venta | Entries tagged with quiz

Every year, a bunch of ChrisC's university friends rent a big house and go away for the weekend.

( Which caused a little consternation for us )

So there was some panicking, and ChrisC and I churned out a 50-question "nostalgia" quiz. Note: the target demographic for this is quiz is emphatically people who were born in the mid 70's, and grew up in the UK. Anyone else is very possibly going to struggle.

( Hell yeah, I'd like a 90s nostalgia quiz... )

Crossposts: https://venta.livejournal.com/545559.html

So, that lyrics quiz. Here are the answers:

( Answers! )

The run-away winner is (as ever)

bopeepsheep with a whopping 20 points. For those who feel a bit daunted by that, the median score was 5.5 and the mean was 6.8[*]. Bopeepsheep is, in the nicest possible way, an outlier. Runner up prizes to

phlebas and

valkyriekaren (both on 14) and an honourable mention to

kauket (13).

Also worthy of note are

d_floorlandmine, with the most entertaining answers (including getting two answers wrong, but by the correct band and also fitting the theme...) and

sammason, who gets the SamMason Award for being SamMason in a lyrics quiz (as negotiated, see comments).

Of course, by my own standards I lose, too :) My idea of a successful quiz is one where every question is answered by at least one person... and I failed. No one spotted 14 (Less Than Jake) or 21 (Interpol) (

zotz, I was relying on you for 21). Also thanks to

mr_tom and Bopeepsheep, without whom there'd have been four unanswered. The most-correctly-answered question was Bohemian Rhapsody, narrowly beating Tubthumping.

[*] I calculated all this using a highly approximate semi-automated process, data may contain any number of errors.

Current Music: Barenaked Ladies - Gordon

It's Thursday! That's, like, practically Friday and thus sounds like a good time for a lyrics quiz.

Simple scoring system: one point for every correct song-title. You can go for extra credit and add the artist if you want, but it will only gain you honour and glory. Please note: correct title. There is a link between all the songs in the quiz, I'm sure you'll work it out.

Responses from my stringent beta-testing and product-development team (or ChrisC, as he's also known) suggest the quiz has come out rather more difficult than intended, but we'll give it a whirl...

[Poll #1834706]

This lunchtime, I was amusing myself with the first-lines-from-books quiz that

undyingking twittered about: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/book-quiz-classic-first-lines/

I was doing rather poorly on it at first, partly because it featured first lines from books I hadn't read, but mostly because it was featuring first lines from books which don't appear in quizzes of first lines from books.

( Now what I want is, Facts )

Current Music: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Some time ago, I posted a poetry quiz on here. Then forgot to post the answers. The winner, with an impressive 9 1/2 out of 10 was

bopeepsheep. She could really have had 10, but I was quite harsh with her answer about the Big Steamers. Just to stop her getting too cocky ;)

shui_long came in as runner up, and we have an honourable mention for

dr_doug whose answers made me laugh a lot (and quite often his wrong answers indicated that he knew perfectly well what the right answer was).

The answers... with tediously long commentaries behind the cuts.

1. Who recommended (or at least remembered) travelling to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands, and to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head?

( The Rolling English Drunkard )

2. I grow old, I grow old. What fashion statement do intend to make?

( I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled )

3. Which incredibly implausible conveyance carried ivory, apes and peacocks, sandalwood and cedarwood and sweet white wine?

( The Quinquireme of Nineveh )

4. What, according to Kipling, will happen to you if you stop the Big Steamers?

( You will starve )

5. On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars. What was Mad Carew worryied about?

( About his impending trip to steal the green eye of the little yellow god )

6. Who, or what, did John Donne deem a "busie old foole"?

( The sun )

7. The pail by the wall would be half-full of water... and what else?

( Stars )

8. What, according to WH Auden (in one of his lighter moments) can no-one hear without a quickening of the heart?

( The postman's knock )

9. My bread is sawdust mixed with straw, my jam is polish for the floor What am I?

( A church mouse )

10. What was built when twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round?

( A stately pleasure dome )

If anyone cares, the subject line and cut-text of the original quiz and the subject from this post are all from Kipling's fabulous The Mary Gloster.

Current Music: The Indelicates - Songs for Swinging Lovers

Well... every so often I spit out a lyrics quiz. But I thought for a change we'd have a poetry quiz.

Disclaimer: my taste in poems runs towards the old-fashioned and I've tried to stick to poems I expect to be well-known. This quiz is drawn from things which spring immediately to my mind, which mostly means things I learned by heart when I was little.

exspelunca is not barred from entering, but she is barred from winning on the grounds she has an unfair advantage, having taught me most of them :)

( I've humoured your crackedest whim )

Current Music: Cherry Ghost - Thirst for Romance

Rightio. Here's a monster, monster poll to allow people to indicate how well they did in the self-writing lyrics quiz. Also to see how well their choice of song was answered.

Given it's so hard, I think we'll relax the usual must-get-artist-and-exact-song-name rule. If you could confidently identify the song, that's good enough. Feel free to post your score as a comment if you want - or to own up to a lyric if you're so inclined.

[Poll #1444529]

Right. As pointed out to me, it's Friday afternoon. Accordingly, we have the first iteration of the self-writing lyrics quiz. I think it's come out really, really difficult.

Keep your answers to yourself for now, and I'll post a poll to allow for self-marking tonight/tomorrow. Feel free to comment on difficulty or otherwise (I'll be delighted if my estimate of difficulty is wrong), but please don't post answers in the comments.

( Yes! I'll take on the hard lyrics quiz )

Current Music: Gomez - Natural Reaction

I've had a fabulous idea. Everyone likes lyrics quizzes, right ? Well, nearly everyone. But they take time to write...

( Read about my fabulous idea )

Friday ? Time for a silly quiz. This poses as a series of cryptic questions, but is really a thinly disguised lyrics quiz. I don't need artists or songnames, just answer the questions.

( Sure, I'm not going anything useful today anyway. )

I'm not sure how hard this is likely to be. Some of the songs are quite obscure, some aren't. I've tried to include some dead-easy ones, but these things never seem to come out how I expect.

I can't rule out that there might be some ambiguous questions: if the lyrics for your answer are online, and if I - in my my ultimate, arbitrary and easily-bought wisdom - rule that your answer is as good as mine, you can have your points.

Comments are screened, leave your answers below.

Current Music: Radiohead - Pablo Honey

OK, answer, scores, etc to the lyrics quiz.

Thanks to all who played :)

First up, this quiz had a few problems. Notably, I got a couple of the lyrics wrong - I thought I'd double-checked everything but obviously not :( This is what happens when I post things unilaterally without getting ChrisC to fine-toothedly check them them first. Apologies to those who were thrown by the wrongness of the questions.

In some cases, I think there may have been alternative answers - there probably really is a song called 24 Hours from Tulse Hill. It's probably by Half Man Half Biscuit. However, unless there seems to have been genuine ambiguity, I've gone with the "obvious" one.

(The artist attribution is the artist whom I regard as most strongly associated with the song. This isn't necessarily the original. Your opinion may vary :)

Answers:
( I've been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota )

Scores:
( Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota )

Meaningless extra data:
( Whichita, Tulsa, Ottowa, Oklahoma )