A Google A Day

Culture

Culture

Who wrote this in The New York Times:

"Playing with a net really does improve the game"?

Hints

Things to think about as you get started 1 How do you search for a quotation?

2 Remember a quote needs quotation marks around the search terms.

Background and further discussion

Searching for a quote is often tricky, frequently because finding the original person who said the clever phrase is difficult. It's easy to repeat an aphorism many times and become associated with it, even if you didn't originate the phrase. What's more, the originator of a clever phrase sometimes will only say it once, while others pick up on the idea and repeat it later. If that person is better-known, then they get the credit!

Often, tracking down a quotation to the originator means finding it in their original writings or first-hand quote in a news article. Quotes are often also changed a bit to read more smoothly.

Thus, tracking down who said "In this decade we will put a man on the moon" is fairly simple (President Kennedy, May 25, 1961), but the exact quote is: " I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon."

How to find the answer

Answer

Paul Krugman

Search

If you search [playing with a net really does improve the game], it will not yield very successful results. Because this is a quote, the words in this phrase should be searched using quote marks, like this: ["playing with a net really does improve the game"]. This approach yields the answer: Paul Krugman.

Follow-up questions

Can you find the actual origins of other famous quotes? Try one like "I cannot lie, I chopped down the cherry tree with my axe."