the /'s arent needed but im glad to see that its different from all other of the 30-40 some 8ball scripts on here

another approach could be using a socket to get many more possibilities

alias 8ball {
  sockopen 8ball web.ics.purdue.edu 80
  sockmark 8ball $replace($1-,$chr(32),_)
}
on *:sockopen:8ball: {
  sockwrite -n $sockname GET $+(/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi?question=,$sock($sockname).mark)  HTTP/1.1
  sockwrite -n $sockname HOST: web.ics.purdue.edu $+ $crlf $+ $crlf
}
on *:sockread:8ball: {
  var %a | sockread %a 
  if ($regex(%a,/<center><h1>Magic Eight Ball</h1> <hr /> <img src="/~ssanty/images/\d.gif" alt="(.*?)" /> <hr /> Question:/i)) {
    echo -a $replace($sock($sockname).mark,_,$chr(32)) $+ : $regml(1)
  }
}

that site doesnt have that many responses but its just an example