Player nayandev reported that in my quiz "This Chameleon Can Hide Two Elephants" the answer to questions 2 and 5 did not accept an answer in lowercase. The correct answer is a single letter.

Normally any FITB answer will accept all possible mixtures of capitals and lowercase letters.

I presume that the player typed a leading or following space, but I vaguely remember Terry having done something about truncating leading and following spaces.

Can an editor look into this matter please?

I played that quiz and had no trouble entering lowercase letters, so case is not the issue (which is expected, as you say).

I've just played the quiz, and checked it from the editor's point of view, and nothing appears to be wrong with the quiz. I couldn't see anything wrong with the player's answer either, so looks like it was some sort of weird glitch that is OK now.


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Spanishliz (Editor in Brain Teasers, Geography, Movies and Crosswords)

No issues on my end playing it. I'm on Chrome with Win10 to give you the specs.

I played the quiz. In my browser (IE 11) when you first enter a letter (and each answer was for a single letter) I get a drop-down presentation of possible answers that begin with that letter. To by-pass an entry from that list after typing the single letter, you have to click outside the drop down list of options. If the top entry on the list was an apostrophe letter (such as 'a) and the player just hit enter, they would see the 'a seemingly by itself and not notice the '.

So, it may have been a case of errant option selection from a drop-down with a space, a period/stop or an apostrophe attached to the letter. Might you or an editor approach nayandev to determine the method they used to enter the answer?

I am an editor, and I have checked the answer that was entered, before making my earlier post. None of the problems you suggest appear to have happened. I can see the answer as it was entered, and have checked for all of those possibilities.

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Spanishliz (Editor in Brain Teasers, Geography, Movies and Crosswords)

Usually when I receive a correction like the one described, the player has accidentally inserted a space before or after the answer. If the player inserted an apostrophe, it would show on the correction notice (an editor can see what a player answered for a given question; there's no need to hunt them down and ask).

My post was only to point out the pitfalls that the drop down options present in FITB. I used the apostrophe as an example (since the space has been cited). There is also the key character under the ~ (`) that may be difficult to resolve on some low resolution phone screens. I am sure your investigations present the answer: glitch. I just thought reminding players of that drop down trouble was warranted too. Asking nayandev their machine type and manner of answering might set the nail in the lid, but you all seem satisfied and that has worked in the past.

My response was just to note that the editors have the resources to pinpoint exactly where an issue may lie in this regard without needing to ask around. The less we need to investigate player browser settings, the better it is for everyone.