One day last week I was surprised to see the following entry:

Can you name the countries that are the most common answers on …
Mattomic: Nov 3rd, 2009 at 08:09 GMT, 11 points. Poor Kyrgyzstan. … batmann: Nov 3rd, 2009 at 08:42 GMT, 1 point. lol for some reason i forgot france and kept trying kyrgyzstan for #1 …
Trivia Games at Sporcle – http://www.sporcle.com/

As I have said elsewhere, I am a great fan of “trivia”, so, I clicked on the link and went to see what it was all about.

It seems that the site, www.sporcle.com,  has over 2000 games or quizzes … and their logo carries the subtitle: “mentally stimulating diversions”.  This particular quiz is in the “just for fun” section.  Other sections include Geography, History, Language, Literature, Movies, Music, Religion, Science, Sports and Television.

Each page poses a question and users have to type answers into a box and correct answers are then displayed in a grid underneath.  There is a time limit, so it is a race against the clock.

Some of the questions ask for a the members of a list such as “Can you name all the US States” (in ten minutes), but others require the player to match the answer to specific questions on a theme, such as “Can you name the only U.S. president who fits each clue?“, such as The only president who… “never lived in the White House” or “spoke English as a second language“.

The question on this particular page was “Can you name the countries that are the most common answers on Sporcle quizzes requesting country names?“, and there were 28 countries to guess in five minutes.  I had a go and it proved not to be as easy as it looked.

Incidentally, (and I hope this doesn’t spoil the game for anyone who wants to try it), Kyrgyzstan was not one of the answers.  I felt a little cheated …  although at the bottom of the page there is a link to see what comments people have added about the quiz and one of them, (from someone calling themselves recklessness), said: “What, no Kyrgyzstan? It seemed to be in every geography quiz I took…“.  Another comment suggested that it should have been a “bonus” answer … and sure enough, it was added with the comment: “Kyrgyzstan – Fun to spell, but that’s it“, which brought the riposte: “Poor Kyrgyzstan” that was quoted in the Google alert.

Apparently, however, Kyrgyzstan does come up in these quizzes quite often as Pariah said: “As soon as I saw the title of this quiz i knew the top comment would be something to do with Kyrgyzstan…“.  Batmann, also quoted in the Alert, commented that: “lol for some reason i forgot france and kept trying kyrgyzstan for #1“, and mister_pianoman moaned:”As soon as I finally learned to spell Kyrgyzstan on the first try, the last 3 or 4 new geography quizzes I’ve played haven’t had it as an answer“.  I wasn’t the only person to type in Kyrgyzstan as my first guess, as aoibhgreinemm: admitted: “I am not ashamed to admit that Kyrgyzstan was my first guess, now that sporcle has taught me to spell it “, (which left me wondering: where do these names come from … and … why would he be ashamed?)

On the page there was a list of some other quizzes, and I went and had a look at one or two and in the process I came across this one: Can you name the most commonly used words in the English language?

There were a hundred words to guess within a twelve minute time limit … and I thought that this should be easy … however, once again, it proved not to be as easy as it looked.  One hundred words in twelve minutes – that’s just seven seconds a word.  To my chagrin I only scored 53 … well, at least it was over half.

I was quite impressed with the idea and so I wrote a quick message to some of the people in my address book that I thought might enjoy having a go at it:

If you have a spare 15 minutes … can I suggest you give this a go … to my embarrassment, I scored a mere 53 …
http://www.sporcle.com/games/common_english_words.php

The first response I received in my email the next morning was from an Australian ex-pat here in Bishkek who said simply: “60!  But I struggled.”  … to which I replied “Malodetz!”, which is Russian for “Well done!”, and that in turn elicited the following rebuke: “Malodetz except that I have done nothing so far today except play games on that site!”

Amongst the other responses I received were:

• I’m a simple person who only uses simple words – but I still only got 57
• Only slightly better: 59. A good way to spend 12 minutes!
• I managed 62 out of 100.

The only person who has owned up to scoring less than me was one of my staff … but only just less than me, with a score of 52 … but I was quite impressed with that because her mother tongue is Russian, not English, and the test is really about more than just vocabulary, (although, to be fair, she is a linguist).

In fact it was another non-native English speaker that has managed to get the highest score to date: “yes! 64! still, many of these were taken automatically while I was typing a longer word… “, (for the record, she’s German).

Apparently users can create their own quizzes on the site.  I haven’t tried this, but I thought it might be fun to create some about Kyrgyzstan.  Some of the possible questions that come to mind are:

• Can you name the twenty tallest mountains in Kyrgyzstan?
• Can you name the famous persons?, for example:
  • the Kyrgyz Astronaut
  • the Queen of the Alai
• Can you name the largest nationalities represented in the population Kyrgyzstan?

However, although the registered users of sporcle seem to know about Kyrgyzstan, I don’t know how popular the quizzes would be, or how many questions they would be able to get right.

Be warned, if you do decide to have a go at the quiz that several people have told me that they found the site to quite addictive …

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