Tuesday Trivia II-I (9/12/06)

[porpoise spit]

21% got perfect scores? I hate to sound like a poor sport, but I'm dubious that all of them refrained from using Google. I think that when it was announced that a copy of Brainiac would be a prize, a few bad apples spoiled it for the rest of us. Sigh.

[Vorotyntsev]

Well, I for one do not use Google. Probably why I do so poorly.

But I want to complain about one of the questions. I knew Steinbeck named his characters for Cain and Abel. But Ken included "Trask," which had me trying to figure out what the initials C.A.T. referred to (and I knew it wasn't the obvious). Count me doubly disappointed as Steinbeck is my favorite American author.

[rkd]

Well, I for one do not use Google. Probably why I do so poorly.

But I want to complain about one of the questions. I knew Steinbeck named his characters for Cain and Abel. But Ken included "Trask," which had me trying to figure out what the initials C.A.T. referred to (and I knew it wasn't the obvious). Count me doubly disappointed as Steinbeck is my favorite American author.

I had a similar thought about the Cal and Aron question -- Trask was included as a useful hint, but the T was in each name. However, I don't know what else one could guess with the initials CT and AT that would make any sense.

--Raj Dhuwalia, tied for 147th or something like that ... darn ghosts!

[Vorotyntsev]

I had a similar thought about the Cal and Aron question -- Trask was included as a useful hint, but the T was in each name. However, I don't know what else one could guess with the initials CT and AT that would make any sense.

--Raj Dhuwalia, tied for 147th or something like that ... darn ghosts!

You mean Cain and Abel had a last name? I guess I just overanalyzed the question. I forgot to send in my answers anyway.

[karifull]

I for one am not surprised that 21% got the answers correct. (me included) I do not google my answers. If I know them, I know them, if not, then after I send on in, I would look up, such as today's presidential question 7, I had no clue

So for all of us who got them right and are in that 21%, congratulations and keep it up

[Ken Jennings]

Yeah, when you see that many perfect scores, you gotta think there's a whole lotta Googling goin on. I know how it is. I've taken trivia quizzes online. The answers are just keystrokes away, and it's easy to say you're just "confirming your guess" and then suddenly realize you "would have got it anyway" right when you see the correct answer.

Plus there's probably a lot of clueless people who don't really read (or much care about) the instructions. But what are you going to do?

[tvisgod]

The reason I always assumed there were a significant number of players googling was that googling for answers is just too easy to do. That a higher percentage than usual are doing well isn't really further evidence, though. Why would this past week see such a rise in the number of perfect scores? Is the offer of a not-that-expensive book given out months from now really going to make someone who wasn't googling answers before suddenly commit to doing so for the next ten weeks?

This is the start of a new round, and I'm willing to bet a lot of players (like myself) have been following along many of the past weeks but waiting until the field was level again before jumping in. Wouldn't these players (patient and committed enough to play along at home without actually submitting) do better than the average player from Round 1?

I guess Ken could confirm this theory by 1) telling us whether the jump in number of submissions last week was significantly greater than the usual rise in submissions from week-to-week, and 2) comparing the scores of 1st time submitters last week to 1st time submitters from prior weeks. I'm guessing he has better things to do, though.

Subjectively, I also think these two weeks were significantly easier that most of the weeks from Round 1. The questions have been easier to guess correctly despite not actually knowing the answer (one doesn't have to be religious or an English major to see a C and A pair and immediately think "Garden of Eden"; after that, what other book could it possibly be?).

[Empsall]

I thought the East of Eden question was very easy if you have seen the movie or read the book or just take a look at the title even and have any bible knowledge.

[Ken Jennings]

There was an only-slightly-larger-than-usual jump in the number of submission this week.

Here's the number that made me think more people are Googling than before: the hardest question this week was the Pac-Man ghosts one, and Andy says it still had 51% conversion. Now, obviously, 6,500 people get the quiz, and we're only looking at the 350 that cared to return answers. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that the numbers are skewed so high.

[tvisgod]

Ken wrote:

Here's the number that made me think more people are Googling than before: the hardest question this week was the Pac-Man ghosts one, and Andy says it still had 51% conversion.

Maybe 51% of the submitters once had an argument in a bar about whether the fourth ghost was "Clyde" or "Sue," leading one of the debaters to go home, do a lot of drunken research and send an email like the one I received which began this way:

The ghosts in the original Pac-Man were:
>Blinky (Shadow), Pinky (Speedy), Inky (Bashful), and Clyde (Pokey), not
>Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue as some believe, or for the Japanese speakers
>among us, Akabei (trans:red guy), Pinky, Aosuke (trans:blue guy), and
>Guzuta (trans:slow guy). Furthermore, Aosuke is evidently a much darker
>blue in Japan. However, Ms. Pac-Man did replace Clyde with Sue (hence the
>confusion), and also added fruit that bounced around the maze. Also an
>interesting note, the original English Pac-Man cabinets had a Dip-Switch
>setting where the ghost names changed to Urchin (Macky), Romp (Micky),
>Stylist (Mucky), and Crybaby (Mocky). Also, later in their lives, the
>Japanese names were changed to Oikake, Machibuse, Kimagure, and Otoboke.
>Otoboke was Clyde, not Sue (see below).

I don't know about everyone else, but that's how I knew the answer:) Said email went on describing the evolution of Pac-Man for 14 paragraphs, including:

Truly
>bizarre, Jr. Pac-Man did not feature Sue OR Clyde (or Mocky for that
>matter) at all, but introduced two new ghosts. Tim took Sue and Clyde's
>place in hunting the little tyke, and during the Oscar Nominated
>cut-scenes, Pac-Man Junior (the hero, not the game) showed his love and
>affection for the pint-sized ghost named Yum-Yum. Pac-Man Junior is assumed
>to be male, due to his beanie, and Yum-Yum is assumed to be female due to
>the antenna sticking out of its head. Note that Pac-Man Junior was soon
>pulled, due to some of the changes made to the fruit. Pac-Man Junior would
>instead chase and eat various toys, include a cat, a bike, and an
>overflowing beer stein. Concerned parents worried about their children
>eating the bikes.

[Empsall]

I knew several of this week's questions because I'm a child of 80's pop culture.
1. Pac-man fans who are also trivia-nerds would know this.
2. anemometer- kids who did well in science in school or did science competitions probably know this.
3. like i said in my post above
4. Hawaii is easier to pick out and learn senators, because they are so different from the rest of the 48, and a popular destination spot. If it was Montana or something, no one would have got it hardly.
5. The Lost question was very easy to pop culture people
6. The flag one was the hardest for me, and Brazil was pretty much an educated guess
7. The last one started with putting Rush, Rush and Bling, Bling together, and thinking wait a minute, Monday, Monday. Those three songs is what caused me to get the question right.

[porpoise spit]

I was the thread starter, and, while I am still dubious, I certainly didn't want to imply that everyone googles; I know there are some brilliant trivia buffs around these parts. I'm wondering what would happen if Ken rescinded the free copies of Brainiac as a prize this time around; my hunch is that far less than 21% would get all 7 questions correct.

[WestBerkeleyFlats]

Umm, I don't think people would be so motivated by a relatively inexpensive book that they could probably check out for a time from a public library. Unless, of course, a large proportion of the prospective audience for said book consists of hoboes and other penurious transients.

They're probably just nefarious cheaters.

[JD]

Here's the number that made me think more people are Googling than before: the hardest question this week was the Pac-Man ghosts one, and Andy says it still had 51% conversion.

I had that one off the bat, because I knew Pac-Man's connection to Japan. I didn't know the "East of Eden" one, not having read the book, and I didn't know #7.

As for the senators, well, I'm a politics junkie - and #7 this week is easy.

(I've disagreed with Ken Jennings...should I prepare to be vaporized?)

[rkd]

The Pac-Man ghosts question was something I hadn't heard before, but it was gettable from the built-in clues -- 51% is high conversion, but the question was reasonable. The question told us that there were four of them; that they're famous (which in Ken's quiz usually means you've heard of them); that they're presumably fictional; that they had Japanese names; and that two of the translated names (Chaser, Ambusher, Fickle, and Stupid) involved chasing or action in some form, while the other two names implied wacky personality traits relative to the other two. So at that point it's narrowed to very famous Japanese-import quartets of fictional characters who may be involved with action in a somewhat comic vein. Unfortuantely for me, I took exactly those same clues to come up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ... it seemed logical, and I have no idea what their Japanese names might be. But if I'd hit on Pac-Man first, I might have guessed that as my answer. (There may be plenty of other famous quartets of Japanese characters, but I don't know enough to say.)

More generally, I try my hand at these quizzes because they're a neat challenge. There are no three- or four-digit prizes, so I don't care much if some folks are googling. The quizzes very well written, and the questions I don't know tend to have enough embedded clues that I can reason out the answer in time. And in my particular case, I don't have any practical stake in continuing to play except the joy of the challenge.

[Cannon]

I've been lucky now for several weeks. I don't Google, but the date that I send my answers in varies in large part because I find myself "working" on the 7th question, often for several days. I haven't Googled any answers yet, but I have done a lot of writing and guessing. By way of example, I got the city question correct a few weeks ago (newspapers contain the word star). I guessed as I knew that 3 of the cities had a star in the name. And the Seurat painting question was another "educated guess" from remembering the very odd thing of seeing a monkey on a leash and remembering that Ken Jennings was in Chicago that past weekend after hearing him on an NPR radio show. Sometimes, I think I might know an answer, but it doesn't "come to me." Prime example is Toricelli. In fact, the first thing I thought when I read a quote that perained to barometry was Gallileo.....but I remembered Toricelli a considerable time later. For the Question 7s, I tend to write them down and then start making lists..... I stil have no idea if I have this week's question correct (the books, The Awakening, Gone with the Wind, etc...) but I can tell you I made a bunch of lists.....and several of them seemed, 'almost correct." I chose between two answers and hope I'm right, but I easily could have chosen something else as I'm dead certain on all of the books except 2. I went with the answet that I was sure of for al books except for one. I've read them all; however, one of them I read in the language it was written in and my comprehension and recollection is seriously compromised.

That being said, I am certain that I cannot go through 10 weeks with a perfect score each week. I put as much thougt as I can into #7, first, and the rest is "gravy."