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Trivia Quiz Room

A Sanctum of Cool & Unusual Punishment
for the Academically Masochistic

This page demonstrates self-scored quizzes! They are entirely for your own use. No grades are generated or reported.

For more on the educational logic and access to the web forms to make similar quizzes for your own web site, click here. (Not all of the quizzes on this page can be made with those forms.)

Most of the following are directed toward college students, sometimes even in my courses. If you are a person who likes testing yourself, these may amuse you. You may even learn something. If you are a low self-tester, there are almost certainly more interesting ways to spend your time.


Political Gibberish:
Overused and/or Underthought Expressions From American Politics

(Items on this page are quizzes. For generalized satires on gibberish of all kinds, click here.)

Terms in these quizzes were mindlessly repeated by politicians, reporters, and talking heads in 2022-2024. (2022 and 2024 were election years, which tends to render such folk especially fatuous. 2023 was a primary year, which has the same effect. Hypothesis: Fatuousness is not year-dependent; only the temporarily fashionable expressions are.)

In each quiz pick the item in the second column which, based on frequency in public discourse, an artificial intelligence robot would routinely propose to complete the “thought” begun by the item in the first column.

2024 Political Gibber:
Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3, Quiz 4, Quiz 5, Quiz 6.

2023 Political Gibber:
Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3, Quiz 4, Quiz 5, Quiz 6, Quiz 7, Quiz 8.

2022 Political Gibber:
Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3, Quiz 4, Quiz 5.

Numbers in the News

The news is full of model numbers for armaments, airplanes, and other stuff that the consumer is just supposed to know about. Is that realistic? Is a reader really supposed to know what an RC-135 is?! Here are some recent numbers for you to match to models. To keep the task manageable, the quizzes are short and each one comes in two versions, one with hints and one without. Live it up.
With hints: Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3
Without hints: Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3

Words in the News (Vocabulary Quizzes for College Students)

What This Is. The following quizzes include words used in some of the world’s leading weekly Anglophone news sources (usually The Economist). They are therefore words that educated readers should know.

Why This Is Here. I once had a (jaded) colleague who, in about 2005, insisted college students, being part of Youth Today, and therefore clueless, ignorant, inarticulate, and generally hopeless, would find the vocabulary used by standard news sources completely over their various heads. If you are a college student, here is your chance to prove her wrong! (In fact, she eventually retired to become a hermit and to spend her days feeling superior, but you may still have fun with the quizzes.)

Although blocked into years, the items are in no significant order. You can start anywhere.

2005-2011      
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10 11 12 13 14   15 16 17 18 19 20 21

2012-2014      
22 23 24 25 26    27 28 29 30 31    32 33 34 35 36    37 38 39 40 41

2015-2016      
42 43 44 45 46    47 48 49 50 51    52 53

2017-2019      
54 55 56 57 58    59 60 61 62 63    64 65 66 67 68    69 70

71 72 73 74 75    76 77 78 79 80    81 82

2020      
83 84 85 86 87    88 89 90 91

College Life

Americana

Californiana

World Geography

Other Stuff You Should Have Learned in School

Religious Studies Stuff

Chinese Studies Stuff

Pop Culture Trivia Quizzes


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