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July 28, 2021 4:05 PM   Subscribe

Introducing Name Drop: A Daily Trivia Game from the New Yorker

Archive link for above, and "daily" means "new quizzes are released every weekday, Monday through Friday." Email come-on runs:

Dear Subscriber,

We’re delighted to introduce The New Yorker’s Name Drop, our new trivia game, which was created by the Puzzles & Games Dept. to test your knowledge of fascinating people. The goal is to deduce the identity of a notable person—contemporary or historical—based on a series of six clues. Name Drop’s subjects hail from a variety of disciplines: you might see writers, musicians, actors, directors, visual artists, athletes, activists, scientists, philosophers, or the occasional Jack-of-all-trades. Many of them have been profiled or interviewed by The New Yorker, so—fair warning—loyal readers may have an advantage...
posted by Iris Gambol (17 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is very similar to the way pub quizzes end in the Ottawa trivia league. The host reads clues in descending order of difficulty and if you hand in your paper after an earlier coffee and get it right you get more points than if you hand it in after a later clue. If you are wrong, of course, you get nothing.

One of my greatest trivia triumphs came when I correctly identified the then current chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada based on little more than her date and place of birth and the religion of her parents.

I would play the crap out of this game except it requires a subscription.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:39 PM on July 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


jacquilynne, the Archive link works fine for me (no subscription, but completely playable).
posted by pipeski at 5:10 PM on July 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


Mod note: One comment removed; I feel you on the enthusiasm for sharing but keep in mind that folks who haven't played yet may not want to immediately see answers to the few puzzles that exist so far.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:12 PM on July 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


Mother fuckers require exact capitalization. What is this, Unix?
posted by rodlymight at 5:12 PM on July 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


I had no problem with all lower case answers…
posted by robcorr at 5:39 PM on July 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


This i9s a bit like the connections round in the BBC's Only Connect, where you get four clues in decreasing order of hardness and have to construct a sequence of four things, ending in the answer. I am still disgustingly proud of answering the picture version of this, where the first picture was a yellow flower and i got the answer "dog". The flower was canary creeper, named after the yellow bird (2nd clue), which is names after the Canary Islands (3rd clue), which are names after the dogs the Romans found there. Had to crow about that one!

I could only find two puzzles here, but got both on the second clue. My second answer was properly captialised but spelt wrong, and was still accepted.
posted by Fuchsoid at 6:19 PM on July 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


Fun puzzles. For me the clues are all of no help at all until one clue, usually the 4th, makes me think "oh, it must be ________" but even then I don't retroactively "get" the previous clues, they still could be about anyone.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:56 PM on July 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


I had no problem with all lower case answers…

Wish I'd screenshotted it now, if only to prove to myself I'd actually misspelled it (because in my recollection, I'm perfect of course). Apologies for my mock outrage.
posted by rodlymight at 7:30 PM on July 28, 2021


I got to play two as a non-subscriber before I used up my "free articles".
posted by oneirodynia at 7:51 PM on July 28, 2021


After receiving a high score: "You’re the literati. You’re the glitterati. You’re probably in the Illuminati."

come for the quizzes, stay for the Dan Brown allusions
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:05 PM on July 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


It's fun! I got a 4, a 3, and 2 2's and was surprised by many of the facts. Not sure I'll pay for a New Yorker subscription to play every day but if I already had a subscription I'd slot this in after the NYT crossword in my daily puzzle agenda.
posted by potrzebie at 10:05 PM on July 28, 2021


Digital-only access is 12 weeks for $6, and there's an app for the Puzzles and Games feature.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:08 PM on July 28, 2021


Scores of 5, 5, 3 and 4 for me. That 3 rankles a bit because it was only a lack of courage in my own convictions which kept it so low.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:52 PM on July 28, 2021


Mother fuckers require exact capitalization

Well, it is the New Yorker, after all.

Also, “motherfucker” is one word.
posted by scratch at 6:21 AM on July 29, 2021 [8 favorites]


Not sure I'll pay for a New Yorker subscription to play every day but if I already had a subscription I'd slot this in after the NYT crossword in my daily puzzle agenda.

The New Yorker is where I migrated my subscription money after canceling the NY Times. Well worth it. They also have crosswords: https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword.
posted by hypnogogue at 6:50 AM on July 29, 2021


Well, it is the New Yorker, after all.

mötherfuckers
posted by kate blank at 11:34 AM on July 29, 2021 [3 favorites]


actually fun.
I often play guess-my-word, thanks to MeFi, and the daily NYT mini, this is a fine addition.
posted by theora55 at 2:07 PM on July 29, 2021


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