I realize the popularity of Harry Potter, yet I feel non-fans, such as myself, are being unfairly inundated with HP questions. I cannot count how many times I've lost out in the triathlon competition due to a Harry potter question. Just a few minutes ago, one was included in the "Easy set", and unless you're an expert in Harry questions, missing that one question ruins your chance at gaining the ever-elusive triathlon badge. Anyone else feel as I do?

I see questions about HP everywhere though, including entire sets dedicated to him.
Any chance of easing off Perry Hotter questions in so many of the categories?

Thanks for reading.

yak

Usually, if they appear in an easy set, they are very obvious questions. I'm sure you can get the correct answer to these, even without multiple choice:

Who is the main character in the series of books "Harry Potter"?
Who is Harry's best male friend?
Who is Harry's best female friend?
Who is Harry's enemy?
What is the name of the school Harry goes to?
Who is the headmaster of Hogwarts?


Besides, what do you want to do? The questions are automatically put in the database, and picked randomly. And do we want to get rid of any?

If we do start getting rid of HP questions because 1 person doesn't like them then I suggest we get rid of every American based question, every question asking about sports scores (not to mention "Who had the most runs in X?") and every television question and movies question.

I haven't noticed an extraordinary concentration of HP questions in any of the games. They occasionally do show up on For Children, but actually if you take a look at the vast array of HP questions there, they are vastly underrepresented in comparison, so they are already being "eased off".

Maybe with the further growth of our question pool, we can one day ensure that each timed game will select questions from 15 different subcategories, but this will probably be another few years of putting quizzes online until it will really work for all categories. If you all want to help the process along, write easy and medium quizzes in underrepresented areas!

I don't really see an inundation. I guess everyone has a category that he or she does not like terribly. I like Music for instance as a category, but many a Smartest set got ruined by country music questions. For a while I just answered Garth Brooks at every one of them, but that did not seem to work I don't think getting rid of certain categories is the answer to that, like AdamM7 already said. Practice makes perfect in most cases.

I like Harry Potter but I'm hardly well-versed on HP trivia. I don't see an overabundance of HP questions even though it's the biggest publishing phenomenon since the Bible .

Lightning bolt, Hermione, expelliarmus. That should get you started on default answers.

Don't forget who Arthur is either. (or was it Sam?)

Total immersion is a way to overcome biases. Take all the Harry Potter quizzes the site has to offer and then forget about fretting over them. You'll have seen the Q&A already! When immersed though, don't forget your gillweed.

"...they are very obvious questions..."

Like everything else, they're only obvious if you know the answer.

The last HP question I saw was multiple choice, and it went something like this:
"Golly gosh crumbs I'm almost faint with excitement. A new Harry Potter film's just been released. The year is 2002. What's the name of the film?"
followed by the names of four HP films. Close eyes and click randomly.

I agree that they are only obvious if you know the answer, but any question in Cake is easy, at least to the majority of people. The last HP question I saw was about the colour of something or other that was barely relevant to the plot of the book, but it wasn't in cake, which indicates that it *isn't* an easy question.

It was there this morning. Time to memorize it.

Barely relevant to the plot - that's why they call it trivia. :P

How did Cake get in here - or is it an inside joke known only to Harry Potter fans?

The "Easy set" was how Mayneeyak referred to the "Piece of Cake" game that began the thread.

"Cake" is just an abbreviation for "Piece of Cake", as mehaul said.

Missing one question on the POC game is not a disaster, either. It is much more damaging to your total score to miss one on the other two sets.

Really?

I thought the three games awarded the same amount of points for a correct answer - 100 each.

The games do have different time penalties though - 1 point per second for Cake, 2 points per second for the others. So you are better being faster on mixed/smartest, although I think it should be the other way round, especially since I always seem to be 10 seconds over on smartest and mixed and 30 seconds under on cake. Oh well.

(POC is also an abbreivation for Piece of Cake.)

Cake = Piece of Cake
Thank you both, I have caught up now.

I only see HP questions in the P of C game in the For Children category. I think a person has to expect that sometimes.

"It's not where I've been, fat boy, it's where I'm going." What Tommie Frazier said to Warren Sapp in the 1995 Orange Bowl"

Dave, If I'm not mistaken, those words were spoken by Bilbo Baggins to Harry Potter as he passed by him on the road to Hogwarts.

Are you saying Harry's magic wand makes him look fat?! lol

I'm saying neither that he is fat nor that his wand makes him look fat. I just think you may have misquoted Tommie Sapp.

From the Potent Quotables website:



From the Motivational Quotes website:



Now to get back on topic, I don't play a lot of the For Children timed games as I know very little about Harry Potter either, other than the blatantly obvious questions (Hermione, Ron, Hogwarts, etc.) that about 99.9% of people know.

Well, shoot! I guess I misspoke. I don't suppose Bilbo ever played quarterback for Nebraska?

With those big feet he was the kicker, which is a back but I don't think of the quarter kind. The Orange Bowl is now Marlins Park. What can be heard there now is "It's not where I've been, bat boy. I lost it elsewhere." To which Ozzie Guillen yells, "&!@# cucarachas!"

The thing with Harry is, he's in For Children in the Books for Kids, and he's in Movies, so it doubles the chances of a Q coming up in anything that draws Qs from both those pools. Maybe HP should be a category all on his own (And he can take those bloomin' Star Wars books with him out from among the "proper" science fiction too... )
Does anyone else remember those awful Trixie Belden Qs? They made Harry look positively rare and the really annoying thing was, all 2723 books in the series were out of print so one couldn't even read them in the hopes of remembering any of it.

Must just be me - but every time I see the title of this thread it takes me a while to work out what HP refers too. My first two reactions invariably are Hewlett Packard & when I realise that isn't the subject my mind turns to HP Lovecraft.

I think of the first one of yours, too, paper_aero.

I usually think of HP sauce first...

I'm thinking of a REALLY bad double-entendre just now! Har-har!

And I couldn't even think of anything HP stood for...

Horse Power?

Actually, Warren Sapp was to have supposedly called him "Thomas". Tommie just HATED being called that name! lol

BTW, there is a theory the story is apocryphal. No matter. It's practically folklore here in Nebreaska. People my age and a little younger will be telling that story to their grandchildren. I guarantee it.