Refreshed Challenges

As information gets relocated online, links break. When this happens it is usually a simple task to find its new home.

This happens all the time, but today's example comes thanks to a reader who discovered bad links in two of our Search Challenges: The Air Race Challenge and Freezing Milk Challenge (now not in Flash).

It took a lot longer to edit the coding and upload the changes than it did to find new answer pages (the examples we had cited led to 404 errors).

In the case of the Air Races, we changed the challenge because sites like wiki.answers provided a correct answer, short-cutting the Deep Web search process. The specialized database we referenced proved difficult to go back before 2007, so a new challenge was in order.

For the Freezing Milk Challenge, the ownership of the information changed and consequently the url. Following links to the new home, it required a pretty simple query on the new site to find the original article. Information doesn't typically disappear online; it gets relocated.

Try the new Challenges. Both require Deep Web searching. They may not be ideal for novice searchers, however. Air Races is intermediate; Freezing Milk is advanced, due mainly to experimentation required to find an effective query.

Find the Perennial

Here's a pretty typical Internet Search Challenge:  You see something and don't know what it is. You turn to searching to find a match.

This happened to me while biking near my house on the Illinois Prairie Path. My eye caught what I believe is a pretty spectacular perennial, one that I would like to grow in my yard. The area is fairly shady, which is the type of plant that will do well under a canopy of oak trees.  The plant has a nice shape; bumble bees love it. I took a photo which I've posted here, including a close up of some flowers and leaves.

Can you find the name of this plant?  Where would you look? What terms would you query? What would be a good strategy for tracking down a match? What do you need to know to answer this accurately? If you know the name without having to search, give others a chance to solve it first.

Note: There are databases that allow you to look up plants by characteristics--the problem is knowing how best to describe the plant. I realize the photo is not very adequate. Knowing how an expert might describe the shape of the flower or leaves or stem could help. This may be answered more quickly by taking the photo to a nursery, but I'd still like to know how someone might solve it online!

Post your answer here and include how you arrived at your answer.