sporcle blog

In honor of the 2007 NFL season which starts in a couple weeks, I thought I’d throw together a quiz to see how many of the Super Bowl winners of the past 41 years I could remember. In doing so, I came across some interesting statistics, that somewhat flies if the face of the parity argument that is thrown around by NFL commentators and chatterers.

Out of 41 years, the Super Bowl has only been won by 17 different teams. That’s just barely half of the teams in the NFL who have won in 4 decades.

To compare the other 3 major US sports during that time (% teams winning championship from 1967-present)
NFL: 17 of 32 (53%)
MLB: 19 of 30 (63%)
NBA: 14 of 31 (45%)
NHL: 16 of 30 (53%)

Obviously, these are not scientific numbers, because each league has expanded since 1967, and they had different #’s of teams during those 40 years. However, you’ll notice they are all fairly only slightly above or below 50% in ‘Championship Parity’. Why is this? Does it have to do with poor owners who don’t know how to build a team that can win, or the fact that star players tend to propel certain teams to championships in multiple years? I’m curious your thoughts.

Take the Super Bowl quiz yourself:
http://www.sporcle.com/games/superbowls.php

William Shakespeare, whoever he was, certainly was a prolific little writer. According to multiple sources, he wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets, and is often considered to have written the most beautiful poetry in the English Language. He also married Anne Hathaway, who may or may not be the great great great great great great great great great grandmother of the similar namesake of our generation. No, I kid.

Anyhow, given that Jeopardy and the N.Y. Times Crossword both frequently have questions related to the plays of Shakespeare, I figured it only fitting to use his plays as the basis for the next quiz. There were 36 plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare, published in 1623, and 2 other plays that have been attributed to him. The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge lists 2 other works as plays, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, however multiple other sources classified them as poems, so I left them out of this little quiz.

The works are ordered based on their order in the First Folio, but as you’ll notice, the years they are believed to have been written do not follow the same order. Ready to take on the Bard yourself, and see how many you remember? As usual, you have 10 minutes to name as many of the 38 plays as you can.

Take the Shakespeare Quiz.