Dumb Quiz!

[asterroc]

I got 22/25 correct (the average being 18ish). I could've gotten higher if I'd looked things up. :-P

Comments

[tnh.livejournal.com]

It's common to mix up accept/except and affect/effect. Other word pairs that do that: ensure/insure, prophesy/prophecy, cache/cachet.

I got 25/25, but I had to think hard about the miles-to-meters conversion, and I nearly psyched myself out over the relative land mass question because I got to wondering whether the apparent size of Australia is an artifact of projection. Then I visualized the countries on a globe instead: a much simpler solution.

The question about the farmer with 17 cows was very cute. I'll bet it catches lots of skim-readers.

Have you ever taken The Alchemist's Challenge (http://www.mindworkshop.com/cgi-bin/quiz)? It's beyond tough, but it's the only quiz I know that's worth reading for its own sake. I fell in love with it on the first question, which has a beautiful set of wrong answers. The words defined by the wrong answers only differ from the right answer by a letter or two. I've put them in brackets at the end of the definitions.

1. Dido is:

A machine used to cut ornate moldings in wood. [dado]

An extinct flightless bird once living on the island of Mauritius. [dodo]

A sex toy. [dildo]

The queen of Carthage and the spurned lover of Aeneas. [Dido]

A group of early twentieth-century artists who used accidental and incongruous elements in their work. [Dada]

An accomplished female classical singer. [diva]

Not all the questions have answers like that. In most cases, the wrong answers are merely learned, plausible, and witty. Question #14, though, has its own notable gimmick:

14. Aside from reputedly being the longest word in the English language, antidisestablishmentarianism refers to:

Opposition to the withdrawal of state support from an established church.

Withdrawal of opposition to state support for an established church.

Opposition to the establishment of a state supported church.

Withdrawal of the state's involvement in the establishment of a church.

Opposition to the support of a church which seeks to withdraw from the state.

Support for the withdrawal of the involvement of a state in an opposition church.

It's a work of art.