Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Singing Purple Leprechaun Monkeys with Sunglasses

When Google’s search engine first came out, I used to have this game I’d play with my friends to see if we could enter in the oddest combination of words to return exactly a single result. This is incredibly difficult, and even more so with how sophisticated the search engine has become now. It’s learned to return partial search results, “similar” search results, and even the “we think you meant this, you total moron” search results. Not to mention how much more information is actually available on the Internet now.

However, with a lot of time (and I mean missing out on your kid’s entire childhood kind of time) and a creative imagination, you can still do it. But the real fun is seeing if you can string several seemingly-nonsensical words together in the process and still find a page that has them in that exact order. For example, try this search string, which as of today, returns one single hit for a website selling t-shirts.

"singing" "purple leprechaun monkey with sunglasses" "dragons" "horror"

You can also adjacently learn a lot while doing this. For instance, there apparently used to be a pub in Nova Scotia called the Purple Leprechaun Roadhouse where the owner was inexplicably tased by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Now, I have to go get ready for my son’s college graduation. He was three when I started this game.

BONUS:  "Leek Soup and the Flatulating Tree" will also return a single result...and it just so happens to be to this very blog!