10.17.2005

Stuff or nonsense?

I've just come across a couple of very cool quizzes at Reverent.org. They aren't lame personality tests, they're simple quizzes with two answer choices, in which you must distinguish between something that is famous or great and something that is fake, obscure, or just bad. I only missed one on the "True art or a fake?" quiz, and got progressively worse from there. I only got 50% on "Great Prose or Crap?" which pits Charles Dickens against Edward Bulwer-Lytton*...a statistically likely result for mere guessing. And I think it got worse after that. Those with good eye can try "True art or a fake?" and "Famous or unknown artist?", the musically inclined can attempt "Mozart or Salieri?" and "MIDI or Virtuoso?", and literary folks can do "An artist or a hack?" and "Machine translation or Faulkner?"
Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

These remind me of another fun quiz I posted a while back, Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

Good luck.

*Edward Bulwer-Lytton is the inspiration for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to write the worst first sentence of a novel, and the Lyttle Lytton Contest, the same thing in 25 words or less. (Side note -- I had known of and admired the Lyttle Lytton for some time when I discovered that its creator was someone whom I had recently met and worked with. My mind was just a little blown. Especially when I browsed the rest of his site and saw all the interesting stuff he's into.)

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous:

You've worked with Adam Cadre?! I'm awed. I've known his work for a while because he's so famous in interactive fiction circles . . . he writes these gorgeous games that are alternately hilarious and really, really dark.

And those quizzes are . . . humbling. Must pass link along. =D

18:35  
Anonymous Anonymous:

How do you know him?

I've been intending to do that Bulwer-Lytton Contest since my freshman year at Bard. Someday...

19:20  
Blogger Jess Haskins:

He's my trainer for The Princeton Review. I spent a couple of grueling weekends with him a while back in a training course for new SAT prep teachers. I had no clue he was famous in any circles whatsoever.

19:36  

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