Know Your Cuts of Font

April 14, 2008 5:09 AM

The Rather Difficult Font Quiz Do you know your Birch from your Bembo from your Bauer Bodini (Hey! Where's Bookman?) At the moment, 34 fonts to identify with more coming soon. A fun way to spend 2-3 minutes and learn just how much a font nerd you really are. (I only got 25 out of 34? I'm ashamed!)

Yes, the dreaded comic sans is part of the quiz, but not the others from the woebegotten Typematching post. Still, who the hell is Mrs. Eaves?

posted by wendell (39 comments total)

Just 28 pts.
posted by signal at 5:19 AM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Well, I got 16, the only ones I knew were Comic Sans, Times New Roman and Wingdings. The rest was dumb luck. My font-fu clearly needs work...
posted by jontyjago at 5:19 AM on April 14

34... and I usually don't care about quizzes. Maybe I should change my job.
posted by Termite at 5:26 AM on April 14

Hmm, 34/34, and no wild guesses necessary. Too much time around fonts...
posted by Etaoin Shrdlu at 5:35 AM on April 14 [1 favorite]

29/34. if you don't know it by sight, a lot the time you can use a process of elimination to work out what it's not.
posted by Hogshead at 5:42 AM on April 14

After guessing more or less randomly on the first 12, the only one I got right was Comic Sans. Heh.
posted by DU at 5:45 AM on April 14

25/34, but work in the least arts- or design-y field imaginable. I can't believe I have brain cells devoted to this.
posted by ~ at 6:06 AM on April 14

28/34. Not terrible.
posted by SansPoint at 6:07 AM on April 14

HUZZAH!
You scored 28 points out of 34
posted by BlueMetal at 6:21 AM on April 14

First read this as, "The rather Difficult Fonz Quiz." Coffee, please. Ayyyyy!
posted by wensink at 6:24 AM on April 14

ahhh fruck. i scored 22 :P
posted by liza at 6:30 AM on April 14

Jesus, I read that as "Difficult Fonz Quiz." I'd probably score well on that which is sort of sad.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 6:36 AM on April 14

I'm ashamed that I did so well, actually. Although, in my case, at one point the samples stopped displaying at all (just a big white space) and I had to make totally wild guesses.
posted by grouse at 6:46 AM on April 14

27/34 -- need to spend some more time around Didot, clearly... :P

: headdesks :
posted by metrocake at 6:47 AM on April 14

I just ended up reading the old Comic Sans thread because of this post. I love every other font so much more after seeing Comic Sans. (I got 24 on the quiz.)
posted by blacklite at 7:06 AM on April 14

Still, who the hell is Mrs. Eaves?

From Wikipedia:

Baskerville... hired Sarah Eaves as his housekeeper. Eventually her husband Richard abandoned her and their five children, and Mrs. Eaves became Baskerville's mistress and eventual helpmate with typesetting and printing. On the death of Mrs. Eaves estranged husband, she married John Baskerville within the month.

A lovely face. One usage I can think of is Radiohead, on the "Hail to the Thief" liner notes.
posted by boombot at 7:07 AM on April 14 [2 favorites]

32/34, which I find embarrassing, actually, since this was too damn easy.
posted by effwerd at 7:12 AM on April 14

32, with two stupid mistakes.
posted by D.C. at 7:16 AM on April 14

OK, I have to say I'm pretty impressed that I got 19 of 34. The ones I knew for sure were Times New Roman, Wingdings, Comic Sans, Copperplate, Arial, Playbill, Old English, and maybe another one. Obvs I'm not a font hound. But that's fine.
posted by Stewriffic at 7:26 AM on April 14

1/34

I knew if I kept choosing Bell Centennial Std Address everytime I had the chance, I'd score at least one point.
posted by three blind mice at 7:29 AM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Improperly weighted multiple choice. Always choosing the second option got me 12 out of 34.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:37 AM on April 14

28, I'm deeply ashamed.
posted by Grod at 7:58 AM on April 14

16/34.

Making it through half of the movie Helvetica didn't help much.
posted by aerotive at 8:04 AM on April 14

34/34 without even taking the quiz.
posted by katillathehun at 8:05 AM on April 14

Hm, that wasn't very hard. The FAQ says it will get harder as time goes on. That's the trouble with the choices being automated.
posted by sciurus at 8:14 AM on April 14

26/34. My font-fu has weakened since leaving the world of graphic & web design.
posted by grubi at 8:16 AM on April 14

29/34
I shall now burn all of my black mock-turtlenecks in shame.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:31 AM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Heh, I actually posted a score of 102/34 on this last night before I emailed the author and he closed a loophole that allowed to you to continue identifying samples and increasing your score even after "completing" the quiz.

Legitimately: 34/34.
posted by aqhong at 9:23 AM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Got 30. Better than I thought, since our shop works around a small family of standard fonts, and I haven't seen some of these in forever.
posted by azpenguin at 9:32 AM on April 14

21/34. Better than I expected, but my font-fu needs work!
posted by bettafish at 9:41 AM on April 14

a) 34/34. Got Arial versus Helvetica (and Bembo and Andale Mono) but nailed it anyway.
b) to go further with boombot's explanation, Mrs. Eaves (the face) is an update of the original Baskerville by Zuzana Licko, who didn't want to name it Emigre Baskerville (as is the standard for reworkings of faces) because it was actually fairly different; thus the font was named after his eventual wife.

More on Mrs. Eaves, direct from designer
posted by heeeraldo at 10:09 AM on April 14

32/34, which is a whole lot better than I expected. Lots of lucky guesses. Still, this was a fun little challenge.
posted by wanderingmind at 10:38 AM on April 14

25/34, better than I expected. I feel lucky that some of my favs were on there. No, not Comic Sans :P
posted by Xoebe at 10:54 AM on April 14

Link is borked for me. Takes forever to load, and the samples stop loading after a few rounds. I was 6/6 when I gave up though.

Why does it not surprise me that Etaoin Shrdlu got 34/34?
posted by [expletive deleted] at 11:52 AM on April 14

I missed more than one.

If anyone can demonstrate the differences between Monaco and Andale Mono, I'd be eternally grateful.
posted by Monochrome at 2:28 PM on April 14

32/34. But I did it without looking at the choices, just calling out font names. Stupid Andale.
posted by TochterAusElysium at 9:10 PM on April 14

If anyone can demonstrate the differences between Monaco and Andale Mono, I'd be eternally grateful.

The most significant differences that I can see:

• The lowercase a and g are double-story in Andale Mono, but single-story in Monaco.
  
• The bowls of the lowercase b, d, p, and q are symmetrical on a horizontal axis in Andale Mono, but are irregularly shaped in Monaco.
  
• The central vertex (or "crotch," if you will) of both the uppercase and lowercase W reaches the height of the endpoints in Monaco (that is, if divided into two Vs, each V is symmetrical), but not in Andale Mono.
  
• Monaco features serifs on the uppercase J and lowercase r, and an additional serif (at the bottom) on the lowercase i.
  

Differences that are distinguishable only at large sizes:

• The juncture of both the uppercase and lowercase K is symmetrical on a horizontal axis in Monaco, but not in Andale Mono.
  
• The finials of curved letters (like c, e, and s) are sliced off by a perfectly vertical line in Monaco, but at an angle in Andale Mono.

posted by aqhong at 12:09 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

Looks like the game was just updated with a handful of slightly more obscure fonts. Also, identification of numerals. Tricksy.
posted by aqhong at 12:28 AM on April 15

18. Clearly need more fonts. but they're so pretty, glee.
posted by Phire at 1:28 AM on April 15