Welcome to the Lycos 50 Monday Pop Quiz.
Below are 10 items from last week's Lycos search logs. Your challenge: arrange them according to popularity, from the term Lycos users asked for least to the one they searched for most.
Jot your rankings down, then compare them to the correct rankings at the end of this column. Are you ready? Begin.
Airlines
Autism
Disneyland
Haiku
Hair styles
Lyrics
Midget tossing
Motion sickness
Princess Diana
Winston Churchill
(Insert Jeopardy! music here...)
While you're thinking, we'll point out an added twist: each item in the correct list is twice as popular as the one before it -- which means that item #8 is four times as popular as item #10, and the #1 term is about 512 times as popular as #10.
OK! Here's the correct order, from least popular to most:
10. Midget tossing
9. Motion sickness
8. Winston Churchill
7. Haiku
6. Princess Diana
5. Autism
4. Disneyland
3. Hair styles
2. Airlines
1. Lyrics
How did you do?
It's never easy to guess what terms will be popular with searchers. As the list shows, general terms like "airlines" are usually more popular than specific terms like "motion sickness." (Though those two go together at times...)
Pop culture figures like Princess Di also tend to be hotter than historical figures like Winston Churchill. In fact, you have to give Churchill points for being only 4 times less popular than Di.
And once again we can see how intensely popular music lyrics are online.
Now then: don't write in to condemn midget tossing. We aren't promoting it, mind you -- we're just reporting that people do search for it. (Here's a page which claims that "dwarfs who go on tour can earn a six-figure income." Believe that or not as you like.) Isn't it some comfort to know that haiku is 8 times as popular as midget tossing?
Tune in tomorrow for this week's new Lycos 50, won't you?
