Happily!

That would work.

Thank you, I'm glad it's not just me.

I try and avoid "not" questions too, but sometimes there is no other way to do something. The reason why a few persons are rather picky at this is of course the use in timed games.

I sometimes feel frustrated at the importance of suiting questions to timed games, as my quiz is an integrated work, moving in a meaningful way through ten structured questions. It is not an assembly of ten random questions, and it is meant to be savored, not gulped down. Of course, I know that for many the questions exist only as fodder for their games, and that's the way it is.

"Not" questions tend to be answered incorrectly more often than might be expected. In a recent quiz I asked which of these would NOT be one of the items placed in a small container to float downstream during a religious ritual: candles, flowers, incense sticks, llamas. Only about two-thirds of players have gotten it right! It would probably have more correct if I had chosen to go with the longer and (to my eye) uglier option of giving four sets of three items, with the three incorrect options including the llamas.

What's even worse is an approach I came across recently - a quiz that said in the introduction that the nameof an aothor would be given along with the titles of four books, and you have to choose the one they did not write. Of course, that information isn't there in a timed game, and the quiz title gave no clue, so players just saw a name and four titles, and would have had a lot of trouble guessing what was needed.

What l_t described in that last paragraph is the reason why all questions now have to ASK a question. For example, if you're writing a "which band sang this song?" quiz, every question has to actually ask in some way "Which band sang this song?" rather than putting "Black Dog?" and the four answer options.


I too don't like to write my quizzes pandering to the daily/hourly games. I mean, I do in that every question has to stand on its own and follow the particular rules of the category I'm writing in but something like "Is this question too long for someone to read in a timed game?" does not cross my mind while I am writing.

I'm another one who doesn't like the "tail wagging the dog" aspect of the timed games coming to dominate quiz writing. Much of what makes an FT quiz something special - interesting info, fresh approach, humour, storyline - just seem to be so much chaff in in the way of getting that answer 1/60th of a second faster.

As an editor and an author, I make sure all questions are *possible* in the context of a timed game, but quite frankly don't give much of a hoot if they are *optimal* for timed games.

Having had a quiz which took 18 months of research rejected completely because of the guidelines for the New Question Game, (no, I'm not dragging it up again lol, just mentioning as it colours my opinion now) I HATE it when "people" get picky because they've had a question in a timed game that "was too long" or "had to read to much to get to the question" or similar complaints. It feels like the daily/hourly games are taking over, and the actual quizzes no longer matter in the quest for fast times, high scores, and badges. Having to reiterate all the information in every single question (on the off chance they might be used in an hourly/daily game) can make the actual quiz "clunky" and detract from it.

I'm with you on that one Rowena.

I find it hard to reiterate info in each question sometimes without feeling like I am sounding like a broken record. Video Games and Music are the two categories that come to mind when I have minor meltdowns trying to repeat myself without repeating myself. If that makes sense at all?

Ditto the previous five posts. I'm not a fan of the timed games, but I understand that everyone has his or her own preference.

I really enjoy the timed games, but I still think the quizzes are the most important part of the site - I fully agree that it can be a nuisance tailoring your quiz questions for the possibility of inclusion in the hourly games. It's good then that the Question Quest submissions are used for many hourly games - though also with them, if my question is long, so be it! As I understand it, the length is shorter for QQ, but still there may be people who think the questions too long!

Let's be honest, even in regular quizzes, lots of players are not going to read questions that are too long - not that that's a good thing!

Oh, well, that's their loss. I admit, I can be a little put off when the question text is HUGE, but some people would probably complain if a question had at least one extra sentence that wasn't the question!

I don't consider a question to be "too long" until, in Flash mode, it gets turned into really tiny text - then that's a bit long! But still, I figure if someone wanted to write that much, then that's fine. There are most likely fans of the particular topic who enjoy reading that much about it and those that don't can learn how to skim!

But that's one of the great things about the site, too, where the content comes from not one, or a few, but literally thousands of different authors. You may not like everything you come across, but chances are you'll be able to find quizzes/games that you particularly enjoy.

((As I understand it, the length is shorter for QQ, but still there may be people who think the questions too long! ))

One of the things I find most frustrating about the Single Question format constraints is the very limited length of answer options. I'm not sure of the exact length, but it feels like about 24 characters - something like four or five words?
Sure, you don't want an answer option which is 3 lines long, or even which breaks onto more than one line - but you could double the present character allowance without that happening.

Edit: I checked: You are allowed 40 characters (including spaces) for an answer option. By way of comparison, I looked at a relatively long answer option from one my quizzes, which was 65 characters - even this amounted to only about half a line.

That's half a line on your screen. It won't be the same for everyone.

Even at 800x600 it's only 3/4 line. Another 15 characters would still not push it past one line at this resolution.

But you've made me wonder - was this limit set back when some people were still using the lowly 640x480? If so, maybe it's time to review it!

The New Question Game hasn't even made it to its second anniversary yet, Rimrunner! And the character limit was imposed some time after its inception. It's never caused me any problems as an author, but as a quiztaker I'm rather glad of it.

I've had a couple of submissions where I've had to reword what I originally wanted to say so that it was concise enough to fit in the question space. When this happens I usually just copy/paste into Word, which has a character count, and fiddle around with it until I can pare it down to a usable size.

I do remember having to give up on one question because I simply couldn't work out how to get it down to the maximum length without losing its flavor entirely. But for the most part it encourages clarity and conciseness - these questions are meant to be relatively short and snappy, as their intended destination is timed games. When I feel like crafting more complex questions, I write a quiz. Which, to be honest, I do much more often that writing single questions which don't have as much scope to explore the ideas that inspired the question in the first place,

I understand the reasons for making the word "not" stand out in questions. I just find it a bit jarring when it's done all in upper case. I equate that use with shouting, though I know that's not the intention of any writer or editor here. It's simply that it goes against Internet convention and my own too-sensitive nature.

And please, I'm not being critical. I appreciate whatever works in making the questions readable and fun to answer.

I personally prefer highlighting by *asterisks* if a highlight is to be made because it tends to be less disruptive to the flow of text. There's however the one exception to the rule: the ever-popular NOT. This is such an important indicator in timed quizzes where you are speed-reading the question that it has to stick out at all cost.

So if you need to highlight words in a Hobbies quiz you write and want to make me extremely happy, it's caps for a NOT in the question text and asterisks for everything else

(By the way - I am not adverse to the "not" question in general, but I would prefer to see less of actors not being in which movie and songs not being by which band. It always strikes me as wrong to talk about someone and highlight the work they did not do.)

Well, Wes, that statement made me go back to my hobbies quiz that is currently submitted and change a word to not be all caps. lol. It's further back in the queue now, but you'll find less fault in it. lol.

Actually, it went from last place (of 2) to last, so no damage taken

lol, only two in the queue, huh? Well, you put one of them onlilne shortly after saying that.....

WHOOHOO! Mine's next, mine's next! lol.

Actually, I put it online before I said it. It just wasn't through the Early Bird minutes yet.

So still second :P