I voted first because only one can be first.

Ahhh, clever. That must be it?

I didn't vote. Didn't have the foggiest idea. When smoke started pouring out my ears I gave up.

give up then?

I give up!

don't read below if you're still contemplating it (highlight to see)

They all contain three consecutive letters of the alphabet, quaffed is the odd one out because they are backwards -fed- where as the others are all forwards.

Doh! Bloody hell, I was looking at it from entirely the wrong angle lol :P

Nice one Monnie, that got the grey matter going a little.

Wow. I would give points to Pico for a good answer, though.

I never have been good at those kinds of things. I need to go from Point A through Point whatever...I used to be good at geometry proofs.

My next guess was quaffed. The only word in past tense.

My little Survival ditty was meant to be a hint without giving away too much. It seems that I didn't give away enough.

All have 3-letter alphabetical runs? So quaffed is my guess. It's got the three-letter run in reverse.

ya know, I just ignore anything entitled thread drift if it's not really an appropriate place for a thread to drift, as it were... :lol:

My ceramic teacher showed me this -a father and daughter from the previous class had heard it on NPR and brought it in and they still hadn't worked it out. I laughed because hijack was spelled incorrectly and then got it straight away because of that. I was mighty chuffed with myself :lol:

Silly me -- I just posted without reading the thread. Didn't know the answer had been given. :o

Okay, so I read the answer. However--why is that answer more valid than the several ways crabcake is out? e.g., only compound word, only edible item, only word with a vowel at the end. Very arbitrary!

Because the "unwritten rule" of "odd one out" type things is that all the other have a feature in common that the odd one out does not share. Not being the odd one out is not a sufficient common feature..... e.g. "they are not compound words" "they are not edible". Weak. You might as well argue that stupid is clearly the odd one out because it's the only word that begins with s.