Sahil Gandhi, WSO Regionals 22-23
38
We’d like to get to know you better. What is the combined age of you and your partner in Minecraft days (day here is defined as a day cycle, meaning a full day and night)?
6
What’s your phone number?
10
How many tetrominoes (Tetris pieces) would it take to complete an ideal 40-line sprint?
2
What is the sum of every ACT score from 2022?
7
How many species of beetles exist on Earth?
5
How many sticky notes would it take to cover up the Pyramid of Giza?
7
What is the ratio between the Hawking Index scores of Catching Fire and Fifty Shades of Gray?
0
Take a breath. You’re doing great! How many molecules did you just inhale?
22
How long would it take a Hippocampus Zosterae seahorse, the slowest fish, to swim the length of the observable universe in hours?
27
A Helen is a unit indicating a woman with the beauty to launch 1000 ships from port, originating from the idea that Helen of Troy from the Iliad had such a face - supposedly the most beautiful in the world at the time. If the amount of ships a woman can launch is directly proportional to the amount of women the woman in question is more beautiful than, how many ships could the “most beautiful woman in the world” launch today?
5
Assume that right after the tea dumping part of the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Harbor was stirred to homogeneity. If a Son of Liberty suddenly got thirsty and took a sip out of the water right from the port, what ratio of dumped tea to water would the revolutionary taste?
-5
Jonas has been enslaved by giants and is to carry harvested mushrooms up Jack’s Beanstalk to the Castle of the Giant King nestled up in the Cirrus clouds. Marilyn wishes to free Jonas, but the giants expect her to pay them in the amount of mushrooms Jonas would transport to them over the entirety of his life, assuming no rest. Given that Jonas can carry 589 mushrooms at a time and his climb rate is 10 m/min both directions vertically, how many mushrooms must Marilyn provide the giants to free Jonas?
7
A single bacteria is growing in an infinite pool of resources. Assuming each bacteria doubles every 20 minutes, what would the fermi number of the total mass of the colony in kg be after the sun has depleted its hydrogen fuel?
13
Peru is a major producer of blueberries. How many tons of blueberries did Peru produce in 2020?
5
Blueberries do not grow on trees; rather, they grow on bushes. However, Peru still does have a whole lot of trees. How many hectares within Peru are forested?
8
The common juniper possesses seed cones that are similar to blueberries in appearance; these juniper “berries” are very bitter but still used in traditional medicine by cultures like the Navajo. The Navajo is the largest Native American tribe in America. How many members were enrolled in the tribe in 2021?
5
Plants vs. Zombies 2 includes a wide assortment of floral weapons, including an Electric Blueberry choice (though its unlock requires a microtransaction sadly). How many different plants are playable in PvZ2?
2
Blueberries are Canada’s most exported fruit. How many gallon cans of paint would it take to cover all of Canada?
11
Billy is on his first day of elementary school and meets Fernando, who he knows is Hispanic. He doesn’t know the specific country that Fernando’s origins lie in, however. How many Spanish-speaking countries are there?
1
Billy was stunned by the amount of Spanish-speaking countries. He also meets Abby, who is Filipino. She says her parents hail from the same island, but he figures it’d be hard to guess which one exactly. He’d be right! How many islands comprise the Philippines?
3
During lunch, Billy snuck his dad’s gaming PC to school and booted up Minecraft. Because he’s only just started playing, he doesn’t really know how the inventory works. Abby shows him that his inventory space could store how many individual wood blocks because of the stacking feature?
3
At recess, Billy is playing with Fernando and they stumble across a large beehive. Since they are not very intelligent, they hit it with a stick and get stung many times by the angry bees. How many bees are supported by a typical large beehive?
5
While recovering in the hospital, Billy thinks about his family’s trip to the Grand Canyon last summer, and the fact that there is a whole Native American tribe, the Havasupai, living inside of the enormous rend in the earth. He thinks about how they have probably never eaten any Starburst, his favorite candy. How many Starburst would it take to fill up the Grand Canyon?
18
Fernando unfortunately got stung a bit too much and passed away from the injuries that he sustained. His devastated family must now arrange for a funeral. In America, how much does an average funeral cost in Argentine pesos?
6
Billy too has been devastated by this occurrence, and is grieving for the first time in his very short life. How many stages of grief are there in the standard model?
1
Abby has turned to depressive slow cinema as a means of coping with the loss. Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz is well regarded for his extremely long films. Considering his feature filmography, how many minutes will his collective work last Abby?
4
Unfortunately, such films are probably not meant for elementary schoolers. Abby watches Norte, The End of History with Billy, who promptly goes insane and is committed to a mental asylum at the young age of How many patients reside within mental asylums in America as of 2017?
5
19 years later, Billy is a long-time escapee and on the loose. It appears he’s been attempting to achieve some type of futile vengeance for Fernando’s sake. He was most recently spotted burning down a honey farm in North Carolina, and is likely to end up permanently locked up at this rate. What is the longest non-life-imprisonment prison sentence ever given in centi-centuries?
5
What is the length of Belgium’s border in beard-seconds?
14
How many bytes does the Wikipedia page “Hypothetical partition of Belgium” take up in its revision stage as of February 2023?
5
Did you know that french fries are actually from Belgium? Hopefully! How many deep-fried french fries would it take to equal the yearly caloric intake of an elephant?
5
Belgium is known for its chocolate exports. How many cocoa beans would it take to make all the exported chocolate for an entire year?
11
The Smurfs franchise originated in Belgian cartoons; according to the lore, a Smurf is supposed to be 3 apples tall. How many apples tall is Mt. Kilimanjaro?
5
How many people are online on r/askreddit as of the moment this question is being written?
4
What is the ratio between the RAM in the first spaceship and an average PC according to the 2023 Steam hardware survey?
-4
What is the ratio between the amount of transistors in a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and a 1971 Intel 4004 graphics card?
4
What is the ratio between the amount of memory space taken up by Red Dead Redemption 2 and Brawl Stars?
-4
How many trees would it take to build Noah’s Ark?
4
