Quizzes

I get a little frustrated from time to time with quizzes. I like to have my mind challenged, but sometimes the people that want to challenge my mind don't do a very good job of it.

Some time ago, I was visiting a web site that had quizzes on a number of different subjects, but most of the choices didn't really appeal to me. There was one on science fiction, so I clicked on that one. A ten question quiz, the first question was about Star Trek, and it was easy. The second question was about Star Wars, also easy. The rest of the questions dealt with Joss Wheedon stuff. Okay, Joss Wheedon has done some science fiction ("Alien: Resurrection", "Titan A. E.", "Firefly" and "Serenity"), but none of these questions dealt with any of that. The remaining eight questions all dealt with "Buffy" and "Angel"--not science fiction. I managed to guess right on four of those questions, giving me a 60%. Normally I would be disappointed in myself for scoring 60% on a science fiction quiz, but, considering that only 20% of the quiz dealt with science fiction, I felt pretty good about myself--just not very good towards whoever put the quiz together.

Another web site was trying to set itself up as a collection of expertise, and they were taking applications from people who felt that they were experts in a particular field. In order to qualify, though, you had to score well on a quiz prepared by one of their existing experts. No, science fiction was not an available category (not that I really think that I'm an expert in science fiction--I know more than a lot of people, but not nearly as much as some), but the Bible was. That's interesting; let's see if I can qualify as a Bible expert. I didn't. One question in particular that bothered me was, "How many loaves of bread and how many fishes did Jesus use to feed the multitude?" That's kind of a vague question, since Jesus fed the multitude more than once; but the first time it was five loaves and two fishes, the second time it was seven loaves and 'a few' fishes. Neither one of those were possible answers. The closest I could find was five loaves and three fishes, so I put that. WRONG! The 'correct' answer was five of each. I'd sure like to know which version of the Bible that came from...

There was also another one that was obviously put together by someone just trying to be contentious--they asked a lot of very strange questions (meaning that I didn't know how to begin to answer them) , but one in particular asked, "What is the seventh commandment?" Their answer: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." That's not even in the right chapter...

Anyway, one that I like much better is on the gotoquiz web site. To be honest, they call this "The Ultimate Bible Quiz," but most of the answers can be deduced even if you don't know (they have a bad tendency to ask 'who in the Bible' questions with two of the choices being people born in the twentieth century...). Maybe that's why I like it... Personally, though, I think the ultimate Bible quiz should have questions on it like, "Name both of Ruth's husbands." with choices like, "a. Mahlon and Chilion b. Mahlon and Boaz c. Chilion and Boaz d. Mahlon, Chilion, and Boaz," or, name all of the women mentioned in the lineage of Christ in Matthew. But, of course, I'm sure that such a quiz would have questions on it that I wouldn't be able to answer--but it would be fun to learn from it.