Sunday, September 30, 2018

I'm not telling you where I live!

Have you heard of the Scunthorpe Problem?  No, me neither, although now I do know about it, it's impossible to ignore it.  If you look closely, you will see that Scunthorpe contains a vulgar four-letter word.  And you probably had to look closely, because it doesn't jump out at you, but if you're a computer, and have been programmed with a list of unacceptable words, it's clearly there.  And that's the Scunthorpe Problem - when a computer refuses to accept a name or a place-name because it contains a series of letters which it has been programmed to reject.  Some are obvious - there's a bloke who lives in California who rejoices (if that's the right word) in the surname of Dikshit - but some are more subtle.  Would you reject someone who lives in Clitheroe, for example?  The computer would!

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