And damn it all.
Show of hands: How many people would have stood the slightest inkling of a chance with an “American Girl” question that involved character names (from, apparantly, the book series, no less. So boys were involved too!)?
Cost me my 10/10 for the day, it did.
I’ve found that the most effective strategy when you are faced with material you know nothing about is to spend a second seeing if the answer is in the clue. If not, click the first option (or the last, as those are the two places inexperienced quizwriters tend to put the answer) and move on as quickly as possible. There’s no point puzzling over material you won’t know any better with five more seconds of thinking about it.
That is, unless you want to sacrifice your quiz time to look an answer up. If you can get one more right in under 80 seconds (40 seconds is a pretty decent time, SDMB-wise, for getting the 10 answered), though, it might be worth it to do a quick websearch. You’d better get the answer, though, because otherwise you’ve just cost yourself a number of points.
The question (as best as I can remember:
[spoiler]
*In American Girls, Amelia says that Becky “has frisson” with what other character:
A) Charles
B) Daniel
C) “What’s frisson?”
D) Nobody*
Obviously, the answer is either A or B, but if you don’t know the book (and I was wrong, it’s a book by the writer of “Princess Diaries”, nothing to do with the dolls), it’s a total stab whether it’s A or B. And I could easily google it using one of the two names, but wouldn’t you know it? Both names A and B appear in the book descriptions somewhat near the word “frisson,” so it’s further time wasting to determine which one it applies to. A 50/50 guess without looking things up is the better choice.[/spoiler]
I’m just in the mood to be petty and fuming this morning, because I’m not a 14 year old girl. Which of course, makes me act just like a 14 year old girl.
Hey everyone. If I may be so bold to bump this. A new Global Challenge just started on that site…and those are VERY fun.
Basicially it’s like this: There are 12 or so “ranks” or groups ranging from Newbies to Geniuses. You start at the bottom of the ladder and every 4 or 5 hours or so, you can take 5 quizzes in the categories they have. Based on how you do on them, it builds you up slowly but surely to the next level.
Anyway, I just thought it’d be cool in this global challenge to get as many people from here who have an account there to the highest tier. This Global Challenge just started last week. To play simply go to the site listed in the OP and scroll down to “Global Challenge” and play any five you want. You can even play the impossible category as a bonus. 
Since this got bumped…Thanks **Fessie ** for coming up with this trivia tournament. I’ve been enjoying myself for months now. I hope it keeps going.
Hey, I’m glad people are having fun!
Just an FYI on the parameters:
I have some control over the parameters - I could up the difficulty level (or change the subject), and we could all answer exactly the same 10 questions.
At first I was going to pick the topic by hand each day, using something from the “Comments on Cecil’s Column” to keep it impartial (they have a database of 90k questions) - but none of the terms I tried generated enough questions for a game. Seems like 80k of those 90k must be pop culture.
OTOH, if we’re bored with this format, we could go with some more specific topic, on either a daily or weekly basis. I’d hate to exclude anyone, but don’t want to be bored with playing, either.
Hey, I did okay!
I stupidly used a different handle, so I’m “Icon” (don’t ask, work-related)