WTF?

[threemonkeys]

OK, this just has me perplexed. See I have one of those desk calendars that gives you a trivia question per day. On Friday, it posed the question "Where might you hear people mention the terms penultimate and rover?" The answer given, from a multi-choice set is "On a cricket pitch".

They are valid English words, and I suppose you could fit them into the description of a game but I wouldn't think them distinctively cricket terms in any way. For example penultimate does occasionally get used by commentators in a restricted overs match, but it isn't common. Then perhaps "rover" is just somebody mishearing "over" but I haven't spotted anything else that badly researched. The other questions are very American and rather old which might be a factor (it also makes it a crap calendar generally).

Google does not group the words sensibly, so I'm turning to you. Any ideas?

Comments

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

In court. Definitely for "penultimate" and all its permutations, not all of them actual words. Rover, yeah, could happen, you get cases about everything.

They've also used:

misunderstoodings
small-ly (opposite of largely)
considerisations

and so on.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Which, of course, have to be recorded exactly as said I suppose.

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

Depends. I can have mercy if it's plain what they really mean, unless the lawyer is a complete prat who has annoyed the transcription staff. :-)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Actually, that prompts a thought relating to your job. I was listening on the radio to some discussion of a local high court trial and it got held up because the centralised transcription service had a technology problem. Turns out that the courts don't have people in them recording any more but it is all done remotely. There is a feed from all the courts to a centre in Auckland where the recorded chat is transcribed and then made available to the court staff. They have clever playback systems so the transcriber can go back and listen to bits they didn't get before - a bit like live pause on a TiVo.

Do you have that sort of thing happening, or are you still in the court? Just me being curious y'know.

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

Not here in Perth but I understand the system works that way in Sydney where they can have one person minding ten courts at a go.

We're not in the room any more but in a small cubicle where the monitor can contact the judge's associate if they have to. It's better because you can scratch your nose or anywhere else without the whole court observing.

I'm glad we usually just have one person, one court. You lose a lot of accuracy the other way!

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Always nice to get a sense of what people do.