MetaFilter posts tagged with quiz

Pin the tail on the blue marble

MartinWisse — Sat, 11 May 2013 07:06:11 -0800

NASA needs your help. Match the picture taken of a random location on Earth to the map, see how close you can get and "help NASA qualify their huge photo repository".

Public's Knowledge of Science and Technology

frimble — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:37:06 -0800

Pew Research and Smithsonian Magazine recently performed a survey, looking at the American public's knowledge of science.

Pew: The public underestimates how well American high school students perform on standardized science tests compared with students in other developed nations. A plurality (44%) believes that 15-year-olds in other developed nations outrank U.S. students in knowledge of science; according to an international student assessment, U.S. 15-year-olds are in the middle ranks of developed nations in science knowledge.

An examination of the results from Smithsonian Magazine.

Metropolitan-Statistical Madness

schmod — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:09:11 -0800

Which of these two cities is bigger? The Census bureau has a quiz to see how well you know the relative sizes of the 64 largest metropolitan areas in the US, March Madness style. More data visualizations from the Census bureau.

GET QUIZZED IN THE FACE

Potomac Avenue — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:15:34 -0800

BILLY ON THE STREET is a show on Fuse network (but made by Funny or Die) in which host Billy Eichner asks random people on the streets of New York (and sometimes celebrity guests) sometimes rude , often unanswerable questions for small amounts of money. If he ever approaches you, remember that the best answer is always Meryl FUCKING Streep (who he met, epically, on Watch What Happens Live.)

Jay-Z or Jay-G?

book 'em dano — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:53:49 -0800

Quiz: Jay-Z Lyric or Line From The Great Gatsby?

King William College Quiz 2012

biffa — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 03:51:26 -0800

Thank God its Christmas quiz time! Your annual dose of devilishly difficult quizzing, hot from the Isle of Man - the King William College Quiz. Official answers in January, eyes down for a Metafilter full house ahead of that.

What's Snots?

rollick — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:27:38 -0800

Two Irish children misunderstand a quiz show

Round Britain Quiz

Paul Slade — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 08:12:56 -0800

The world's hardest radio quiz is back.

Who do you side with?

crunchland — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:06:22 -0800

See which U.S. presidential candidates you side with on most issues.

First Class!

feelinglistless — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:35:33 -0800

First Class was a titanic "electronic" tea time BBC general knowledge quiz show in the late 1980s, presented by heartthrob Debbie Greenwood (now a regular on QVC UK) with the aid of a BBC Micro called Eugene. Two teams of teenagers represented their schools as they battled for supremacy playing a random selection of arcade games like skateboarder 720 degrees and Hypersports, the ultimate prize an Acorn Archimedes. Now, the nail-biting encounter between Armthorpe School in Sheffield and Montagu School of Kettering is on YouTube [parts 1, 2 & 3]

supercilious daiquiri

freshwater — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 06:59:36 -0800

Who wants to be in a spelling bee? Tricky and difficult are neither, but fiendish is a way to spend too much time. It does have quite a few words adopted into English, but everyone should know how to spell burrito.

Friendly neighbors

IvoShandor — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:50:09 -0800

Take the Ultimate Sesame Street Quiz (and watch a bunch of Sesame Street clips)

How thick is your bubble?

valkyryn — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:38:14 -0800

Charles Murray, author of the controversial 1994 work The Bell Curve, has a new book coming out, entitled Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. He's included a twenty-five question, weighted quiz to get a feel for how in touch you are with mainstream, blue-collar American culture. It's not automated, so you'll need pen and paper. CSPAN-2 lecture from April 2011, when he was still writing the book.

King Billy 107 in '11

Iridic — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:30:47 -0800

What disaster befell the Asch House? Where do a few surviving hedges keep alive our lost Elysium? Where is there a fully clothed life-sized wax effigy of Sarah? These questions and more in the One Hundred and Seventh Issue of the King William's College General Knowledge Paper! [PDF]

Dad, what's an album cover?

mr.curmudgeon — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:03:07 -0800

Coversmart: The first music trivia website dedicated to the art of album covers. On each weekday, Coversmart will post a new 10-point quiz on this site. Each quiz will be "active" - that is, you can play it - for the day that it's posted. Artist names and album titles must be complete and spelled correctly. For each quiz, 5 album covers will be listed. One point is given for the correct artist and one point for the correct album title for each cover listed, meaning a perfect score is 10 total points. In the age of MP3's, the creators of Coversmart are using the lure of trivia to rally a community of people still interested in the appreciation of cover art.

Every drop counts!

crunchland — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:07:10 -0800

National Geographic's Water Footprint Calculator The average American lifestyle is fueled by nearly 2,000 gallons of H₂O a day. What may come as a surprise is that very little of that — only five percent — runs through toilets, taps, and garden hoses at home. Nearly 95 percent of your water footprint is hidden in the food you eat, energy you use, products you buy, and services you rely on.

name that game!

flex — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:58:21 -0800

How many video games can you identify by their sound effects? How many can you guess from their music? (part 2, part 3) Can you name video game consoles by their start-up sounds?

Huey Lewis and the News: You are hanging from monkey bars in two or more successive class pictures

flex — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:49:21 -0800

what your favorite '80s band says about you

The Official Gay Card

ericb — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:12:05 -0800

So, you think you're gay. Prove it. "A new quiz puts stereotypes to the test and decides whether or not you're worthy of a Gay Card."*

I got the whole world in my hands...

Rhaomi — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:27:51 -0800

The official Google Earth plugin is one free download that makes all sorts of cool stuff possible in your browser. There's a full screen version of the program (complete with underwater views and 3D buildings) which can be searched by entering queries at the end of the URL. There's a framed version with support for layers, historical imagery, day/night cycles, and the Google Sky starmap. Less useful but more fun are Google's collection of "experiments" demonstrating the possibilities of the Earth API, including a "Geo Whiz" geography quiz, an antipode locater, a 3D first-person view of San Francisco, a virtual route-follower, and MONSTER MILKTRUCK!, a crazy fun driving simulator that lets you careen a virtual milk truck through the Googleplex campus, ricochet off the Himalayas, or explore any other place you care to name. Lots more can be found in the Google Earth Gallery -- highlights include a look at mountaintop removal mining, a real-time flight tracker, a guide to trails and outdoor recreation, a 360 panorama catalog, geotagged Panoramio photos, and the comprehensive crowdsourced Google Earth Community Layer. And while it's too large to view online, don't miss loading the Metafilter user location map into a desktop version of Google Earth! Controls for the plugin: left click and drag: pan right click and drag: rotate/smooth zoom scroll wheel: zoom into/away from cursor scroll wheel click and drag: rotate around point double left/right click: zoom in/out WASD/arrow keys: pan Shift+WASD/arrow keys: rotate/tilt camera +,-: zoom in/out

Film or Digital?

SylviaAspevig — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 07:46:52 -0800

Can you guess if it's film? Can you guess if it's film? Or digital? This is an old(er) quiz and the answer has been... answered but if you haven't seen it and you think you know your stuff, this is a good way to test it.

Zigguraticity, Pyramidality

curuinor — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:07:37 -0800

College Bowl was an American tradition for more than 50 years: two teams of four players each, who are read a toss-up question which anyone could answer alternating with a bonus question which only the team which got the toss-up question could answer. It was officially cancelled in 2008, due to a variety of factors. A strange new format dominates its successors: pyramidal quiz bowl. I link to a lot of packet archives here: all the ftp-looking folders with numbered .doc or .pdf files are packets of questions, and are filled with same. The term Quiz Bowl encompasses a variety of activities which have in common a lockout buzzer system which is used to answer questions about things: these things can be as narrow as the video games of the VAIN video game tournament and as broad as the generality of the Academic Competition Federation Regionals and Nationals. There are slightly frightening middle school tournaments and the frankly terrifying Chicago Open. Usually, a round is played for 20 questions or 30 minutes, depending on the format of the tournament: the tournament then goes on all day. The successors of the College Bowl include the Academic Competition Federation and the National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC, which is notable for also hosting competitions at the pre-college level. Some random man named Ken Jennings occasionally edits literature and mythology questions and occasionally reads questions to high-schoolers for them. For high schoolers only are the High School Academic Pyramid Questions. A sea-change in philosophy occurred during the change to "good" quizbowl: in addition to making you look smart by answering the questions, some thought began to go into making questions answerable and edifying. (Nearly) every toss-up question in every one of those tournaments is pyramidal, meaning that they are designed to be interrupted mid-question by an answer. In deference to the differing abilities and knowledge of the participants, the clues inside the questions go from hard to easy, hence the name pyramidal. For example: There were eight British soldiers not a casualty in this battle, out of fourteen hundred and eight. One side in this conflict was led to believe that the other side was fortifying Dusseldorf. Oscar Koch, however, correctly predicted a vast new offensive. In Operation Greif, Otto Skorzeny would cause confusion in Allied lines, and the command would be shifted from the Wolf’s Head to the Eagle’s Nest, along with Hitler. The Wehrmacht’s name for it was Watch on the Rhine and it was named for the shape it made in Allied defenses. FTP, name this German counteroffensive involving a siege in Bastogne. ANSWER: Battle of the Bulge, accept Ardennes-Alsace Offensive, or the Von Runstedt offensive The intended effect is to satisfy the trivia nut and the self-esteem-lacking dilettante alike and yet to differentiate people based on skill: skill at learning and skill at the game of quizbowl itself, a canon learned from by reading the packets of questions themselves. All fields of human knowledge goes in most tournaments, pop culture (lovingly called "trash") sometimes included. And sometimes, tournaments are just about trash. There's a wiki. There's specialized statistics software. And if you do not care a whit about any of this, it may just be nice to know that such large amounts of information are stored so lovingly in question form.

The Guardian Review literary quiz

goofyfoot — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:55:40 -0800

The Guardian Review literary quiz. It may be a little easier than the venerable quiz down the page. And if it isn't, it still looks like fun.

King William College Quiz

biffa — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 07:08:37 -0800

From Castletown, it's the quiz of the year! It's back and as hard as ever!

Hint: It's spelled Allen.

phunniemee — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:30:15 -0800

Mental Floss has some good stuff, but I really like their quizzes. Especially the "Who Am I" series. Novels. Poets. Actors. Sports. Wonders of the World. Bonus: Beards.