Interesting. I have never mastered the art of chopsticks. I’ve watched many YouTube videos and practiced. I even had a Chinese person who was born and grew up in China sit with me in a restaurant with chopsticks and try to show me, but I just couldn’t make it happen. Reliably. Every now and then I would accidentally get a piece of food into my mouth.
And speaking of conveying food to your mouth, I also have a hard time using a regular spoon to get soup into my mouth without getting it on the outside of my lips and or chin. But then I discovered Japanese soup spoons. I have one of these and use it for all soups and do fine. I should never be allowed to go out in public, that’s the bottom line.
I once won a contest for estimating the number of nematodes floating in a glass gallon jar. So I’m going to go with that, just for nostalgia’s sake.
The kids were impressed right up to when I told them that winning meant my estimate was closer to their estimate than anyone else’s. When the number is X x 10^13 (or so), no one has counted every nematode.
The prize was a half-gallon bucket of gummy worms, though. So the kids were happy enough with the result.
That’s not even remotely possible. Your skill is much rarer and more therefore valuable than that. You probably got the Google AI answer.
Ditto!
But for my skill that hasn’t been mentioned, I’d go with identifying a musical note on a piano by sound. It’s not that rare, but I’d stand a decent chance of being the only one in a random bunch of 100.
If the other 99 are all paying $100 and selecting the same skill as you they are not random people, they are all people who are very good at the skill you selected.
So the other 99 are not choosing their skill are are not competing, the organiser would probably have to pay them for their time (but I’ll ignore that and assume they attempt the skill for free).
Even then if more than 10% of participents therefore are indeed better than 99 random people (which I think is very likely given they are choosing their best skill and have more than 100 options) the organisers lose money.
Regarding my skill, as long as it doesn’t break the generally accessible to most rule, I would choose to maintain a constant depth underwater while breathing through scuba gear. Most people are not certified scuba divers but could do a try dive and after minimal instruction attemt the task in a safe environment. It is something I believe I am better at than most certified divers but doubt I would be better than all of 99 random certified divers.
This is actually the correct answer. I never intended, in my creation of the hypothetical, for the 99 to pony up any money. They are just random folks.
That was one thing that briefly occurred to me, except I recently saw a guy backing a trailer with a pick-up through a mostly full parking lot. He was moving at a pretty good clip, probably fast enough that had he been going forward I would have thought he was going too fast in a parking lot. Not only was he backing fast, but he was going STRAIGHT, too. I’m good enough backing a trailer to know how hard it is to back in a straight line. That guy was good. Stupid, for going as fast as he was, but still good.
It may look easy, but after any number of people who have watched me play them, and asked “Hey can I try that?” and failing miserably; I’m confident that I’d do better than 99 random people.
Similar to this, I’d say I can play slide guitar better than 99 random people. I’ve been in the same small time type of bands since my teens, and I’m usually not the guitarist because we normally have a better guitarist available. Any time I’ve played slide in front of any of them, I’ve gotten compliments on my playing. I’ve even heard more than one say something like, “I can play a little slide, but not like Scabpicker can.” Of course, I probably play more slide guitar than any other style, so I’d hope I’d be good at it by now.
So, I most likely play slide better than 99 random guitar players. I figure I’m a shoo-in for 99 random people who may or not play guitar.
While I’m sure there’d be at least 7? 8? folks out of that random 99 who’ve sat behind a drum kit, my name is Eric Savareid if any of them can blast beat like I can, or get double kicks going at around 250 b.p.m., or pull off completely bonkers four-bar fills.
(Damn - just wasted last ten or so minutes listing off another five skills before remembering it’s supposed to be only one skill. )
To piggyback on what a couple of others have mentioned, I’m also very good at parallel parking and walk faster than anyone I know. I’m also very good at maintaining depth control while scuba diving.
A few skills that I’m probably better at than 99 random people:
Scuba diving itself, mainly since less than 1% of the population of the U.S. is a certified scuba diver.
Downhill (alpine) skiing (especially if we can restrict the competition to people who learned as an adult like I did). Again, it’s simple math: only about 3% of the population is a downhill skier, and there’s a good chance I’m better than the other two.
Knot-tying: I learned the basic Boy Scout knots as a kid, and I never forgot them. In particular, I can tie a bowline with one hand in less than 5 seconds.
Swimming: I swam competitively in high school, and still swim for exercise. I’m just an average swimmer among former competitive swimmers, but I bet I’m better than 99 random people.
ETA: Just saw the admonition to pick only one skill. Sorry—I guess my most unique skill is knot-tying.
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