From: stephen.w.perry@gmail.com   
      
   On Monday, December 25, 2023 at 8:03:16 PM UTC-5, Mark Brader wrote:   
   > Erland Sommarskog:   
   > >>>> 11... Hint: it was one of the less populous countries.    
   > >>> Greenland.   
   > Mark Brader:   
   > >> Not a country at all! That makes it harder to guess.   
   > Erland Sommarskog:   
   > > Well, it has a country code... But, true, it is not independent.   
   > Not a serious complaint. After all, as somebody said, it is no news   
   > that there are national teams representing territories that are not    
   > fully independent.   
   > > I was considering this problem, but I could not think of a better    
   > > alternative that would not be too stilted or have been too much of    
   > > a hint.   
   > Since the question asked which *team*, "Hint: it was not one of the    
   > more populous countries" would have worked this time.    
   >    
   > The same problem arises with questions about normal teams in the major    
   > sports, where the typical pattern is a city name followed by team name:    
   > a few of them don't use a city name, they use a state or province or    
   > region or even, in one case, a nickname for the city. So in writing    
   > trivia questions and saying what's required, if you refer to the    
   > "city name" you're being misleading if the team is one of those oddball    
   > ones. (I sometimes say "city or other place name" in such cases.)    
      
   hmmm.  an interesting trivia category.  professional teams playing   
   in the top level league of their sport in a country that don't have a city   
   name as part of their normal name.  for example, the new york yankees   
   would not be in this set because they are associated with the city of   
   new york not the state, nor would the lehigh valley ironpigs since they   
   are a triple-a club and not at the top level.   
      
   of course, a lot of premier league soccer teams fall into this category   
   so it is a good sized set overall with lots of potential for subcategories.   
      
   > Mark Brader | "You could have a perfectly normal life, if you were simply    
   > Toronto | willing to have a perfectly normal life."    
   > m...@vex.net | -- Q (Michael Piller, "Star Trek: Voyager")   
   > My text in this article is in the public domain.   
      
   swp, who left normal in the rearview mirror a long time ago   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)