In the BOL, I still don't see anything that goes beyond "for some reason" as an explanation of why you can't convert an empty string to decimal, while you can convert it to integer or float or bit. Anyone have any ideas ?

Also, maybe this is maybe not the place to debate this, but is "researching" the question before answering really in the spirit of the QOTD ? Is it any different to just copying the code and running it ?

When I get one of the (many) questions where I don't know the answer, I prefer to try to work out what I think a likely answer would be. I can look at the explanations later, but often learn more by getting it wrong and then finding out why.