Needle in a Haystack

On rare occasions, searching on a pair of words, such as antediluvial oxymoron, returns just one document. Finding such pairs is quite difficult and gave rise to a game that computer innovator Gary Stock christened Googlewhacking. For details and some clever examples, see www.googlewhack.com.

1. Needle

2. Keys

3. Instrument

4. Organ

5. Lightbulb

6. Light

7. Plastic


8. Mouse

9. Fan

10. Drill

Pick a Number

1. Six documents: two, three, four, five, eight, ten.

2. The four searches find the following sets of documents, in order: [two, three, eight], [four], [five, six, nine], and [seven, ten]. The missing document is one.

3. The solution is: o OR r OR f.

4. The solution is “th” OR e –t. You can also use “hr”, “re”, or “ee” instead of “th”.

In Other Words

1. Boiling point

2. Milky Way

3. Continental drift

4. Complex numbers

5. Grand unified theory

6. Potential energy

7. Order of magnitude

8. Redshift

9. String theory

10. Time lapse

11. Color blind

12. Big Bang

13. Natural selection

14. Missing link

15. Cloud chamber

16. Crop rotation