twelvefootboy wrote: ↑Thu Dec 03, 2020 1:20 pm
The oldest surviving of a certain type of hole still in use in the United States is widely believed to be in the West Virginia town of White Sulphur Springs, and dates from 1884. What type of hole is it?
This is a good question, but the clue needs some work, ergo, 10% get rate. Obviously you can't say "nine holes" or even give it away as a sports category. I think something like "certain types of holes" might be a less misleading. A couple of problems with the clue:
1) I think the clue implies that the ORIGINAL hole in the ground survives. No chance unless there were some very forward looking preservationists. For the non-golfers: the physical hole is moved around frequently to even out the wear and to change the playing characteristics. Generally, the layout will rotate with 6 easy locations, 6 average ones, and 6 difficult pin placements.
2) There is some ambiguity in that a "golf hole" almost always implies the entire real estate from tee to green. In that regard, this clue is accurate. The wording of the clue implies a literal hole in the ground.
I rarely criticize the commish, but this one probably didn't turn out as he wanted. It's still a fair question but the commish doesn't write trick questions on purpose to my limited experience. I would have known the approximate decade that golf arrived for a sports question but this sounded like a business/industry clue.
BTW, the "New Course" at St. Andrews was built in 1895. The Old Course dates to the 1400's, and the 1750's in the exact format today. .
I wracked my brain over this for a long time but the best I could do was oil well and I was pretty sure that wasn't it. On the reveal I probably shocked the neighbors, I know I shocked my wife. I was especially distraught (yes, distraught) because I've been a golfer for 50 years plus and I damn well should have gotten this. 1884, White Sulpher Springs WV, a kind of hole? Why, that's the Greenbrier, of course! Never played it (yet) but it's a famous resort with three famous courses and a ton of American golf history. The problem was that I started off thinking about holes as things that go down into the ground, like oil wells, coal mines, sink holes, swimming holes and I couldn't extricate myself from that rabbit hole.
As the tall fella points out, most golfers think of a "golf hole" as the entire tee to green, 100-600 yards of real estate, not the 4 1/4" circular "cup" that's sunk 6" or so into the ground. Still, golfers should have figured this one out without breaking a sweat. I'd be curious as to how many of 10% that got it were non golfers. I'd wager very few.
Maybe the question could have been worded more artfully but I don't think it's a trick question. As with many LL puzzlers, getting there requires thinking out of the box or in this case climbing out of the rabbit hole. I don't know about you but I keep having to relearn this lesson.