I am seeing a lot of questions showing up with a choice of dates for answers, many of the annoying, close together date variety such as "1969, 1970, 1971, or 1972?". I know that a lot of editors reject regular quiz questions with dates as answers unless they are particularly worthy. Are they allowed through in the "New Questions" game with the hopes that they will simply be knocked out by poor ratings?

Still love the new questions quest, just not loving the return to "what year did such and such occur" questions.

I too have noticed several questions with dates as options. I have also noticed a rise in the more obscure questions. In the introduction it does say that the questions are meant to be easy to intermediate. I am sure that if 80% of English speaking people were asked a high percentage of the questions, they wouldn't get the answer right.

Question Quest is a brilliant game, perhaps there should be easy, intermediate and obscure levels attached to it.

If it's something really obscure (even if I know it!) I mark it poor/uninteresting, because I don't think they're in the spirit of the game. I'd do that for date questions such as you describe, Lieberkuhn...

The dates should not be close together like that because it becomes a guessing game. By spreading them apart, it at least makes the player ponder, and go through the elimation process. As for easy/intermediate, all difficulty levels are being accepted, then once initially played, are put in their own labeled question set. However, totally oblivious and those with no originality get sent back to the author.
When I write quizzes, the date options are a few years apart. When I write Single Questions, the dates are in separate decades because of the worldwide audience factor. I want to hang the player a carrot and make them *want* the answer. That's the spirit of the game. Try to be nice to the writers with your ratings.

I thought it was new game for submitting easy/intermediate questions, perhaps the introduction should be altered.


I submitted several when the Quest first started, which were sent back as too obscure. Blimey they were easy in comparison to some of the ones I've had lol

I always figure that date questions should be constructed so that someone who has some knowledge of the subject should be able to make an educated guess. I know which century Shakespeare, Mozart, Dante worked in, and answer options about 100 years apart are fair. I know in which decade to place the Beatles, Culture Club, Miley Cyrus...

I think questions of all difficulty levels are acceptable, as the questions are being generated for the difficult hourly games as well. However, since most of the hourly and daily games need easy to average questions, that is why the page says that is what we are looking for, and that's why authors of questions that meet those standards are eligible for badgelets.

There are some categories where dates are significant (sports and history come to mind) but it is a good idea to space the dates out as Nightmare was saying.

Unless they are also uninteresting, I usually rate the really difficult questions as "average". Date questions will usually get a "poor" from me, unless they are done well.

Another type of question I rate poorly are the ones that show up "Which regiment did this or that on such-and-such a date?"
A - the 4th
B - the 612th
C - the 42nd
D - the 31st

The question could be so much better asking about what happened than about which regiment did it. Those are just a bunch of numbers to me, about as uninteresting as a date question.