Denis: On pub quizzes and what constitutes a desert

Oct 12 2009 by Denis Kilcommons

The pie and peas were brilliant, the company superb, and there was even a prize for the team that came last in the quiz, although this took quite a while to resolve as the two teams that had identical low scores took ages to come up with a correct answer in the sudden death tie-break.

A great night, though, and the next day I looked up Antarctica. And discovered it IS the largest desert in the world and no, I didn’t believe it either.

Apparently it depends on how you define desert.

A hot desert is a region where the rate of evaporation exceeds precipitation. In a cold desert, there is little evaporation, so low precipitation alone determines its status as a desert.

And as the entire continent of Antarctica is a cold desert and is about 14 million square kilometres in size, it beats the hot desert of the Sahara (nine million square kilometres) and is the biggest desert in the world.

Surprised? I could have gone to the foot of our stairs.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, Stephen King wrote The Shawshank Redemption and Thelma Barlow played Mavis).