# Seeking assistance constructing a trivia quiz
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 28, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921 "2025-05-28T21:00:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/21 "2025-05-29T01:17:08Z")
Exactly what are the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn?
They mark the limits of the area on Earth in which the Sun can be directly overhead (twice in the course of a year). They lie at 23.5 degrees N and S because the Earth’s axis is tipped 23.5 degrees.
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/22 "2025-05-29T01:19:07Z")
> [@terentii](#):
>
> You have a cannon that is perfectly level, with its bore parallel to the ground. If you fire one round and simultaneously drop another from the height of the bore, which one will hit the ground first?
>
> They’ll hit the ground at exactly the same moment, since gravity affects them equally.
What about the drop due to the curvature of the Earth for the one traveling? Or are you assuming a flat Earth?
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### Author:  [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/23 "2025-05-29T01:20:51Z")
Wits a Wagers has a similar mechanism. Folks write down guesses and then bet on the correct answer. So if you know someone is an architect and there is a question on how many single family homes Frank Lloyd Wright designed you may want to bet on or at least near their answer.
Or you may want to bet on a large gap (iirc it is closest without going over)
> **[Wits & Wagers](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20100/wits-and-wagers)**
>
> Bet on who’s likely to guess the closest to the correct answer in this trivia game.
Brian
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/24 "2025-05-29T01:21:58Z")
Good question. Let’s assume a flat Earth. If the Earth curves, the shell fired could theoretically go into orbit around it.
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### Author:  [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/25 "2025-05-29T01:22:06Z")
Ninja’d on Wits & Wagers. Indeed, it is designed around exactly the sorts of questions you are after, and so for a minor outlay you could have a prebuilt stack of questions (with the actual answers).
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/26 "2025-05-29T01:23:13Z")
> [@terentii](#):
>
> Good question. Let’s assume a flat Earth. If the Earth curves, the shell fired could theoretically go into orbit around it.
Then you would be punishing a person for knowing the actual fact?
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/27 "2025-05-29T01:29:13Z")
Not at all. That’s the kind of thing someone thinking about the problem might ask.
To avoid ambiguity, a perfectly flat Earth would have to be specified in the question.
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/28 "2025-05-29T01:31:09Z")
> [@N9IWP](#):
>
> Wits a Wagers has a similar mechanism.
Ya know what? I own that game. I think I played it once, maybe 5 years ago.
Off to the game shelf.
mmm
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/29 "2025-05-29T01:32:39Z")
Friendly reminder, please read the OP to understand what I am asking for.
mmm
ETA: Although this…
> [@terentii](#):
>
> In which large city of the American Midwest will you find a marker for the halfway point between the Equator and the North Pole?
>
> Minneapolis, MN, at the edge of the suburb Golden Valley.
…is interesting.
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/30 "2025-05-29T01:45:37Z")
It’s at exactly 45 degrees N … or at least it used to be, when it was first placed there. No idea if it’s changed in the years since.
(Other cities might have one too, but MPS is the only one I know of.)
On a related subject, there’s an interesting marker of sorts outside the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. It’s a girder mounted vertically in the ground, trailed by a furrow (gash, really) at least six feet long running east and west. It shows how far the North American plate has shifted west since a certain date (I don’t remember which).
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/31 "2025-05-29T02:21:30Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> I don’t know what audience you’re writing for, but the best way to alienate an audience is to come up with a bunch of questions no one can answer.
Hard disagree. Our trivia nights always had these sorts of questions as tiebreakers, with the winner being the closest (usually using Price Is Right rules). We begged to hear the tiebreaker each time, even if there wasn’t a tie.
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/32 "2025-05-29T02:47:20Z")
Of the 91,000 German prisoners taken at Stalingrad in January 1943, how many lived to be repatriated after the war?
Around 5000, in the 1950s.
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### Author:  [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/33 "2025-05-29T05:56:49Z")
How many VWs were sold in the United States the first year they were imported?
2
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### Author:  [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/34 "2025-05-29T06:02:20Z")
How far in miles was the home ballpark of the American League team from home ballpark of the National League team in the 1921 World Series?
0 miles. That year it was the New York Yankees vs. the New York Giants, and they both played at the Polo Grounds.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/35 "2025-05-29T06:05:57Z")
Also, ISTM, some of these numbers are not hard facts and may be open to interpretation. Is there a hard-and-fast rule about what counts as “Broadway?” Are we talking about original run? Any cast or all original cast? The first ever or all performances over the years?
Is the base price of a car the MSRP when the company first advertised it? The price when it hit showroom floors? Where was the car sold?
And it goes on. Too easy to get different answers even if all are technically correct answers. Not sure how you would decide.
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### Author:  [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/36 "2025-05-29T06:07:10Z")
> [@glee](#):
>
> How many Agatha Christie detective novels feature the narrator as the murderer?
>
> 2 : Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Ten Little Indians
There’s another one, an excellent late Christie that deserves to be better known.
[Endless Night (novel) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Night_(novel))
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### Author:  [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/37 "2025-05-29T06:41:00Z")
> [@terentii](#):
>
> Twenty-seven. Three in each of the above missions, plus three each in Apollo 8, 10, and 13.
1. 3 of them went twice.
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### Author:  [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/38 "2025-05-29T07:37:20Z")
> [@hajario](#):
>
> Those questions would be good if the challenge was to see who could come closest to the actual number.
I could see it being fun, for the right audience, if there was some mechanism by which you could make an order of magnitude calculation of the answer, using common knowledge and a few smart assumptions. Then it comes down to who gets closest to the correct answer.
But creating such questions would be much harder than just tossing out a bunch of random “How many Xs in Y?” questions.
ETA: “Give a think and a guess to things you’ve perhaps never thought much about. How many dimples in a golf ball?”
This is a good one for my idea! Almost everyone has a rough idea how big a golf ball is (about an inch in diameter), and how big the dimples are (about a millimeter). So, if you know the formula for the surface area of a sphere, you could give a reasonable estimate.
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### Author:  [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/39 "2025-05-29T07:45:26Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> And it goes on. Too easy to get different answers even if all are technically correct answers. Not sure how you would decide.
In trivia contests, the traditional answer is “the answer on the card”.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2025, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seeking-assistance-constructing-a-trivia-quiz/1018921/40 "2025-05-29T07:46:54Z")
> [@Horatius](#):
>
> ETA: “Give a think and a guess to things you’ve perhaps never thought much about. How many dimples in a golf ball?”
>
> This is a good one for my idea! Almost everyone has a rough idea how big a golf ball is (about an inch in diameter), and how big the dimples are (about a millimeter). So, if you know the formula for the surface area of a sphere, you could give a reasonable estimate.
But there is the problem. There is no definitive answer. Not all golf balls have the same number of dimples.
So, sure, someone could get a reasonable estimate but saying who is closest to the right answer is not really possible if more than one is within a certain range of answers (a quick Google suggest 250-500 dimples are on different balls).
Maybe if the question specified a specific manufacturer and a particular ball they make there is a definitive answer but then it is not knowledge and just luck which kinda sucks for a trivia contest. May as well ask how many jelly beans are in a jar (and even that might be simpler to come to a correct answer within a few).
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