Interesting Info Trivia Quiz

Answer: No

Not only is Agatha dead wrong about The Edge's musical skills, but there's also no information in this "interesting info"! All that she writes is her opinion, which probably won't really enlighten the players. She's perfectly free to state her opinion there, of course, but this is a trivia site - she's got to include some facts as well.

For example, she could give information about The Edge's personal life or tell about a chord he might have missed in a live performance of "Walk On."

Answer: No

All the normal Quizzyland rules - spelling, grammar, capitalization, etc. - apply to interesting info as well as the questions and answers. Many people, like Cameron, are surprised by this - but the fact is that the interesting info is just as important to the quiz as anything else! And if you look closely at what Cameron wrote, you'll see that "Tomb Raider" is not in quotation marks - as all movie titles are required to be -- and that several words that should be capitalized aren't.

Answer: Yes

It's true that we prefer interesting info that doesn't repeat the question and answer - but Lola gives plenty of additional facts, and only repeats herself for emphasis. There would be a problem if she had written the first phrase only ("Yes, this amazing woman was nicknamed Moses"): not only does it not give any information that wasn't already in the question and answer, but about the only new thing it says (that Ms. Tubman was "amazing") is an opinion!

Answer: No

Take another look at the very first sentence: "Yep, Mr. Cruise is all over the cinema this summer." The problem is that, hopefully, Emil's quiz will still be online at FunTrivia for years and years to come - and the phrase "this summer" won't mean the same thing in, say, three years' time.

This info is date-dependent and will go stale as time goes by, so Emil should rephrase it: "Mr. Cruise was all over the cinema in the summer of 2002 ..."

Answer: She can use ellipsis ( . . . ) to replace the offending word - or she can just choose a different quote.

At FunTrivia, most swear or curse words are not allowed, although in some cases exceptions are made. (For example, feel free to refer to Hell in a Religion quiz - but don't tell your players to go there!) We don't even let you replace some or all of the letters with stars or dashes, since that's too close to the original word when you consider it from the standpoint of a curious eight-year-old.

But when you're writing out a quote, you can't just remove a word willy-nilly either - that changes the quote and makes it inaccurate.

The solution is to replace the word with ellipsis ( . . . ) which signify that a word or phrase is being left out, but says nothing about what was removed. Or, of course, Guinevere could simply select a less hard-boiled quote to spice up her quiz.

Answer: No

Imagine that you're taking Archibald's quiz, tripping along happily from question to question. You click "submit" and check your answers. Monet, Degas, Manet - you're on a roll! But then it happens - you get to Question 4, and where some interesting info should be, there's a little note saying "n/a." What does that mean, "not applicable"? Does it mean that "Girl with a Hoop" is so boring that there's no information about it, at all, anywhere? Should you cancel your trip to beautiful Washington, DC, where you were going to see the painting? The momentum of the quiz is lost, the player is unnecessarily confused, and Archibald will get destroyed in the rankings.

It's far better to check whether your category guidelines will allow you to leave the interesting info blank for a question or two if you need to ... if not, bite the bullet and do some research. "N/A" is neither interesting nor information; it's worse than a blank interesting info box.

Answer: She should do some research, on the Internet or in a library, find out the title of the episode, and write it in.

It wouldn't be very fair of Etheline to expect the players to do her research for her - she's the one writing the quiz, after all! And "I can't remember the name of the episode" is not only uninformative, but would probably sour the players on the rest of the quiz - they're taking a quiz to test their knowledge or to learn new things, and here the quizwriter can't be bothered to look up some basic information. Meanwhile, they'll see right through a non-info blurb like "This was funny," which offers no information other than Etheline's opinion. If Etheline sends that quote through a standard search engine or breaks out a Star Trek encyclopedia, though, she'll quickly find that the episode was "The Trouble with Tribbles" from the second season - and her players will appreciate it, because now they know which videotape they should rent.

Answer: No

What Hubert doesn't realize is that the players, even the ones who don't know very much about Triple H or pro wrestling, are not his enemies! All kinds of people take FunTrivia quizzes. Some take quizzes in order to test their knowledge of subjects they already know well; others take quizzes in order to learn about fields they've never really looked at before. Getting any question wrong doesn't make someone stupid, and there's _never_ a good reason to insult the players, in an interesting info box or anywhere else.

Answer: No; it's factually incorrect.

Henrietta needs to do some more studying before she takes her exam! Interesting info is fact-based, and it's just as important as the rest of the quiz - the editors hold it to the same high standards of accuracy as the rest of the site. It's true that German is a fine language, but the editors are much more impressed by correct information. (The exploding battleship in 1898 was actually the U.S.S. Maine, in Havana, Cuba and it was American newspaper barons who ignited a war with Spain over it. The Spanish-American War ended quickly, with the U.S. taking over the Philippines and several other former Spanish colonies.)

Answer: No - it's plagiarism, plain and simple.

There's no Quizzyland-wide minimum limit for interesting info, but Floyd is in trouble nonetheless. After all, he's attached his user name to someone else's words: by submitting it, he claims it as his own. That's stealing, whether the editors catch it or not - and we spot plagiarism more often than you'd think. And the source doesn't matter - plagiarism is plagiarism, no matter if the words are taken from a book, an encyclopedia, or a homework assignment. Floyd should have done some more research so that he could write his own interesting info, and if he still had to use anyone else's words, he should have used quotation marks and cited the source.