I’m not sure if out from Spain children play this game, I will give you the basic rules:
– people sit making a round
– one player asks a question at the ear of the next player and gets his answer
– each player does the same, the questions must be random and not related
At the end of the round, each player says the question he had been asked, and the answer of the question he asked. The question-answer combos can be very funny (much more at childhood).

And now, after left childhood long time ago (if you don’t believe my wife), it seems we want to continue playing the game. But in a much more refining mode.

Someone has a problem. He needs a simple answer to a simple question (complex questions must or have to be changed to multiple simple questions). He asks his question, get his answer and solve the problem. Sounds easy, right?

Now let’s face the real life:

• First: we are unable to find simple questions (except few brilliant people, who usually wear nice straitjackets).
• Second: we are unable to formulate a question in an appropiate way (exceptions here are much more, and they don’t wear necessarily those jackets).
• Third: some of us are facing forums in a non-native language (in my case, I use to move my questions through English forums, being a natural Catalan/Spanish speaker)

Here we have reached the anking part of the game.

Then the fun continues:

• Fourth: our readers can be facing our same third problem: they are not native English speakers. But being worse, although they would, they are reading something in non-native English.
• Fifth: they are unable to find simple answers (as everybody, except the straitjackets wearers)
• Sixth: they are unable to formulate an answer in an apropiate way (like we are asking)

We can continue the trip to the answer noticing:

• Seventh: the answer will come in a non-native English, most times being a different non-native English than our (I mean, I can understand the non-native English from a Spanish writer, because we both make the same grammar mistakes, but I will not be able to do the same with a non-native English from a Chinese writer, because our grammars are pretty different)

Add to this seven points the natural disability of the human being to understand answers, and you will have a lot of fun… if it was not your problem, or your work (and family’s feed) doesn’t relies on it.

We can prevent us some of those problems just by learning How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Sadly, most people who will read this text will had read it, and most people who really would need to read it, will never read this text.

Life sucks (wifes doesn’t 😉 )