Today’s my birthday, so I’m relaxing. Okay, not really… I’m going over proofs for the next issue of the magazine, and will be most of the weekend. But since it’s still technically my day, I’m going to make this Weekend Genius Challenge as painless as possible.

All you have to do is guess how old I am as of today, March 29, 2008. Send your guess via comment to this post - ONLY ONE GUESS PER PERSON, PLEASE. The first person to correctly identify my age will win a special prize we’ve never before offered: a copy of our latest book, The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to More Not So Useless Facts, signed by Kara and me.

Yes, I know, guessing someone’s age isn’t “genius.” But hey, you can pretend you work at a carnival. (And no, don’t guess my weight.) Good luck!

• You might have heard of Project Greenlight, but what about a competition for the WORST movie ideas? It’s called Project Redlight, and was judged by Harvey Weinstein himself, who chose an all-out winner from a competitive field of ten. I fear the one with Rob Schneider might actually get produced.

• Flossy Reader Joseph R sent in this stunning time-lapse footage of a rotting strawberry (seriously cool). And just as fascinating, see it happen to a lemon.

• Definitely one of the strangest videos on the internet (and that’s saying something). One of my old Professors described it as “net-era Terry Gilliam-esque.” Note: some images may be disturbing to the sensitive. See more of Cyriak’s animations here. (Thanks to Kevin for that one)

• The celebrity rumor mill has been around for as long as there have been, well, celebrities. Today’s antics are no worse than before - judge for yourself here, with 25 of the best rock rumors ever.

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A hearty “thanks!” to all those who participated in WGC #24. As is often the case, mental_floss readers are very sharp, so the puzzle was solved fairly quickly.

We asked you to tell us what the twelve images (shown to the right) had in common. The answer: Each photo represents the title of a hit movie. Starting in the upper-left corner, they are: Hitch, Signs, Contact, Seabiscuit, Twins, Airport, Hairspray, Dinosaur, Eraser, Rocky, Hook, and Maverick.

Congratulations to Carole, who was able to figure out the connection right away. We’ll contact you via email soon about your T-shirt!

A new Weekend Genius Challenge will appear a bit later today (Saturday). In the meantime, feel free to explore the rest of mentalfloss.com, including the popular Amazing Fact Generator. And we’re not just busy on weekends! You can quickly test your mettle five days a week with our long-running Quiz of the Day.

Congrats to the winner of our second How Did You Know? Trivia Hunt! Adam Constable was one of dozens who had all the answers correct, but he was the first, so he gets a t-shirt and book of his choice from our store. Below you’ll find his e-mail containing the answers and the logic. I’ll have round three for you all next month… so stay tuned.

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It was about four years ago when I first saw a 20Q ball. The tiny handheld device scrolled text across its meager one-line screen, inviting me to challenge it in a game of 20 Questions. I immediately thought of an object I figured it wouldn’t guess (”iPod”) and began to play the game. After a series of slightly odd questions — including “Does it bring joy to people?” — the little ball gave its guess: “MP3 player.” Wow. It was right.

So how does this 20Q device work? The short answer is “artificial intelligence.” The long answer involves lots of practice. In 1988, Canadian inventor Robin Burgener programmed a neural network (a specialized form of computer program) capable of playing 20 Questions, but without a library of knowledge about common objects. He proceeded to teach it twenty questions about the object “cat,” then handed the program (on floppy disk) to friends and encouraged them to play, recording their play sessions as it went. For 20Q, playing equals learning, as it develops “synaptic connections” whenever it receives answers to questions. It’s able to reinforce connections by playing games over and over with different people, gradually learning which answers are correct and which aren’t. (Thus it’s difficult to “poison” the system by purposely giving it wrong answers.) The program can then use these connections to pose clarifying questions, eventually arriving at an answer.

By 1995, Burgener had a good body of connections in his neural network. He put a version of the 20Q program on the web and encouraged web visitors to play with it (thus training it in the process). After the online version of 20Q had played one million games (amassing 10 million synaptic connections in the process), Burgener boiled down the 20Q system into a simplified 20Q-on-a-chip version. The hardware version was incapable of learning, but contained information about the 2,000 most popular objects chosen by users of the online program. As such, it embodied a shocking “intelligence” that toy makers later put into the 20Q balls, now available at toy stores everywhere for under $15. (Specialized versions are also available, including a Harry Potter unit, and later versions of the handheld game have more information built-in.)

Today (or at least as of late 2006, the last time its online FAQ seems to have been updated), the online version of 20Q guesses correctly about 80% of the time, and if you allow it 25 questions, it claims a 98% success rate. With over 60 million games played online, the neural net continues to learn — and this learning can be translated into future versions of the 20Q handheld games. In an interview with Kevin Kelly, Burgener said, “It is learning, but it is not increasing its success rate. What happens is that it is learning to play more kinds of people, people who don’t speak English easily, or who have never played 20 questions, or who come from different cultures, and to understand more difficult kinds of things.”

You can play 20Q Online for free, or pick up a handheld version at any reputable toy or game store. You can read a bit more about the game at Wikipedia or check out more on neural networks for a deeper understanding.

I grew up in an era when parents didn’t hesitate to use the television set as a babysitter. Back then, TV didn’t rot our brains, it simply “kept us out of Mom’s hair” for a few hours. How many of these shows kept you company as a child?

1. Sesame Street: The Surprising Rocker Behind the Numbers

Sesame Street was sort of the MTV of children’s programming when it premiered in 1969. There were a few adult “regulars” in the neighborhood, but the true stars were the Muppets – Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, Oscar, et al – and the various animated shorts and comedy skits. I already knew my alphabet and numbers, so I was a bit older than the target demographic of Sesame Street, but I still watched it regularly because the A.D.D.-soothing, rapid-fire graphics were mesmerizing. Plus, the songs were catchy. One of my favorite recurring bits was the “Jazzy Spies,” which featured a frenetic musical background while a singer repeatedly intoned the particular numeral being highlighted. The vocalist was none other than Grace Slick (of Jefferson Airplane/Starship), whose then-husband, Jerry Slick, actually produced those segments.

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Which came first: the famous celeb or the famous name? In the case of these 10, the name you know them by is NOT the name they were born with. Will the real Bono please stand up?! Pick the birth name that is closest to correct in our Celeb Birth Name quiz.

By now, many of you have heard about the giant ice cube that recently broke off from the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Western Coast of Antarctica. It’s the latest in a series of eyebrow-raising, canary-in-the-mineshaft reminders that this global warming thing (whomever you choose, or don’t choose, to blame for it) is really happening, and happening fast. (Because this particular chunk of the WIS is floating on water, not sitting on land, it’s not going to raise sea levels when it finally breaks off, not that that makes us feel a whole lot better about it.)

But what’s really amazing, and kind of difficult to comprehend, about this kind of phenomenon, is the sheer size of ice sheet we’re talking about. The “ice cube” that broke off was about 160 square miles — about three Lichtensteins, to be less exact — but the Wilkins Ice Shelf itself, which scientists say is now in danger of breaking off entirely, is much, much larger — a whopping 5,282 square miles. To help us get a better sense of scale, EnviroWonk (cousin of EcoGeek) has put together a fun/scary list called “10 Things Smaller Than The Wilkins Ice Shelf.”

1. Delaware (2,489 square miles)
2. Everglades National Park (2,357 square miles)
3. Jamaica (4,243 square miles): They could probably use some of that ice.
4. Yellowstone National Park (3,468 square miles)
5. Rhode Island (1,545 square miles): Though to be fair, there are people in Alaska with backyards larger than the Ocean State.
6. Ghawar Oil Field (3,243 square miles): Yes, there is an oil field in Saudi Arabia that’s larger than Delaware.
7. Puerto Rico (3,515 square miles)
8. The Falkland Islands (4,700 square miles)
9. 81 District of Columbias (68.3 square miles)
10. Los Angeles County (4,752 square miles): Which, with its population of 10 million people, answers the question, “How many people could live on the Wilkins Ice Shelf?”

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If you’ve made it this far, I commend you! One more puzzle to solve and you’re home free. First one to send in the correct answer to the challenge below, along with the correct answers found all along the path this week, AND, the logic behind ‘em (which is to say: HOW DID YOU KNOW?), gets a pick of any t-shirt and book from our store.
As comments have been turned off for the length of the hunt, please click on the following link and send your answers and logic to us at: TriviaHunt@Gmail.com

If you missed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday’s challenges, there might still be time to solve them all. No one knows how long it’ll take for one of you trivia junkies to nail down the whole megillah, so make haste, make haste. And now, on the next page, I present the final puzzle, drawing on all the answers you dug up along the trail.

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There were some genius quiz ideas this week, and we figured a recap was in order. Click around and prove your smarts already!