I came across this whilst reading a book about flirting in a book store, which subsequently made for some funny openers, but I remembered it so I could pass on the message because I was surprised I hadn't heard of this experiment before. The author of the book said it was the first of its kind, by Richard Wiseman.

The following is key excerpts from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4909322.stm

'A mass speed dating study in Edinburgh has found the most successful chat-up lines, according to researchers.

One hundred people aged from 22 to 45 went on five three-minute dates and were asked how they chose who to see again.

Almost 50% of women made decisions about potential mates after half a minute during the experiment, carried out at the city's International Science Festival.

Professor Wiseman, of Hertfordshire University, said: "One in five men had made their minds up about a person within the first 30 seconds of meeting them, compared to about half of the women.

"The key thing, particularly as women are making up their minds so quickly, is that the opening line really matters."

"Our top male and female were using the same sort of chat-up lines, with topics that would make the person feel quite light-hearted.

"The most successful lines were ones which were impossible to answer with a simple yes or no, such as 'What's your favourite pizza topping?' and 'Who would you be if you were going on Stars In Their Eyes?'.

Professor Wiseman said at the other end of the spectrum, the worst chat-up lines included 'I have a PhD in computing' and 'My best friend's a helicopter pilot'.

"It's very difficult to respond to these in an interesting or creative way," he said.

The psychologist also found that those looking for a potential partner should steer clear of topics which could cause disagreement, such as favourite films.

He said: "We asked participants to talk about certain topics and when they spoke about films it was a disaster, I could just hear people arguing.

"No-one wanted to meet each other afterwards, mainly because men and women often disagree about the best types of films.

"But when you shifted the conversation to travel, everyone became a lot more energised and that ended in far more dates."'

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It doesn't say this on the BBC page but the research also emphasised the importance of what is basically equivalent to RSD's 'state', that the most successful guys were successful 100% of the time, and that most successful guys asked questions that got the woman to talk about themselves more.

The most interesting thing I find from this study is the importance of the opener - the fact that so many women (~45%) made their minds up in the first 30 seconds. I was under the impression that the initial opener counted for virtually nothing. I have two possible explanations for this: 1. Since non-verbal communication accounts for 93% of communication, this point can satisfy both hypotheses - that the initial opener is trivial, and that many women still make their minds up in the first 30 seconds. The second explanation is more a criticism of the study, that the speed dates may not be representative of real life where approaches may last longer. There may have been demand characteristics also.

Hope you find this of good use.

Its interesting, but i think the important thing to remember is that isnt anything new, to be honest anyone with any hint of social ability knows that if you want to get a conversation going, dont ask closed questions (yes no) but rather ask open questions. Its basically the idea behind opinion opens (after all, they are just open question on a topic everyone loves to talk about, their opinions).
I think a lot of it is to do with tone, body language and all forms of non-verbal communication. Just through untrained tone the way someone asks a open ended question and the way they ask a closed question will normally be different, a yes no question can come off as feeling like an interview, think men vs women rather than men and women working together

The experiment is very flawed however if the conculsion was to see if opening line had an effect, the non-verbal communication, physical features etc would have been different for each guy. It is logical to draw the conclusion that the men who naturally went for open ended questions have more social spark and therefore their non-verbal will be better than those men who choose closed questions.

Madals

I smell a confound.

It's not the opening line that matters. Women just know how to size men up from the get-go from their intuition and feeling. They can feel when they are in the presence of a genuinely attractive man or not.

So, an unconfident AFC with a scarcity mentality and a ton of limiting beliefs asking the same open question "What's your favorite pizza topping?" will still ultimately fail. Alpha males with an abundance mentality and other attractive mindsets will naturally ask these imagination-stimulating questions to screen women rather than brag about chodely shit. Women will smell that congruence and will be standing in a slippery puddle.