Edmund writes: > At First Practice tonight, we read an old pack (Finals round, '96 Beaver > Bonspiel) from the archive. And there was a bonus on three-letter airport > codes. > > Now, things like this we don't see much of anymore. But I'm wondering -- > why haven't I seen boni on Internet domain suffixes for national entities (.to, > .br, etc.)? Questions about Internet domain suffixes were popular five or six years ago, so I'm surprised you haven't seen any. > Note that at no point did I say that I think this is a good idea. I think this is a > lousy idea. Highway number/airline code/urban area boni are inherently lame. > They bite. A lot of people play this game because they enjoy trivia. Unusual airport codes, for example, often have interesting stories behind them, interesting at least to the trivially minded among us. It's also practical information. I've been to airports where the flight information monitors list the 3-letter codes but not the full city names. Knowing interstate highway numbers or zip codes is not merely a matter of memorization. These numbers were assigned systematically, and a domestically well-travelled (or armchair-travelled) team should be able to estimate an unfamiliar one by interpolation from known data points. This is a skill that bonus questions are ideal for testing. I agree that questions on North American telephone area codes will usually be lame, because there's no consistent system to them. But even there you can get some moderately trivially interesting facts in, such as the selection of area code 867 because it spells "TOP".
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