Predictive Search Word Game

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us now is our quiz guy, Mr. John Chaneski.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

It’s so great to hear your voices again. I’m eager to play with you. I’ve got a game with me today that I hope you’ll like. It’s based on an online game called Google Feud, which you may have heard of.

In Google Feud, you’re presented with the start of a Google search string. And you have to guess how Google’s predictive search feature offers to complete it. For example, if I enter, what is the tallest, dot, dot, dot, Google would predict building in the world, and also mountain in the world, and building in NYC, in that order, among others, usually with the most popular at the top.

Now, I’ll give you the start of a Google search string. You tell me what Google would offer to complete it. All I need is for you to pick one of the top nine or ten answers or so, and I’ll let each of you have an answer so we can get as many answers as we can.

Okay?

Okay.

All right.

Great.

Let’s go.

Here’s the first one. First Google search string. Where are my…

Glasses?

Glasses not on there.

Car keys?

Keys is actually fifth, yes.

Oh, keys? Where are my keys? People Google to figure out where their keys are, yes. I hope that works. That’d be wonderful.

I hope so, too. I’ll try it myself. Any other guesses?

Where are my packages?

Ooh.

No, no, no.

Where are my deliveries?

No, there’s similar ones on here. The first one is where are my Google photos? There’s also some other good ones are where are my kidneys?

I was going to say parts of the body.

There you go. Where are my lymph nodes? And similar to keys, where are my AirPods?

Oh.

Okay.

Yeah.

Here’s the next one. How do you use a…

How do you use a…

How do you use a…

Ooh. It’s hard to use that people would Google. So they already know how to use a computer enough to Google. I bet that could be a question, though.

That’s a good guess. It’s not on here, though. How do you use a slow cooker? There’s one on here that is coffee related.

Oh, how to use an espresso machine?

No, it’s how to use a French press.

Good one.

There’s one on here that is grammar writing related.

How do you use a thesaurus?

No.

A spell checker?

No.

A dictionary?

It’s how to use a semicolon.

Oh.

Don’t.

Here are a few of the other ones. This, of course, is actually giving us a good insight into what you guys want to learn how to use.

Yeah, right. Number one is how do you use a bidet?

Really?

Yeah, how do you use a protractor? And how do you use a fire extinguisher? Which you should really know how to use a fire extinguisher, really.

Before you have to Google it.

Yes, exactly. If you’re Googling it and it’s warm, you should just get out of there.

Here’s the last one. What is bigger than the?

What is bigger than the moon?

Moon’s not on here, but the sun is on here.

Number two.

What is bigger than the?

Earth.

Universe?

Universe is number one. People want to know what’s bigger than the universe. How about that?

The other answers are, what is bigger than the Milky Way? What’s bigger than the solar system? And what’s bigger than the blue whale?

No bread box in there?

No bread box, no. But nothing is as big as the love I have for you guys and the way you went through that quiz.

Thank you so much. That was awesome.

Wow, that was a real mind expander, John.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Google doesn’t know all, and you can Google and get a million results. But if you want a good result and you want arbiters and judges of what quality language answers are, call A Way with Words, 877-929-9673.

Or email Martha and me, words@waywordradio.org. And talk to us on Twitter @wayword.