# Soliciting feedback on this 10-question "ID the quote" quiz **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 27, 2009, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308 "2009-10-27T15:47:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/21 "2009-10-27T18:05:25Z")
> [@glowacks](#): > > … is the Gladiator quote immersed in some sort of pop culture that I’ve managed to (successfully) avoid? Possibly, yes. I’ve seen the phrase “on my (command/word/signal), unleash Hell!” in several different contexts in the past few years, mostly in movies and TV though, recalled it being used in “Gladiator” but came up short beyond that point. It sounded like something that should have been a quote, but then I thought: if a Roman general said it, the line would had to have had at least as ancient a source, but there wasn’t really an Armageddon image of destruction associated with the afterlife for the Romans. Something didn’t add up, and I could only conclude that it was made up by a contemporary source and put in the mouth of a fictional character. Googling around turned nothing up to the contrary, other than a Yahoo reply which claimed Stonewall Jackson said it, which I don’t think is true and is otherwise uncorroborated. Since this was the last question in my quiz, I even started a GQ thread on the SDMB to comb for older sources, and it seems this is definitely it. ---
**Author:** ![HongKongFooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c4cdca/32.png) [@HongKongFooey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HongKongFooey)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/22 "2009-10-27T18:09:42Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > I got nine right. But I’m old. Tsk, tsk, we expected better of you. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/23 "2009-10-27T18:14:27Z")
I’m gonna change the scoring to be more fine: **SCORING:** **0 - 1** : _Dumb Ass_. Work harder at climbing the Ass Ladder, my friend! **2 - 4** : _Just An Ass_. Not bad, but you can’t spell “one of the masses” without “asses”.\*\* 5 - 6\*\*: _Wise Ass_. You are a wise one, as asses go! Good for you! **7 - 8** : _Bad Ass_. That’s “Bad” as in “Scary Good”, like Jules in _Pulp Fiction_. **9 - 10** : _Smart Ass_. Asses don’t come much smarter than you, do they! ---
**Author:** ![Dancer\_Flight](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dancer_flight/32/7601_2.png) [@Dancer\_Flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dancer_Flight)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/24 "2009-10-27T18:57:38Z")
I got 7 right (I guess I Am a Wise Ass) including the give yourself credit for A, C or D for the Bang/Wimper quote (I picked D for that by the way). I missed the JFK and FDR quotes (picking B and C, respectively), and number 9 (picked A when my first instinct was B). I’m Canadian by the way, so that might explain the two muffed presidential quotations. I thought the quiz was well put together. -DF ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/25 "2009-10-29T14:00:36Z")
OK, I changed my Question #5 (the Eliot quote) to not be a “one wrong answer” one because it’s too confusing to score for any FB quiz app I’ve found (which I haven’t yet, for that matter, for various reasons). I had trouble coming up with 2 more plausible answers though, and settled for one plausible one and one ridiculous one. Can anyone suggest something better for Choice D? The question and its write-up in my answer key is now: * * * **5. “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” What is this an allusion to, in its original source?** (A) Guy Fawkes, who was caught trying to blow up the English Parliament in 1605 (B) A global nuclear holocaust, wherein death would come so fast you’d barely have time to cry out (C) A soldier’s death by poison gas in a World War I trench (D) A boy being forced to shoot his destructive pet deer, who then runs away but eventually comes home to be a farmer **Answer: (A) Guy Fawkes!** This ending to his poem “[The Hollow Men](http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/)” is T. S. Eliot’s most recognized quote, and the reference to Guy Fawkes is set up in one of the two opening epigrams to the poem, “_A penny for the Old Guy_”. This is a traditional thing for children to say in England to get money on Guy Fawkes Day (to offset the cost of making and burning an effigy of Guy), which commemorates the day he was foiled (“_Remember, remember the Fifth of November / The gunpowder, treason and plot_”). Instead of blowing up Parliament with a bang, he was tortured and executed as a traitor, which surely involved some whimpering. The poem was published in 1925, well before World War II, and while it is replete with bleak images of death and destruction, thermonuclear annihilation was simply not in scope. Eliot himself would be quoted late in his life (1958) as saying he would choose different words if he were to write it anew: “…_while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant [to the poem], it would today come to everyone’s mind_”. In fact, Eliot never wrote any poems depicting war. It is Wilfred Owen’s poem “[Dulce Et Decorum Est](http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html)” which is about a soldier dying from poison gas in horrible detail, ending with the bitter lines: “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: _Dulce et Decorum est_ / _Pro patria mori_.” (Which is a quote from the ancient Roman poet Horace that means: “It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country.”) Owen himself served on the front, and died in the war one week before its end. His parents received notice of his death on November 11th, even as the town bells began pealing to celebrate the Armistice. And the whole bit about the boy and the deer? That’s from a movie called “_The Yearling_”. You’re totally confused if you thought that was the answer! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/26 "2009-10-29T14:11:37Z")
Uber-nitpicks: _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_ is more accurately translated as _it is sweet and fitting_ to die for one’s homeland\*\*\*. \*there’s only one noun in the sentence, _patria_, and it’s not really necessary to translate the phrase idiomatically by adding _thing._ \*\*in modern usage, _patria_ would be translated into country, but in Horace’s time the idea of the nation-state with fixed borders did not yet exist; the word literally translates as _fatherland._ ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/27 "2009-10-29T15:35:41Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Uber-nitpicks: _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_ is more accurately translated as _it is sweet and fitting_ to die for one’s homeland\*\*\*. > > \*there’s only one noun in the sentence, _patria_, and it’s not really necessary to translate the phrase idiomatically by adding _thing._ > \*\*in modern usage, _patria_ would be translated into country, but in Horace’s time the idea of the nation-state with fixed borders did not yet exist; the word literally translates as _fatherland._ I agree with you on the literal and original classical meanings (based on having taken 4 years of Latin many years ago), but I like my own choice of translation and I’m sticking with it! 😃 I personally feel using the phrase “a sweet and fitting thing” adds a needed syllable to the sentence in English. Maybe because it echoes the title of a story I like, _A Fine And Gentle Place_ by Peter S. Beagle, which is also about death (though in a completely different context than WWI). ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/28 "2009-10-29T17:20:18Z")
I think you should make this a Know-It-All quiz in the Know-It-All Trivia app. You will need to ditch your smarmy results and fix the question that has multiple answers, but that app is so far the least annoying quiz app I’ve seen and these questions are more suited for people who want to play trivia, not people who want to take a silly quiz. Also, have you considered posting your quiz on [OkCupid.com](http://OkCupid.com) as well? ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/29 "2009-10-29T17:28:51Z")
> [@HongKongFooey](#): > > Tsk, tsk, we expected better of you. 😉 What are you, the Coalition of Ex-Girlfriends? You should know my shortcomings by now. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/30 "2009-10-29T18:26:19Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > I think you should make this a Know-It-All quiz in the Know-It-All Trivia app. > > You will need to ditch your smarmy results and fix the question that has multiple answers … Thanks, I’ll look into that app. I already fixed the question with multiple answers, and my wife has also objected to the “smarmy” scoring. I was thinking of all the FB “What kind of xyz are you?” types of quizzes and figured this one, relative to the lowbrow nature of the vast majority of FB quizzes, would probably get called a “smartass” quiz so I might as well roll with it 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Godinama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e95f7d/32.png) [@Godinama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Godinama)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/31 "2009-10-29T18:38:51Z")
Eight, but I guessed correctly on one or two so I’m not sure that counts as actually _knowing_ anything. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/32 "2009-10-29T18:55:26Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > What are you, the Coalition of Ex-Girlfriends? You should know my shortcomings by now. I believe their official workgroup name is The Coalition of the Unwilling. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308/33 "2009-10-29T18:56:53Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I believe their official workgroup name is The Coalition of the Unwilling. 😃 Bazinga! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soliciting-feedback-on-this-10-question-id-the-quote-quiz/515308.md?page=1)