Our own Trivia competition.

[Integral]

Trivia (http://my.funtrivia.com/private/main.cfm?tid=87626) quiz for all of you who like this sort of thing.

This is 10 timed questions. You get 100 points for each correct answer and lose 1pt for each second. The more people the better, so I am hoping we can get a good contingent playing with regularity.

[Mk]

I got nine fun bucks. Are we going to use those for anything?

[Integral]

They are pretty useless, poke around the site there are some "trophies" you can buy.

[hypatia]

That was fun, and easy. Ca'mon everybody give it a try!

[Integral]

Yeah, what Hypatia said!

I can change the question sets, will set up some days as Tech/science questions. The trouble is that they are smaller question sets, so you get a significant number of repeats. There will be a new quiz every day, so come back tomorrow and try again.

[cristo]

Hmmm.. I'll do better tomorrow :wink:

[Andre]

Okay I did the test, two wrong.

Suppose that the quiz involved the question: Which Dutch actress (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Millecam) died of breast cancer in 2001 after refusing medical help, turning to the woowoo's, how many Americans would have it right? But there is nobody over age 15 in Holland that would have had the answer wrong. But they would also probably have spelled "batting average" wrong.

Just a heads up that there are global questions and local questions.

[hypatia]

Oh I did bad today, but I am having a very bad day all across the board.

[arildno]

I beat hypatia, cristo is another matter. :smile:

[BobG]

Oh I did bad today, but I am having a very bad day all across the board.

You did better than Chi_Meson. :smile:

At least I did better than hypatia!! :cool: Yess!!!

So you start with 1000 points and lose 100 for each wrong answer, plus a point for each second. I should have tried going faster. In fact, I should have read Integral's original post more thoroughly. Doh!

I wonder if everyone missed the same question.

[Kurdt]

Well I'm annoyed, I'd like to be at the top. :frown:

[arildno]

Well I'm annoyed, I'd like to be at the top. :frown:You're on top of me (and hypatia).
That's nice, isn't it? :smile:

[Kurdt]

I suppose that'll have to do arildno. :smile:

[Chi Meson]

You did better than Chi_Meson. :smile:


I felt bad for dominating the first contest so thoroughly and soundly and completely and entirely and unequivocally. So, I deliberately decided to suck on the second one. Now, everyone who's tried has done better AND worse than I.

[Kurdt]

Aww did I miss the first?

[Integral]

There is a pretty wide variety of questions, some of them are barely trivia, like that ones that are nearly self referential ie "what do you do if you see a question you don't like".

I am going to be adjusting the question set to tailor them to our site. Look for some changes in the next few days.


The more the merrier so give it a whirl, it is painless and takes a few minutes.

As a side note, I have been participating in a similar quiz on Anandtech, winning times there are usually less then 40sec!

You can use the keyboard, Tab moves to the next question, up and down arrows select the answer.

Keep playing!

[BobG]

Wooa for lisab!! She got all 10! :cool:

[tribdog]

I always run into a problem with this kind of test because I usually win and everyone I beat gets upset because they've labeled me as "dumb ol' tribdog"
I just want to come out and say don't feel bad because I've crushed you. there is no shame in being beaten so thoroughly. Just remember that at least you are in good company and will never be lonely in that oh so large group of my mental inferiors.

Edit: There's no such thing as a dumb question, just dumb people.

[Kurdt]

If I wasn't so damned slow for some reason. I thought I went pretty fast.

[tribdog]

wow, only nine people playing? I'm just posting right now so that it shows up as a new post and someone else notices it

[lisab]

I'm sunk on any question relating to movies, actors, musicals...I litterally could not care less about such things, but they're always such a big part of trivia games.

[BobG]

Woohoo! I won yesterday! :biggrin:

I'm doing the moonwalk, baby! :cool: And posting without any typpppppp

[arildno]

I won! Almostly! :smile:



(what can I buy for my fun bucks?)

[cristo]

I'm winning one, finally!!

[Kurdt]

Argh! I read so damned slow. Its not fair. :frown:

[Chi Meson]

I'm winning one, finally!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
:grumpy pirate:

[Kurdt]

Damn my poor reading skills once again.

[tribdog]

Mine's gonna be tough to beat today

[arildno]

Correcting for my language handicap, I am the moral winner today! :smile:

[Chi Meson]

Mine's gonna be tough to beat today
Oh yeah?


edit:

yeah, I guess.

[Moonbear]

I finally signed up. Fun! I just need to avoid the questions about computers. They slow me down and I get them wrong anyway. :rolleyes:

[cristo]

I finally signed up. Fun! I just need to avoid the questions about computers. They slow me down and I get them wrong anyway. :rolleyes:

At least you had several biology questions to make up for it!

[Moonbear]

At least you had several biology questions to make up for it!

Yep! They were all easy ones though. For example, you don't even need to know all the parts of the small intestine in order to get that question right, because the colon was only last in one of them. My students WISH I'd write questions that easy for them. :devil:

[Chi Meson]

Hey hey hey hey hey!

Spoiler alert!

Talk about today's quiz TOMORROW!

[cristo]

Hey hey hey hey hey!

Spoiler alert!

Talk about today's quiz TOMORROW!

Good point. I'll put some spoiler tags around the part of Moonbear's post giving away the answer in case she doesn't notice this. (Hopefully she won't mind!)

[Integral]

I am pretty disappointed in the History category, that will be changed for next week. Perhaps another Sci/tech day?

I will be experimenting with different question categories as we go. Some of them do not have a lot of questions so you get a pretty high rate of repeats.

I tend to like harder questions to make it less of a race and more knowledge based. I the other quiz I participate in there are days when you have to finish is less then 60s to get in the top 10!

Enjoy.

[Chi Meson]

Warriors!

Come out and play-ee-ay!

[Kurdt]

I was quick today but my wireless cut out :cry:

[tribdog]

I was quick today but my wireless cut out :cry:

of course it did.

[Chi Meson]

OW!

OW! no WAY! TRIB! No... you can't... NO!

OW! Jeez!~

[Chi Meson]

I think I'm going to take a few days off. Maybe cool down a bit. Let the others catch up and all. I need to lie down.

[lisab]

Seems like every time I play, I lose standing. Even though today I got 9/10...

Tomorrow's theme - World: Europe.

Uh-oh, us North Americans better hunker down!

[Integral]

Notice that the number of points awarded the top player corresponds to the number of players that day. The more people that play, the more points you get. I am hoping to get some more people involved.

Do you think it would help to unsticky the thread to let it float in the active theads?

[Moonbear]

I think I'd completely forget this thread if it was not stickied. Not that I remember with it sticked either. :rolleyes:

Sorry about the spoiler earlier. Grumpy about today's bio questions though (they sure do seem heavily weighted toward bio, don't they?) I lost time staring at one question because none of the answers was really right. :frown: I guessed right which one the writer thought was the right answer, but sometimes knowing too much doesn't help with questions like these. :rolleyes:

[Moonbear]

I tend to like harder questions to make it less of a race and more knowledge based. I the other quiz I participate in there are days when you have to finish is less then 60s to get in the top 10!

I played this type of quiz with another group, and that was always the problem there too. I can't even get in the 60s if I click randomly without reading the question! I don't know how people can scroll and click so fast.

[Integral]

I simply do not understand how you can finish one of these in less then 40s. In my other quiz the top 6 10s were under 40s!

I am thinking part of it is just having seen most of the questions before. It is surprising how many repeats there are.

[lisab]

Definately keep it stickied.

[Chi Meson]

I simply do not understand how you can finish one of these in less then 40s. In my other quiz the top 6 10s were under 40s!

I am thinking part of it is just having seen most of the questions before. It is surprising how many repeats there are.

Two words:

Sock puppet.

[tribdog]

Something's screwed up with today's game. it says I've already played. It is carrying over the 9 people who played yesterday.

[neutrino]

Something's screwed up with today's game. it says I've already played. It is carrying over the 9 people who played yesterday.

Yes. Same here. However, when I created a new account, I was able to open today's (World Europe) quiz.

[lisab]

Something's not right with the site, I think. It froze up on me.

[Integral]

Seems like it is working now. This is a good one for French speakers.

[Chi Meson]

Is there a way for us to create questions to send to fill up the science & technology question bank?

[Integral]

I think that they draw their questions from the bank of quizzes in the various catagories. If you poke around the funtrivia home site you can find lots of quizzes in prehaps 10 different catgories, you don't even have to register to play them.

Any hope of adding questions would have to be done on the triva site, I have not explored that side of things.

[Chi Meson]

Tonight (Sunday) was the second time a question was answered in a They Might be Giants song. Tonight it was from Mammal: "As the warm blood flows/with the red blood cells/lacking nuclei/through the large ____ _____ _____ ..."

[Kurdt]

Why are the Europe questions so hard for Europeans? :confused:

[Chi Meson]

Why are the Europe questions so hard for Europeans? :confused:

Because evidently "Europe" also includes Brazilian football teams.

[Integral]

Top players for Jan 09

16 players played during the month.

1. neutrino (196 points, 0 wins)
2. yebvas1 (192 points, 3 wins)
3. neu (190 points, 3 wins)
4. Chi_Meson (189 points, 6 wins)
5. cristo (181 points, 3 wins)
6. bonnas91 (177 points, 4 wins)
7. dntstpbelieving07 (170 points, 3 wins)
8. Integral51 (155 points, 5 wins)
9. Kurdt (136 points, 1 wins)
10. NBAJam100 (123 points, 0 wins)

[Kurdt]

Daily System Maintenance
We are currently performing our nightly maintenance and backups (4:00 to 4:20 CT). We should be back shortly.

What a lovely message to receive when you submit your answers. I hope this doesn't compromise my score today.

[cristo]

What a lovely message to receive when you submit your answers. I hope this doesn't compromise my score today.

... I think it will...

[Kurdt]

Only slightly longer than usual.

[hypatia]

I haven't played in a while, its still fun!

[Chi Meson]

My source for information for trivia quiz. Each of these songs has answered at least one question so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_oC7lK1ec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJf6wAQsvc8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHQFAoPy00A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGCuDDAPggw&NR=1

[hypatia]

Eh Gads, playing blindfolded really did not help.

[Redbelly98]

Eh Gads, playing blindfolded really did not help.

Cool, I just found this thread and took my first quiz!

(I followed hypatia's advice and removed my blindfold before playing.)

[Integral]

The more the merrier!

[Chronos]

er, i think you already annoyed at least one mentor . . .

[Kurdt]

I can't submit. :cry:

I wonder if I'll have 24 hours worth of time penalty tomorrow.

[Redbelly98]

At http://my.funtrivia.com/private/board.cfm?tid=87626 :
should I replace one of the geo days with sci/tech?

We could try that. To space out the sci/tech days, perhaps World Trivia could be moved to Monday, and have sci/tech on Sun-Tue-Thu.

Out of curiosity, what are the choices? Besides the obvious bias toward sci/tech, I like the Fun Trivia days as well.

The current schedule is

Our Category Schedule:
Sunday: Science & Technology 2 : Intermediate
Monday: Geography 2 : Intermediate
Tuesday: World Trivia 2 : More Difficult
Wednesday: FunTrivia Mix
Thursday: Science & Technology 3 : Difficult
Friday: Geography 3 : Difficult
Saturday: FunTrivia Mix

What do others think? (I shouldn't be the only voice in changing the categories.)

[Integral]

Redbelly,
I like your suggestions, and if no one objects, will implement them.

The list of topics include,
Animals (1 level)
celebrities
general knowledge (6 levels)
geography (3 levels)
history (3 level)
hobbies (1 level)
literature (2 levels)
movies (3 levels)
music (3 levels)
people (2 levels)
religion (3 levels)
sci/tech (3 levels)
sports (4 levels)
world (5 levels)

One issue is the number of questions, the default mixed bag has 100000 questions, some of the levels have less then 1000. I try to pick categories with several thousand questions, even then there seems to be lots of repeats. The smaller and easier categories turn into speed contests. Since I am slow, I tend to avoid those.

Do we want a speed demon day? Some of you are getting pretty fast now, I would be fine with it if that is what you want.
some of these have multiple levels

[Chi Meson]

Do we want a speed demon day? Some of you are getting pretty fast now, I would be fine with it if that is what you want.
some of these have multiple levels

Gorsh, lemme think about that.....

[Chi Meson]

Thought about it.

Yup.

[Redbelly98]

Thought about it.
And it only took you 44,760 seconds :biggrin:


The list of topics include,
Animals (1 level)
celebrities
general knowledge (6 levels)
geography (3 levels)
history (3 level)
hobbies (1 level)
literature (2 levels)
movies (3 levels)
music (3 levels)
people (2 levels)
religion (3 levels)
sci/tech (3 levels)
sports (4 levels)
world (5 levels)

Wow, there are a lot of topics. Another option would be to switch 1 or 2 of them around 3 or 4 weeks, but keeping at least 2 sci/tech quizzes each week. Of course, that is extra work for you Integral, so feel free to ignore this suggestion.

It may be that people are pretty okay with whatever you decide.

[Integral]

It is not all that hard to change topics. With the smaller question sets it would be a very good idea to just run them for a few weeks. Not a problem.

[Redbelly98]

The current mix of topics seems reasonable. I know some days leave me thinking "What the ___?", but it shouldn't be lots of people getting 10's all the time.


Sunday: Science & Technology 2 : Intermediate
Monday: General Knowledge 5 : Difficult
Tuesday: FunTrivia Mix
Wednesday: General Knowledge 1 : Very Easy
Thursday: Science & Technology 3 : Difficult
Friday: Geography 3 : Difficult
Saturday: FunTrivia Mix

[Redbelly98]

It might be worth changing some topics for August. I have nothing against the current list, I'm thinking more for the sake of variety.

I'd be for keeping the two Sci & Tech quizzes, since we're mostly Sci & Tech people in here.

[Kurdt]

Some are too easy and its just a test of speed. Some of us are chronicly slow. I support a rotation.

[Integral]

I also suffer from a slow click. Personally I do not like the speed tests but some people enjoy that so I have kept one on the schedual.

I agree that it is time for a change, will see what I can come up with. I am very dissapointed in the lack of a true history catagory, when I have tried them they are called humanities and simply do not have the questions I want.

[maverick_starstrider]

I am sure it's been talked about somewhere in this ginormous thread so my apologies if this is a repeat but do people here know about www.sporcle.com?

[Redbelly98]

I also suffer from a slow click. Personally I do not like the speed tests but some people enjoy that so I have kept one on the schedual.

I'm the same way. But the FunTrivia Mix is often a speed quiz as well, so with General Knowledge - Easier we had up to 3 of these in a single week.

Just noticed the new schedule. Thanks Integral!

[hypatia]

Still fun, thanks Integral.

[Jasongreat]

You can use the keyboard, Tab moves to the next question, up and down arrows select the answer.

Keep playing!


I guess I should have read further into this thread than Trivia in the first post, here i've been using my mouse pad on my laptop.

[Chi Meson]

OK.

It's Thursday. I check into the Trivia game. Lo and behold, Integral, my nemesis, has tanked. Last time this happened, I missed that day. But not today, no not today.

I planned my strategy...

wait to the last moment, wait until the kids are all asleep and everything is quiet,

wait for everyone else to play and see how fast I need to go, or whether I can take my time and score higher. It's a careful decision.

Anyway, I need to take my son to his swimming lesson and he can't find his Crocs. I get up, and help him with his things and get his swim bag all ready, and I turn back to put the computer to sleep and...

BENNY IS PLAYING THE QUIZ!

Benny is four, and he knows how to play internet games. He hit the start button and was halfway through answering the questions and a full minute into the game!

"YAHHHHHHHHHHHH! Benny! Benny! GEt away from there! You've ruined me! YOU'VE RUINED MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

QUickly, no knowing how many seconds have gone by, I fix all the answers I can, in total panic. Arg! Arg! Arg! I hit submit, Three wrong!

Still, edged out Integral.

[Integral]

:))

Chi,
That had me laughing harder than I have in a long time. Thanks for sharing.

I can't promise that I will give you another chance like that, so guess you will just have to settle for #2 again. :smile:

(What happened to all of our smileys?)

[Redbelly98]

Look on the bright side Chi. Thanks to your son, I got my first win in 2 months. :biggrin:

[Chi Meson]

Tonight is the night for all of our PF members to try our trivia contest for the first time.

Come on, see if you like it.

Hey! COME ON!

DO IT!

[Integral]

Tonight is the night for all of our PF members to try our trivia contest for the first time.

Come on, see if you like it.

Hey! COME ON!

DO IT!

HEAR! HEAR! The dozen or so of us who play have a lot of fun with it. Warning the competion is getting tough. In other words I don't win all the time any more. :cry:

[Integral]

Some of you may have noticed some strange comments by me in the quiz comments box.

So I started taking these triva quizes here (http://www.funtrivia.com/tournament/ATOT-Daily-Trivia-Challenge-78979.html). I have found that you need separate logons for each quiz and yet another for the main Funtrivia site.

You cannot take a quiz you are not logged into but the comment box still works. Only problem,when you make a comment it does not matter which quiz you are looking at,the comment shows up in the quiz you are logged in to.



So my last comment. I am currently #1 in the Anandtech quiz, as I was yesterday until something less then a half hour before the end, when a user named Bolomite came in and beat me out of first. He is both accurate and lighting fast, but does not play everyday. So the "B word" is Bolomite.

[Chi Meson]

Some of you may have noticed some strange comments by me in the quiz comments box.

So I started taking these triva quizes here (http://www.funtrivia.com/tournament/ATOT-Daily-Trivia-Challenge-78979.html). I have found that you need separate logons for each quiz and yet another for the main Funtrivia site.



Hmm.

"Integral."
"Integral51."

Good God, man, do you do 51 quizzes every day?

[Integral]

Hmm.

"Integral."
"Integral51."

Good God, man, do you do 51 quizzes every day?

Not every day, sometimes more! :))

But I only have 3 user names for that site, one for each quiz and 1 for the main site. It took me several months of sporadic trying to get this quiz set up because of the necessity of separate user names.

IIRC I started using the integral51 on sites that would not accept integral when I was 51.

[ArcanaNoir]

I won't give the question away, but really, "a thingy..."? Take the quiz today and you'll see what I'm talking about. Really, the best they could do was "a thingy..."?? How about, "something that..."? :tongue:

[ArcanaNoir]

Giving us a head start this month, Integral?

[OmCheeto]

Giving us a head start this month, Integral?

Oh that reminds me. What do you get when Integral and I end up on Jeopardy?

http://home.europa.com/~garry/Integral_vs_OmCheeto_on_Jepardy.jpg (http://www.thefarside.com/)

I met Integral one day. I'm about 5'7". He's about 7'5". So the cartoon is drawn to scale. :tongue2: Oh! and he has a long white beard too. And I always have my hands on my hips on the last day of trivia. hmmm......

[Integral]

Come on OM, it ain't that bad, I am only 7'3" (plus or minus a foot or so). :biggrin:

Seems like we picked up a couple of new players this last month, hope they stick around. I think the question selection has improved in the last couple of years.

[romsofia]

Seems fun :D! Even though I'll never get any questions involving literature :x

[OmCheeto]

Come on OM, it ain't that bad, I am only 7'3" (plus or minus a foot or so). :biggrin:

Seems like we picked up a couple of new players this last month, hope they stick around. I think the question selection has improved in the last couple of years.

I was thinking about this today. What are the advantages of being really tall or really short.

Short(advantage): All ceilings in all buildings are vaulted
Short(disadvantage): Been to about 30 rock concerts. Never really saw one.

Tall(advantage): I can see everything!
Tall(disadvantage): Stupid door-sills.... Did a hobbit design this world?

:smile: