Curious Hobbies for Curious People Quiz

Answer: Extreme ironing

Extreme ironing combines the "pressing chore" of ironing clothes with an extreme outdoor activity, and that activity can be almost anything. Phil Shaw of Leicester, England, came up with the brilliant idea in 1997 after returning home from work and facing a pile of ironing. He had wanted to go rock climbing. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the rest is history.

Extreme ironers, who have been known to call themselves "ironists", have tried such extreme activities as rock climbing and ironing, kayaking and ironing, skiing and ironing, scuba diving and ironing, and, of course, bungee jumping and ironing. If you're interested in a unique hobby, this one is a fabulous place to start.

Answer: Flowers and leaves

This one is less weird per se and more niche. French beading uses tiny seed beads and wire to create three-dimensional flowers, leaves, stems and other botany-related shapes. The results can be surprisingly lifelike and quite stunning. Wreaths and arrangements in vases are particularly common. Best part? You don't have to remember to water them.

Answer: Rogue taxidermy

Rogue taxidermy is what we're looking for, and it's exactly what it sounds like: using taxidermy-related materials in less-than-traditional ways Rather than simply mounting an animal to make it look lifelike (already a pretty weird hobby), rogue taxidermists use animal parts, synthetic materials, and sculptural elements to create fantastical creatures and even abstract art. Two-headed animals are not beyond the pale from my searches. For better or worse, the "movement" took shape in 2004, when Sarina Brewer, Scott Bibus, and Robert Marbury showed their work off together and later established the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists.

Answer: Flow arts

Flow arts is an all-encompassing term for movement-based pastimes, art forms, and something your weird Uncle Walter does on the beach for fun. Flow arts combines creative body movement with the manipulation of all sorts of props. Common examples include poi spinning, staff spinning, hula hooping, fan dancing, and even contact juggling, which isn't as fun as it sounds. Props can incorporate LED lights or fire, making flow arts especially eye-catching after sunset. You've probably seen it done without knowing the name.

"Flow" also refers to the mental state practitioners will often try to seek, in which they become deeply absorbed in the activity, experiencing an intense focus and feeling of being fulling engaged. Based on my understanding, we non-flowers would call it "being in the zone".

Answer: Paper marbling

Paper marbling is an interesting decorative technique in which paints are floated on the surface of water or another liquid called "size". From there you can manipulate the pigments with the tools of your choice to create whatever kind of pattern you're looking for. Finally, you place a sheet of paper on the surface, where it picks up your unique floating design. Each sheet is statistically a one-of-a-kind print, because that's just the way physics works.

Answer: Cricket fighting

Before you start picturing something overly gruesome, crickets rarely suffer serious injuries in this curious activity, although they don't always leave their little arena entirely unscathed either. The contest begins with displays of aggression, but it can escalate into grappling and biting.

So before the match (and after bets are placed) handlers will agitate the male crickets by manipulating their antennae with a small straw, stick, or whatever is handy. It gets them cranky. A divider between the insects is removed, and the fight is on!

Rules vary, but typically a cricket loses the fight the moment it runs away, breaks physical contact, or leaps out of the arena, as crickets are prone to do. It also can lose if it simply stops chirping during the match.

I said these were weird hobbies, not necessarily exciting ones.

Answer: Element collecting

Literally "all kinds of substances" in this case, or at least the ones that won't blow up your house or otherwise kill you. The goal is building a physical version of the periodic table. Collectors seek out metals, minerals, gases sealed in cute little containers, or other specimens to represent particular elements. And yes, radium can turn up in collections, but the term "radium collecting" is usually discouraged, because of the way it looks on a police report.

It's hard to collect all of them, though. As a general rule, it's an unreasonable goal. Several elements are extremely rare, highly radioactive, dangerously reactive, or exist only briefly in laboratories and particle accelerators. So you might need to leave the box for oganesson empty.

Answer: Universal fid

Like a lot of niche hobbies, lock picking has a very specialized little vocabulary. A tension wrench applies rotational pressure to the lock's plug. Meanwhile picks such as hooks and rakes manipulate the pins inside. A jiggler is a specialized key-shaped tool used with certain kinds of lower-security wafer locks and the like.

A fid is a nautical tool used for splicing rope.

Answer: Dirt

Playing with clumps of dirt isn't for everyone, but oh, the things you can do! Hikaru dorodango is a fascinating hobby. Start with some dirt... that's the easy part. Now mix in some water and shape it into a ball. Add layers of increasingly fine, dry soil as you continue to shape and dry your dirt clump.

Then finally comes the pièce de résistance! Polish the surface until it develops a smooth, glossy finish, and you've got yourself a hikaru dorodango! The Japanese word "hikaru" means "shine", and the results can look surprisingly like a highly polished rock.

Answer: Circuit bending

Circuit bending is the charmingly weird practice of modifying electronic devices, particularly old toys, keyboards, synthesizers, and more, to create sounds and behaviors their designers certainly never had in mind. These modifications can involve making new connections between points on a circuit board, changing resistors or capacitors, altering clock signals, or otherwise doing your darnedest to persuade the electronics to DO something.

It can be as difficult as teaching a cat to "heel", but sometimes the results are quite interesting: a glitchy rhythm, a bizarre vocal warble, or a noise that sounds like a robot just fell into a sauna.