Today's Quizle

 

The Times has been running this intersting variant on Wordle for a while now. The idea is that you get a question and every time you enter an answer that's wrong (or just click "Give me a hint") you get another hint to the answer, with the hints getting easier and easier, up until a fourth hint. I believe it is outside the Times paywall, so this link hould work for all. I've been doing it every day and particularly enjoy it when there is quirky question like today's. A previous favourite is "What word, when typed into google, makes your screen go wonky?"View the whole post find the answer to that and to today's question, but have a go at that yourself first.

The answer is "askew". Go on. Try it and see for yourself.

As for today's, the surprising answer is "I'm a teapot". It took me 3 hints to get to it. The rationale, as described here, is as follows...

"The HTTP 418 I'm a teapot status response code indicates that the server refuses to brew coffee because it is, permanently, a teapot. A combined coffee/tea pot that is temporarily out of coffee should instead return 503. This error is a reference to Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol defined in April Fools' jokes in 1998 and 2014.

While originally defined in RFC 2324 as an April Fools' joke, this status code was formally reserved in RFC 9110 due to its wide deployment as a joke, so it cannot be assigned any non-joke semantics for the foreseeable future.

Some websites use this response for requests they do not wish to handle, such as automated queries."

The original RFC is quite entertaining.I particularly like the use of BREW method for commanding the cofee to start brewing... 

"Commands to control a coffee pot are sent from client to coffee server using either the BREW or POST method, and a message body with Content-Type set to "application/coffee-pot-command".

 A coffee pot server MUST accept both the BREW and POST method equivalently.  However, the use of POST for causing actions to happen is deprecated.

Coffee pots heat water using electronic mechanisms, so there is no fire. Thus, no firewalls are necessary, and firewall control policy is irrelevant. However, POST may be a trademark for coffee, and so the BREW method has been added. The BREW method may be used with other HTTP-based protocols (e.g., the Hyper Text Brewery Control Protocol)."

...and the WHEN method to tell it when to stop adding milk.

"When coffee is poured, and milk is offered, it is necessary for the holder of the recipient of milk to say "when" at the time when sufficient milk has been introduced into the coffee. For this purpose, the "WHEN" method has been added to HTCPCP. Enough? Say  WHEN."

Well I wonder if I can buy and Internet enabled coffee machine that uses this protocol?