Qualifying Questions
A large part of the tradition of the order involves the qualifying questions that prospective members have to answer. These fun questions are actually small riddles: Each of them suggests a vulgar or lewd answer, however the candidate has to provide a completely innocuous answer to the same question.
A popular example would be the question:
| “ | What does a woman do sitting down, that a dog does on three legs, and a man does standing up? | ” |
The obvious answer to this question would be "pee" or "urinate", but the correct answer to is "shake hands" (as western etiquette demands that a man needs to rise from his seat to shake hands, while a woman needs not).
- What does a cow have four of and woman only two?
- What is a four letter word ending in K that means to have intercourse?
- What is it on a man that is round, hard, and sticks so far out his pajamas that you can hang a hat on it?
A candidate must answer four from a list of twenty-five of such questions. While there is a traditional set of questions, some modern clubs also make up new initiation questions along the same lines.
Read more about this topic: Ancient Order Of Turtles
Famous quotes containing the word questions:
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)