chair
The Sporcle blog started a new series which highlights some of our hard-working curators. Curators are editors for a specific subcategory, and their diligent work finding great quizzes from their subcategories (and sometimes others) helps to shape the site. We asked our curators to complete an interview of sorts, and we’ll be sharing their responses here on the blog.
This next post is from chair, curator for Grab Bag and Literary Character.
1) How did you first get involved with playing Sporcle?
I read a Northwestern Flipside article about Sporcle, and thought, “This website sounds pretty cool!” I checked it out and I’ve been hooked ever since.
2) What are your favorite published quizzes from your subcategory?
One of my favorite Grab Bag quizzes is “Fifteen in Five” by puckett86. It requires a quick mind and a little knowledge from many different areas – exactly what a grab bag quiz should do. From Literary Character, GeoGod’s “Harry Potter Top 200” is of course a classic, but my favorite LC quizzes draw from many different books, such as “Literary Character by Quotation” by peterpan55 or “50 Characters: 50 Books” by Flick.
3) What are your favorite contributed quizzes from your subcategory?
There are some great grab bag quizzes on specific subjects, like “Grab Bag: Roman History” by TJL, in addition to fantastic, clever quizzes that draw on general knowledge, like “Final Fours” by nspyred. In Literary Character, I really enjoyed “Fictional Lives, Critical Events, Changed Forever” by MovieGuru. Even though not all the characters are from books, I think the quiz manages to convey something special about the power of storytelling, making it an excellent Literary Character quiz.
4) What are your favorite published quizzes from an entirely different category?
I thought “Language of a Single Phrase” by Zaprowsdower was a lot of fun, and every few months I need to play “Progressively Tougher World Capitals” by rockgolf again.
5) What are your favorite contributed quizzes from an entirely different category?
I really like Tobley’s flash map quizzes, and as a Latin geek I got a kick out of “NFL Team Names in Latin” by Flick.
6) Are there any quizzes you’ve made that didn’t get the attention you were hoping for?
In general I’m happy with how my quizzes are received – the ones I like most tend to get the most plays. But of course there’s a few I made that I wish more people had seen. I was fairly proud of my first attempt at an image quiz, “Construction Equipment (Images),” which didn’t get a whole lot of plays, and I put a lot of work into researching a virtually unplayed quiz, “Every Brett Favre Interception.” Finally, I was surprised “The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe” didn’t get more plays (though I can see how it could be a bit intimidating).
7) Who’s a user whose games you think deserves more attention?
I’ve really enjoyed Buckler‘s logic quizzes.
After six years, hundreds of thousands of quizzes, and tons of fabulous users, we’re rapidly approaching the ONE BILLION play mark on Sporcle.com.
It’s as simple as that.
