time it would take to cross a football field at a modest jog.

2. YES -- recall, the "four-minute mile" is a big deal...

3. YES -- although so unbelieveable, I have to check it every time. Your world-class marathoner is running 13 mph for 2 hours. It's freaking amazing.

4. YES -- ultramarathon is, in my opinion, verging on strange behavior. But yeah, 6+ mph over 48 hours.

5. YES -- This was the tricksy one, because, hey, the women's record is further than the men's! But yo, they use different weights.

6. NO -- Bicycling at 120 mph? Nah. The actual records are 100 km shorter, which is still considerably better than I can do myself.

7. NO WAY -- For this to be true, people would have to be able to swim nearly as fast as they can run. The real records are 10 minutes longer.

8. NOPE -- Tournament chess is very much an "any given Sunday" sorta deal. And there are a LOT of draws. The records aren't 325 and 395, but only 25 and 95.

9. YES -- It's not always the big names scoring the big points; Anderson was a kicker.

10. NOT IN THIS GRAVITY WELL -- I added 300 kg to the records to arrive at these superhuman numbers.

Michael5000 said...

Making Ben, incidentally, the MQ5 King. Happy New Year, everybody!

Aviatrix said...

1. ISN'T. I ran 100 metres faster than that in elementary school. Those look like 200 m times.
2. IS. That's just 100 metres shy of the mile, and a fast mile is 4 minutes.
3. IS. That's 42 km and a good 10 k is 30 minutes.
4. IS. I didn't even know that was a sport, but I believe ultrafit humans can average 10 km an hour for two days. I expected the women to be closer to the men over that distance.
5. IS. I think I threw about 25 metres in high school and I'm pretty sure I sucked.
6. ISN'T. It's three or four times too large, depending on the bikes and the course.
7. ISN'T. Swimming faster than most people can run. I think that's too fast.
8. IS. No fricking clue, but that's like 15 games per tournament and 20 tournaments in a row. Seems sane.
9. IS. I think a team gets like 30 or 40 points in a game and one super good guy could get half of them, over a 20 game season.
10. IS. I've seen those massive barbells, and lifting twice one's weight when that's what you train exclusively to do seems plausible.

Aviatrix said...

Oh double rats.

One, I thought we'd gone to having a whole week to solve the puzzles, because the other one wasn't graded yet, and

Two, I misread number ten as pounds instead of kilograms, because all the gyms I go to always have the weights in pounds.

And except for not knowing that you don't have ever-winning chess champions, I know what humans can do. Would have been my best ever.

Michael5000 said...

I'm counting Avi's answers -- she's already established her quiz honor code cred, she's had a legit confusion about the rules, and she showed her work. That makes her the kingess of Quiz 5; Ben gets demoted to vice-king. Sorry bro.