This pertains to quiz 202822 about strange NHL records.

I took it today and answered two questions (4 and 5) correctly, but when the answer screen came up, it told me your answer: (my answer) INCORRECT then below that told me the correct answer - which matched my answer! These were multiple choice questions too, not FITB.

I submitted a correction, with the caveat that it looked more like a FunTrivia bug than a problem with the quiz.

The quizmaker messaged me back asking me to try it again. This time, the problem occurred with questions 4, 5, 7, and 10.

Oddly, other questions, I answered correctly and got credit for. Those four, I answered correctly and it told me I was wrong!

I am not sure if this matters, but I'm taking the quizzes on Netscape 7 (kinda like Mozilla, but not exactly) in MacOS 9.2. Which is what I'm using about 80% of the time I'm in FunTrivia.

The problem's trailing spaces after the answer. The author has inserted tab marks after the answer on some, and on others he or she has hit the space bar after the answer.

At first blush, yes, but that's not how these damn computers work! There's a post 3 or 4 years ago by Terry in here, somewhere, explaining how QL works. This is from memory:

the format for all questions is the same (internally, behind the scenes).

the quizplayer submits an answer, and the submission is matched to what's stored as the answer.

the match is a one for one character match.

for FITBs the quizplayer types in the answer, for multiple choice "the computer" types in the answer (being what's displayed on the screen).

if the MC answer selected is [yankees] and the stored answer is [yankees   ], the answer is wrong, as it doesn't match.

ditto if the player types the one word answer [yankees].

This also occurs with answers using foreign language symbols from time to time, even on MCs.

<< Wow. I believe you, but am pretty surprised that the situation you describe would affect multiple choice questions. I mean, doesn't the system say that if the correct answer is [correct answer*tab*], that choice is assigned a multiple choice letter, and if a user selects that letter, he's correct? >>

No, because in order to reduce cheating in the past, the order of the answers CHANGES constantly. Thus, the actual answer text is submitted when you answer a multiple choice question. This has the side effect of creating problems like the one above when weird characters are present in the answer.

Terry

I almost always use the tab button when making quizzes for expedience, including FITB. However, I have never had a report like this. What is the difference?

For all the wonderful features on the site, wouldn't it be fairly easy to write a routine stripping all leading and trailing whitespace characters (tab, space, <cr>, etc.) from within the question/answers/info fields?

Using the "Tab" key (as well as the Shift + Tab combination) does help while making quizzes, to quickly switch from one text-box to an adjacent one. I haven't had any problems yet, either.

No, I use the tab key to actually write the quizzes. No problems so far.