Yahoo! Answers

**Secrets Revealed**

Trick or treating can be traced back to European “guising” traditions where children would travel from home to home, reciting songs, jokes or poems. They didn’t say “trick or treat” back then, it was “please help the guisers” — a reference to the groups who performed plays to ward off evil spirits during Samhain, the Celtic celebration we now know as Halloween.

The children were often given fruit, nuts, sweets or even money. Trick or treating started to take hold in North America during the middle of the 19th century, although it was put on hold for sugar rationing during World War II.

The Celts believed spirits of the dead would walk the earth on Halloween. Costumes were worn to help blend in with and hide from the real spirits who were thought to be walking among them.

The traditional colors of Halloween, Black and orange, have meaning too. Black is the typical color of death in many cultures and orange symbolizes strength in Celtic legend, which was important for weathering a harsh winter. They burned large bonfires, believing this would bring the heat of the sun back after winter. Animal bones were often thrown into the fires and some believe these “bone fires” spawned the term bonfire.

Chad Upton is the editor-in-chief of Broken Secrets and an official Yahoo Answers contributor.

Thanks for reading,

Sources: History.com, IrishCentral.com, Answers.com,

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Grampster Yamster by kaitlynann2010

We took a hiatus, but we’re back! It’s time for our Answers Halloween Costume Contest. In 2010, we had some amazing winners. So good we had to put them in categories and have YOU, our community, pick the winners.

Now flash forward to 2012. We can’t wait to see what you come up with this year!

Download the Yamster avatar and dress him up for Halloween.

Aviary which is built directly into Yahoo’s own Flickr, offers a plethora of accessories that you can use to deck out Yamster. You can also use something like Microsoft Paint, Photoshop, SumoPaint, or any other paint program on the market to edit or enhance an image.

Once you’re done dressing up your Yamster, save the image (right click and “save as”) and upload it to your Flickr account. Then, add the image to the Yahoo! Answers Halloween 2012 group.

In order to see all the fun dressed-up Yamsters, please make sure to join the Yahoo! Answers Halloween 2012 group.

Submissions must be received by 12 a.m. PST on Thursday, November 1st. The voting and winner(s) will be posted on the Yahoo! Answers Blog.

Rules:

• Yamsters must be submitted to Flickr by 12 a.m. PST on November 1st

• All images must be in compliance with Yahoo’s TOS, Yahoo! Answers Community Guidelines, Flickr’s Community Guidelines, and must not contain mature or adult content

• Submitted images may only be that of the Yamster—no actual photographs will be accepted or considered

• No real value is given to this prize: winner(s) will receive bonus points on Yahoo! Answers

Happy Halloween!!

Thanks for reading,

Yahoo! Answers Team

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**Secret Revealed**

The claw game (aka “crane games” or “fairground grabbers”) are pretty straight forward in appearance: put in your money, position the crane over a prize, drop the claw and hope your aim was good enough to bring home the prize.

But, winning a prize requires a lot more than skill. These machines are like slot machines, except children are allowed to play. Just like a slot machine, the operator can dial in how often the machine should pay out.

The crane game machine reduces the claw strength when the player is supposed to lose and increases its grip strength when the player is allowed to win. In that sense, they’re worse than slots because the player still requires some skill when the odds are in their favor.

The odds of the machine giving the claw enough strength to win a prize is regulated by some states and therefore varies. In California, the claw must have enough strength to win during an average of 1 in 12 games. In Nevada, it’s 1 in 15 games. In other words, during 1 in 15 games the claw will be strong enough to pickup a prize, but you still have to aim it well.

The following is an excerpt from a crane machine’s operating manual, indicating how two different knobs can be turned to adjust the claw strength in different ways.

If you really want to win, your best bet is to sit back and watch other people play. Count the wins and losses and put up your money when it’s due to grip again.

Alternatively, much older (less sophisticated) claw machines rely on spring tension and may be easier to beat if they’re calibrated with a decent grip. Also, be sure you aim the claw at the heaviest part of the prize, if the grip is tight this will make it easier for the claw to hang on.

Chad Upton is the editor-in-chief of Broken Secrets and an official Yahoo Answers contributor.

Thanks for reading,
Sources: philaahzophy, crane game user manual, wiki how

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Hey Guys,

Ever wonder why people say “Roger” to indicate that they understood what you said? No? Tough, because I’m gonna tell you anyway.

The tradition has its roots in the military. Back in the days of World War II, Morse Code operators used the letter “R” to indicate that they received (get it?) the last message. “Roger” is simply the letter R’s voice code equivalent.

At least it was. “Roger” was part of the phonetic alphabet used by the U.S. military, but around 1956, things changed. These days, “R” is represented by “Romeo.” Similarly, “B” is now “bravo” instead of “baker,” “Z” is “zulu” instead of “zebra,” and so on. And even then, the words vary by region, country, and military branch.

Still, while “roger” is no longer the official phoentic word for “R,” it is still commonly used both in the military by civilians to let a person know that you are totally clued into whatever they just said. Copy?

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Thank you to those who have been testing our new Answers Ratings feature and providing us with valuable feedback – it’s led to some great insights and some good improvements.

We’ve listened to you and have now included Negative ratings, as it was important to you to flag incorrect or misleading answers effectively.

The new Ratings system includes the choices you asked for, it incorporates our learning, and we believe it improves Answers in both finding and asking information.  We trust that it will increase your enjoyment of, and the effectiveness of, our well-loved Answers product.

For the next few weeks, different members will be randomly given one of two following variants

1. Agree, Disagree, Amusing, Useful

or

2. Thumbs Up

Clicking Thumbs up will show the following optional selections

-       Agree

-       Useful

Thumbs Down

Clicking Thumbs Down will show the following optional selections

-       Factually Incorrect (answers that you know are wrong. ex: 2+2=5)

-       Incomplete (answers that do not give as much detail as you’d like to see)

-       Irrelevant (answers that you feel are not in context of the question)

Clicking Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down will register your rating. Additional selections are purely optional, but at last you get the chance to explain why you are giving the rating. This may aid the answerer in future.  When you rate an answer with a Disagree or Thumbs Down that answer will only be hidden to you, however it can still be viewed by other members. Your usage of these will be tracked, to help us decide which combination will be the permanent one. So here’s your chance to move Answers one step closer to how you’d like to see it working.

It is important to note that you can only give one rating to each answer.  But you may change your rating if you change your mind. This will remove the old rating and replace it with your new choice. Ratings will not be associated with points. So you will not get any points for rating or for being rated. We want the Ratings to be based on pure merit.

Please take the time to rate the answers so that other members will know which answers of theirs the community thought were fantastic.

Thanks for reading,

Yahoo! Answers Team

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