What is It? Game 11.

Alex

This week's collaboration with What is It? blog brings us this object (5-1/2 5" tall). What is this mysterious object?

[No t-shirt for this round - congrats to Fodder, who won the last round.]

Update 2/16/07:

The answer is ... match holder:

The box is hollow with a hole at the top and bottom, and the piece of wood sticking out the top is attached to the base at the other end. When filled with matches, the box is lifted up an inch or two and when lowered back down a match will be found resting on the top.

Seems like no one has gotten it right!


Comments (36)

Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

Hmmm...I would have totally gone with a ballot box as well. It's perfect for one...locked from the outside, with the ballot stuffer sitting in the ballot hole. But he says it's not....

Is it something with money?
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It's the original Price is Right's version of Plinko. Unfortunately all the discs ran sideways instead on straight down so no one ever won the money. After they turned the game on it's side it worked much better...

Pink Freud Men's Large
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It’s a sound effect box for baseball games. It was actually used by the Boston Red Sox and, unbeknownst to them, a voodoo curse had been applied to it. Once it was gotten rid of the Boston Red Sox broke their losing streak!-Kaiju Alpha shirt
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It's a binary lock box. Convert to decimal, then knock that many times and it springs open. Black=1, white=0, so then 111001110010111111110001 represents 15,151,089. Knock 15,151,089 times to open. If you lose count, you must wait 16 hours to let the lock reset.

Or just use a saw.
--

Splatted Nightmare, M
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It's an intercom call board for an apartment ("Hey Buddy, can you let me in?") or a large office ("Mr. Button, your 2 o'clock appointment is here.").

When World Collide, black XL ladies
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Its a trophy case for a backgammon and crokinole piece hunter with spaces to write the kill details and date above each piece. Surprised you guys would feature such a thing given the political incorrectness and dodgy moral position around such a heinous and reprehensible practice. Especially given the recent ban on displaying taxidermied chess pieces on most progressive interweb locales. Sheesh!
Here's Looking at Euclid 2xl
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  1 reply
Everyone knows that before 1960 the world was black and white (colour hadn't been invented yet), and so were Smarties. This is an early prototype B&W Smarties dispenser. Variously named outlets were provided to give the illusion of variety in a pre-rainbow world. So True!

Princess Alphabet, ladies fit M
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An american tentative to make an electronic version of the Go game.
They couldn't tell if it was a failure or not, since they never quiet understood the game...
And neither did I ;oP
[The Hare and The Shell - dark grey - L]
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This is the solution to the "butterfly ballot" issues....one candidate, one button! (Press the wrong one and you get a mild electric shock to remind you to research the guy first!)

"Obey Gravity - it's the Law" - Women's Medium
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Some of us older underground dwellers might know this as one of the boxes Hell puts out annually. Commonly called 'The Celebrity Switchboard of Death', the Archimedes-created Celebricastricator is created once every year and is kept at secret locations around the world. They are issued to an elite agent of the underworld at exactly 12:01 New Year's Day. Though each initially white node is not labelled, the nodes are connected to specific souls of soon to be un-current celebrities. For instance, this is last year's box, 2013. you'll notice that there are some white nodes still in their 'on' state. Well, Christopher Walken is still with us (thankfully), along with a few others. (Thanks to a failed shanking, Bernie Madoff is one of these.) Black nodes indicate a celebrity who has shuffled off of the mortal coil a the press of a node. Anyway, the power source is fame for this device, but in case of low power, an emergency hand crank is available right there on the lower right.

(151% Old School, 6XL)
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This is a frustrated teacher's solution to discipline issues in the classroom. Each button is labeled with the name of a student. When the student acts up, you just press the button and the student gets a mild "ZAP" to remind them to get back on task.
"Beaker full of science" - women's medium
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Judging from the two knobs at the bottom corners and the grid of lights, it's an example of an extremely early attempt at making an electronic Etch-a-Sketch. Unfortunately, the low resolution of the 'screen' due to the size of the bulbs made it impossible to recognize any of the pictures drawn on it, and the inventor was never able to acquire relays small enough to allow him to use grain-of-wheat bulbs on the display; the smallest such a device could be was the size of an upright piano, which was impractical for a child's handheld toy.
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This is an early model for sending Text Type Messages. Note the classic mid-century wooden case, to fit in with 'modern' decor! It didn't catch on for several decades, until the technology made it smaller & portable.

Evolution- Proving the Egg Came First, sz XXL
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You've heard of the useless machine? This is the More Useless Than You machine. When Marvin Minsky was at Bell Labs in the 1950s busily inventing the machine that turned itself off when you turned it on, his colleague and rival, Professor Farnsworth Marvel Parsons made this masterpiece: Press a button, any button at all, and the machine slowly, almost imperceptibly... does nothing at all... ever.

Damn Fine Coffee, Small
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