The daily quiz has been running every weekday (bar some well-needed Christmas holidays) since September 2013. In that time, we’ve written over 300 quizzes and published more than 60 contributions from our readers.
Unfortunately, the more quizzes you write, the harder it is to write quizzes. The stockpile of useless general knowledge kicking around our brains that hasn’t been tapped for some quiz or other is depleted, and the novelty of reading about bridges, medieval armour, binary etc is wearing off. On top of this, we’ve both changed roles significantly since the quiz began and can no longer dedicate as much time to it. We haven’t fallen out of love with the daily quiz, but sadly we can’t keep running it every day as we have been up until now.
The hundreds of emails we’ve received over the years have been mostly welcome, especially the ones that didn’t begin, ‘I think you’ll find that …’ Of particular note were those of you who wrote in to point out our ‘mistaken’ repetition of the same five questions in this year’s Groundhog day quiz, the professor of American history who explained the finer points of the Monroe doctrine and the offence caused by referring to cities as countries and popstrels as opera singers (all since updated).
We’ve had a lot of fun writing questions. Regular readers might have noticed there are way more questions about cycling than you’d expect from the average general knowledge quiz – we didn’t quite get round to asking which classics feature cobbles or who won the E3 Harelbeke but hopefully you know your leaders’ jerseys and world champions by now. There are other common topics – cricket, Greek philosophy, Elmore Leonard, dogs and vegetables crop up a lot.
Part of the joy of multiple choice quizzes is making up the wrong answers. We’ve taken inspiration from our own and other people’s pets – Artie is not the computer that chooses the premium bond numbers but a whippet, Mrs Peel and Mrs Lovett are cats, not the housekeeper in Father Ted. Some require greater creativity such as the size of the corn in Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ or the names of Lynx deodorant scents.
The headlines too have had their share of wordplay – a Moe, a mass, a Matt is our favourite ever. There’s also tea with Milk and two humps, and all manner of other something and something else titles.
Some quizzes had hidden themes – some eventually explicit (for example, those with links), some contained secret messages to friends, some had references that would only be recognised by, for example, a Guided By Voices fan. Some just had fun questions. If you don’t know how to spell the name of the band that brought you such dubious hits as Girls, Girls, Girls, you should.
And so to what’s next. After this week, the daily quiz is going to take a sabbatical for an undetermined amount of time. We hope it will come back, but in the meantime feel free to leave comments below to let us know what you’ve liked and not liked, and include any suggestions for what we could do in future. And thanks for answering so many of our questions.
