Week after week, when I remember to inflict the pain upon myself, I bomb in the Slatest news quiz. This is for a couple of reasons — it tends to ask about quirky news developments rather than the most important ones, and it is timed. Any time you score me on how quickly I answer questions, my score suffers. I’m a think-first kind of guy.
But here’s one I happened to run across today that I like, and not just because I aced it: I like it because the questions have to do with general knowledge of the world in which we live. It tests whether you know enough to understand what’s going on around you.
That, and it’s not timed.
By the way, I would have had 100 percent except for one question that general knowledge wasn’t sufficient to deal with: I was shown a map of the United States with several states in the Northeast, the northern Midwest and West Coast shaded in. I was asked which of several statements was true about those states. Based upon an accurate knowledge of the political cultures of those particular states, there were two statements that were highly likely to be true. I mentally flipped a coin, and chose one. It was the other one.
In other words, it was a fargin’ trick question.
You’ll know which one I mean when you get to it.
Here’s the test. Have at it…
Related Posts
91%. Missed the middle east geography question and the one on makeup of Congress. On the latter, I should have gone with my first instinct. I bet if you gave the test to high school seniors, the scores would be below 30%. And that’s indicative of what’s wrong with education.
13 of 13. I’m officially in the 1%.
On the map of the states question, you can pretty much get it through the process of elimination. Also, on the question with picture of the woman was also done by process of elimination. I knew she wasn’t the rest of the names. I took a guess on the makeup of Congress question and just happened to be right.
The rest of them were fairly straightforward.
Way to go, Bryan!
As I said, the right answer would have been my second choice on that one, but hey, wrong is wrong, and you got it right…
I got 96%. I missed the states with same-sex marriage question.
I got the same 12 of 13. Now I know which shaded state should have been the give-away to get the correct answer.
I looked at the fact that Michigan was not in the shaded group and eliminated one answer.
Anyway, that’s enough fooling around on the interwebz for now; I got to go to Lexington for a status conference hearing in a contested foreclosure. Should be fun.
12/13. I didn’t get the picture of the woman right. Educated guess on the population graph.
I had to go back and see what you meant by “picture of the woman.”
SPOILER ALERT: DON’T READ ON IF YOU HAVEN’T TAKEN THE TEST YET.
That was another fargin’ trick question, but I guessed right by thinking, “They want me to think she’s an Olympic skier because she looks like she’s 14. The point here is to test whether I know that Web companies have ridiculously young CEOs…”
By the way, I looked her up, and that was by far the youngest-looking photo I saw of her. Yes, she looks younger than she is — she’s almost 40 — but the photo they chose was ridiculously misleading, unless you just knew who she was….
She’s actually been in the news a lot. First because right after they hired her, she took a few months off for maternity leave. Then she cancelled their telecommuting program. Then she was at some fancy film festival, Cannes, I think, and slept through a meeting with some key advertising clients, like was up in her room asleep and never showed up. You’d think that since she’s probably getting millions a year in salary/stock options she might at least make important meetings with clients…
Oh, sure: Don Draper has a four-martini lunch and sleeps away the afternoon in his office and you say nothing. But just let a WOMAN do the same thing…
Privilege blindness!
Am I right… 🙂
Actually, full disclosure, I used to occasionally take a nap at work, back in my corner-office days. For a time, I would get these distracting sinus headaches at about 4:30 in the afternoon, when I needed to be focusing on proofs. I figured out a cure: I’d go into this empty office we had in the editorial suite (back when there was an editorial suite) that had a sofa in it, and set my phone to wake me up in 15 minutes. I’d drop off immediately, wake up 15 minutes later refreshed, and work another three or four hours…
12 out of 13 – picked the wrong graph for the stock market.
I got 10 out of 13. I really DID guess wrongly on #10 and #12. The third error was a fumble finger response. I knew the right answer. Neat test…
Yes, it IS a neat test, as far as it goes. And that’s because it tests general knowledge of public life. Those are my favorite tests — the kind that you just have to be hip to the world to do well on. The kinds that you can’t possibly study for.
Because, you know, I was never much of one for studying. I learned by osmosis.
too easy. 12-13. missed same sex question also. thought it was min. wage. knew pretty much the others without guessing.
Yeah, you were like me. I figured those states, being quite blue, were likely to fit either of those descriptions.
12 of 13, missed on the stock market graph.
Missed the same one Brad did. I missed some legislative changes in at least one state.