… your searching is basically done. Searching for ideas that have a single, uncommon term that captures the essence isn’t hard. Once you get that term–e.g., zymurgy, Sisyphean, or even boogie-woogie–your search is simple, accurate and fast.
But I often find myself trying to remember both terms of a compound concept. That is, two words that would be perfect together as a search query, except I can’t remember one of the two words!
The other day, I was writing something about traveling in the Caribbean and visiting the:
______ Antilles
I couldn’t remember what the first word was! I had a blank where I know I needed a search term.
I knew it was the name of a country, but it took me 20 minutes to remember that the word I was looking for the word is “Netherlands,” as in:
Netherlands Antilles
These are the Caribbean islands that belonged to the Netherlands; Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Saba, and Sint Eustatius. Once I got that term, the rest of my search was a piece of cake.
This is a fairly common problem–you can get half of the concept, but have trouble recalling the second part. You often know a bit about what the second term in the compound should be, but can’t quite dredge it up out of memory.
That’s what this week’s Challenge is about: methods for using Google to help you find that second term.
Can you solve these following Challenges? (No fair if you just knew the answer off the top of your head. But I’ll be surprised if you know the answer to all three!)
1. A friend’s child came down with a rare disease that involved an extended period of high fever. She told me what it was, but I forgot the exact name. Can you help me find it? All I remember is that it’s called _______ Disease, and the first word is a Japanese name that begins with either an “H” or a “K.” What IS the name of this disease?
2. I remember reading a book awhile back, that was something like _________ Oranges. All I remember about the forgotten term is that it’s the name of someone out of Moby Dick (it’s like “Ahab,” but that’s not it). What IS the name of this book?
3. Somewhere in Europe there’s a region of the Alps that has an odd, very distinctive name. It’s something like M________ Alps. (That is, the first term starts with an “M.”) It’s not Mont Blanc, or anything like that. It’s just a single word that starts with “M.” And as I remember, it’s a kind of odd term to associate with the mountains. What’s the full name of this Alpine region?
The point of this Challenge is really to bring out methods for doing these kinds of otherwise difficult searches. Once you get the name, everything is pretty straightforward–the Challenge is to figure out HOW to get to the right name in the first place!
So when you find the answers, be SURE to say what you did to find the first time in the compound!
Search on!
(P.S. I haven’t forgotten about the immigration / emmigration data Challenge from last week. I’ll write it up today and post my answer tomorrow.)
