Amazon has invited Wit’s End to join the celebrated think-tank of Nobel laureates, professors and eggheads who provide the answers to the Alexa questions.
I speak of the "Alexa" who resides in your intelligent speaker — the cyber space lady who answers your sage questions, and prevents dinner party discussions turning to fisticuffs.
The following will now be the procedure whenever you shout some important question at your intelligent speaker. Like — "Alexa, who discovered the magnet which sits under the magnetic North Pole?"
A flummoxed Alexa will check her cheat sheet and realise it wasn’t Captain Cook, Captain Scott or Sir Ed. So she’ll fire out an SOS to Wit’s End, or one of the panel’s other jughead luminaries.
If it’s me, I’ll explain that in 1831 James Ross discovered the magnetic pole sits on the frozen Boothia Peninsula. Moreover, when Roald Amundsen plodded back there in his snowshoes in 1903, he found some prankster had dug up the magnet, and moved it round the corner.
But nobody knows who stashed the pole’s magnet there in the first place. It’s a good question, and theologians will realise the magnet placement issue is so preposterous, its answer must rely on faith. So I’ll go for Pope Gregory XVI whose edicts ran things in 1831. I’ll also accept your rebuke for the magnet question being impossibly obscure, but plead the defence that it’s the Silly Season.
I didn’t apply to Amazon to join their Alexa brains trust. They came to me. Their invite arrived by email shortly after my recent column announcing I’d taken over the coaching of the famed quiz team, The Intellectual Dwarfs.
I’m fine tuning the dwarfs’ brains for the coming World Cup of pub quizzing — The Millbrook — held at the eponymous resort each January.
Doubtless Amazon was impressed by the methodology I apply to curating useless information for top quiz teams.
First you do basic training on predictable questions such as capital cities of obscure nations. For example, Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia, but if your quizmaster is particularly swinish (ours is) you must have a supplementary fact tucked up your sleeve.
Inner Mongolia has an entirely different capital — Hohhot, pronounced who-hot-hurt-lah. It is home to 3.1 million Mongols, and a nightmare for their Department of Yurt Planning. Hohhot is worth double points.
With basic quiz training done you move to successfully dealing with the more difficult skill — the black art of responding to the randomly stupid question. What is the correct way to stack a dishwasher? (Refer to Good Housekeeping). The most common flea on dogs is the Ctenocephalides felis.
The Manawatu’s town of Palmerston broke New Zealand’s two Palmerston imbroglio by adding "North" to its name in 1871. There is nobody at Alexa who knows why Otago’s Palmerston didn’t volunteer to become South. (The Letters Editor looks forward to your correspondence.)
I confess to almost rejecting the Alexa Brains Trust job. I hadn’t been a huge Alexa fan because I’d only heard its question-answer service being used by friends who wanted to demonstrate that their schmick smart speaker works. "Alexa — who is the Prime Minister of New Zealand?" they ask, and are pleasantly surprised when she comes up with Jacinda.
("Schmick" = adjective, informal, Australian. Excellent, elegant, or stylish. Collins Dictionary.)
Myself, I bought my new Alexa speaker so it would play me music on any occasion I demanded it. But it’s been a swizz. (Noun, informal, British. A thing that is disappointing, or represents a mild swindle.)
When I ask her to play Roy Orbison or Silent Night, Alexa is no beneficent angel. Her response is always a direction that I pay up and join the Amazon music service.
I haven’t yet asked Amazon whether sitting on their brains trust will bring me an emolument. (Noun, toff word for "fee", meant to disguise the fact that mere money is involved. The joke on the toffs is that “emolument” derives from a Middle English word for the money a miller receives for grinding wheat.)
I expect Amazon’s pay cheque for grinding useless facts will be generous. While the company’s "market capitalisation" (no further definitions — the joke wears thin) recently dropped from over a trillion dollars US to $US889billion, I think they can afford an Arrowtown consultant.
I mentioned my Alexa appointment to the Duchess. To my surprise, she snorted and said: "They asked me too. Amazon must ask anyone who buys their smart speaker. I’ve now diverted all Alexa emails to the spam box."
The Duchess attempts to keep my feet on the ground.
Sometimes she requires cement.
• John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
