Question of the Day - 12 November 2011

Firstly, thanks! We always greatly appreciate it when people take the time to write in with kind words and are gratified to know how many people tune in and appreciate "Question of the Day" on a daily basis.

As to your question, there aren't many questions that we won't answer, although as the many thousands of you who've submitted queries* which, to date, remain unanswered can testify, we either can't, or choose not to anwswer many, based on numerous different grounds.

So, what determines which questions get addressed in this column and which don't? It depends, but here are some pointers:

• We generally steer away from questions that are overtly political and which similiarly beg a partisan answer of some nature, since we are an apolitical company and professionally care about politics only when they impact gambling or Las Vegas specifically. Exceptions occur, as you will find in the archives, when an individual QoD contributor may choose to answer a question from a more personal perspective; in such instances, we offer full disclosure of such.

• We also tend to avoid queries that are too niche or specific to the reader, since we want most QoDs to offer mass appeal. Again, we're not wedded to this policy and sometimes you'll see a QoD or a Reader Poll like, "Who serves the best key lime pie?" or "Where can my husband find an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting close to the Strip?", but those tend to be a break from the norm.

  Why? Although we recognize that not everyone likes key lime pie, and even fewer may be in search of an AA meeting while vacationing in Vegas, we still think these topics are worthy of inclusion in the general QoD panoply, since they do have relevance to a significant number of current and future readers, and sometimes it's just good to know where to find a good pie.

• Some questions are interesting but simply too time-consuming to address in a daily column. Someone recently asked about the last 40 years of bingo on the Strip, for example. We'd be intrigued, too, to know which casinos had carried the game over that time-frame, but a small amount of initial research made it clear that answering the question in any depth would take a huge amount of time-consuming digging that just couldn't be justified.

• We receive repeat questions on a weekly basis, we assume mainly from non-members who can't access the QoD Archives. Some FAQs, like questions about vantage points for July 4 fireworks, or where to see the best holiday decorations, we do tend to revisit on an annual basis, since the answers have mass appeal and change year-on-year. However, if you want to know about the funkiest restrooms in town, or how a Random Number Generator works, or which hotels recycle, or which casinos don't have 13th -- or 40th -- floors, then check out the QoD archives, where we've addressed all these queries before more than once.

Aside from that, there's no secret formula dictating what gets answered and what doesn't. It's basically decided by whoever is responsible for QoD that day (primarily the current writer, but I get plenty of outside help, too) and what they're qualified to write about and/or are in the mood for that day. If something has wide appeal, or piques our personal interest, it's more likely to get answered, but if you look through the archives, you'll appreciate how eclectic and wide-reaching this feature is and how, bottom line, pretty much anything goes!

Actually, there is one last category of queries that we don't generally answer, which get filed in a folder called "Stupid Questions," which may fall into all kinds of sub-genres, from plain crass to completely unintelligible. Back in the mists of time (4/10/2007, to be precise), we dug out a few of these and actually ran them, with what we deemed to be appropriate answers. Maybe it's time to do that again sometime soon, as the silly season approaches...

-- *As a recent Reader Poll underlined, we know at least 2,500 of you enjoy QoD on an almost daily basis (actually, we know the figure's at least double that), and we have in excess of 20,000 submitted questions on file.