Last night I found myself having trouble getting to sleep. In fact, I ended up being awake for most of the night and sunlight-free portion of the morning.
One of the many benefits of talk radio is that, when you do have trouble getting to sleep, the radio is capable of keeping you company. Last night I found myself listening to much more of New Day Australia with George Gibson than usual, and eventually became rather intrigued by his lateral thinking question.
I don’t remember all the details of the question, but I do remember this much of it:
In the 1960’s an East German woman swam the 100M freestyle in a record time of 59.(something, forgot exact number) seconds, but it was never officially recognised, why?
At about 3:30am I felt rather compelled to ring and try to answer the question, I thought that perhaps she had been swimming the Australian Crawl before it was officially recognised. (Contrary to popular belief, freestyle allows the swimmer to choose which swimming style they wish to use, the style that you usually see is the Australian Crawl).
unfortunately, my answer was incorrect, but I did manage a couple games of Reversi on the computer while I was waiting on hold. The conversation I had with George Gibson was rather interesting too.
We started by discussing the temperature in Canberra, which was certainly colder than it was in his studio. Then I gave him my answer, the following dialogue is worthy of transcribing.
George: No, that’s not correct.
Samuel: Are you sure?
George: Yes.
Samuel: Well, do you think you could make that the answer?
George: (Laughter), I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me that before!
Nobody was able to answer the lateral thinking question overnight, so it will be there again on Saturday morning from 5 past Midnight when George Gibson present the “Weekend Wireless Show” New Day Australia on 2UE and network stations.
I eventually drifted off to sleep at about 5:15am
Samuel