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One Billion Is Coming

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.

Since we don’t know when ONE BILLION will hit, we’ve decided to keep rolling out new contests and fun activities. Check out the original One Billion and Counting along with One Billion and Counting: Favorite Sporcle Quiz for previously announced contests. And keep checking the blog for more contests that will be announced throughout the week!

Today’s contest: One Billion Quiz Contest

We know how much you like to make quizzes, especially when the prize is a homepage feature!

The Rules:

1. Create a new quiz that connects to the theme ‘One Billion’
2. Contribute your quiz, make sure it’s public, and give it the tag ‘One Billion’
3. Compete in the contest by posting a link to your quiz in the comment section of this blog post

The Judging:

Sporcle Admin will be the judge of this contest. They’ll be looking for quizzes that are original, nice to look at, and fun to play. To give you plenty of time, this contest will run through Friday, April 13th.

The Prize:

The winning quiz will be featured on the Sporcle homepage.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America. Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) takes the lives of more than 2,150 Americans each day, an average of 1 death every 40 seconds.

One of those Americans was David Baranski, loving father of Sporcle Staffer Leanne Vassallo. David, or Mr B as he was known by his friends, worked as a Regulatory Specialist for Terumo Cardiovascular in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  He spent his time and energy trying to help his fellow man combat this ongoing and terrible problem.

In honor of his memory, Sporcle is making a donation to Gift of Life Michigan. Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Gift of Life Michigan is the state’s only federally designated organ and tissue recovery program. Any advertising revenue generated by playing the Sporcle quiz Anatomy of the Heart in 2013 will be donated to this worthy organization.

By playing this quiz you can help fund programs that promote organ and tissue donation, research grants, and aid transplant recipients in need.

For More Information:

American Heart Association:
Their mission is to build healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
www.heart.org

Gift of Life:
To improve and extend lives through quality programs which maximize organ and tissue donation for transplantation.
www.giftoflifemichigan.org

We don’t know about you, but here at Sporcle HQ, we’re pretty hyped about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. For weeks we’ve been tracking down awesome Lord of the Rings and Hobbit quizzes, slyly sharing our excitement through Hobbit-themed Facebook posts, and maybe even sneaking in a second breakfast.

While we can’t share any exclusive, behind-the-scenes interviews, or give you minute-by-minute updates counting down to the premiere, we do have…(drum roll)…quizzes!

Here are some of our favorite LOTR and Hobbit-themed quizzes, along some brief commentary:

Meals for Hobbits: If it really is true that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, than why not have two of them? Those hobbits really seem to know what they’re doing when it comes to meal appreciation.

‘The Hobbit’ Dwarves: Not to be confused with Snow White and her seven dwarfs, these thirteen dwarves have names that rhyme!  Even if you don’t get many right, you can still have fun saying their names once the time’s up.

Middle-Earth Characters by Father: On this quiz, it’s time to give credit where credit is due. Dads can get us wrapped up in some crazy adventures. Like shopping for tools at Sears, or fighting Smeagol. Each is equally dangerous.

LOTR vs Harry Potter:  We know, we know. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are completely different and shouldn’t be compared. But, with all these similarities, who can really blame us? We’re trivia people, this is the kind of thing that keeps us up at night.

Name to Name: This quiz is a way to test your knowledge of names AND plot. Or you could see it as a complex refresher of your favorite characters and plot points. Either way, this quiz is challenging but satisfying.

Who Held the Ring?: Another character/plot quiz. Though it may seem simple, the extra info provided helps clarify any lingering questions you may have.

LOTR or IKEA?:  Until the dawn of the quiz, you probably did not realize how LOTR characters’ names are eerily similar to IKEA Furniture Lines. Perhaps there’s a deeper connection, hidden in the secrets of Middle Earth. We’re hoping there’s a least a laugh in there somewhere.

The American Music Awards (AMAs) aired Sunday night. Now that the results are out, we thought it’d be fun to see how the winners measure up when it comes to Sporcle quizzes.  

We know Sporclers love music because, quite frankly, there are thousands of contributed music quizzes on our site. Music is one of our biggest categories, and we know that you all love to stretch your brains to remember those long past one-hit wonders, favorite artists, and the newest acts. Today, in honor of the AMAs, we’re giving the spotlight to current artists.

Below, you’ll find a summary of some of the big winners from the AMAs, along with their share of Sporcle quizzes. 

The big news for this year is Justin Bieber, who won Artist of the Year, Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist, and Favorite Pop/Rock Album. Be sure to refresh your memory and take our Justin Bieber Songs quiz.

The other big winner of the night was Nicki Minaj, featured in many hit songs and now becoming quite popular on her own.  Check out or Nicki Minaj songs or Superbass Lyrics if you’re looking for a test.

Winning Favorite Country Female Artist for the fifth year was Taylor Swift. Who doesn’t love a good T.Swift song? This solid country/pop star has made a name for herself on Sporcle, too. She has her own Taylor Swift trivia subcategory, with quite a following. Be sure to check out one of her most recent hits, “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

Beyoncé won Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist, alongside Usher, Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist. And Linkin Park is still going strong, winning Favorite Alternative Rock Music Artist.

Another familiar star is Adele, who won Favorite Adult Contemporary Artist. If you’ve recovered from her best songs being overplayed, you may want to check out the Lyrics quizzes for Rolling in the Deep and Someone Like You.

Whatever your musical preference, there’s probably a Sporcle quiz out there to quench your thirst for good music. And we just want to say, to all the artists, that even if you don’t have a Sporcle quiz devoted to you, that doesn’t mean you’re not on some quiz out there. Or that you won’t get a published quiz down the road. Just keep up the good work. Keep making good, memorable music.

We always love to read all the funny and insightful comments you leave throughout the week, so much so that we’ve decided to highlight our favorite five each and every Friday. Check out our favorite witty comments below:

1. From: Are You Smarter Than a College Student? VII

strags11: The definition of mixed emotions on Sporcle: missing a perfect score because you had no clue on the Twilight question

2. From: Did They End Up Together?

zalkon2004: Ten year old Fred Savage called and said this quiz was full of too many kissing parts.

3. From: No Second Guess Trivia II

Equium: Ah. Zirconium, once again you have made a fool of me and my good friend zinc.

4. From: Just Read the Map III

flyers: You should have used pictures from apple maps. Now that would be challenging.

5. From: Animal Adjective Match

melamo: A combination of astrology, common knowledge & Pokemon helped me on this quiz…

We always love to read all the funny and insightful comments you leave throughout the week, so much so that we’ve decided to highlight our favorite five each and every Friday. Check out our favorite witty comments below:

1. From: Actors (A-Z)

RonB: There is a mistake. This is an actors’ quiz and you included Adam Sandler.

2. From: Is That a Disney Sequel?

enomo67: I still don’t believe “Leroy and Stitch” is a real movie.

3. From: World Border Minefield ‘A’

save_ferris15: Uzbekistan! I trusted you! I thought you would be safe! And when I needed you the most, you let me down!

4. From: Elements by any 3 Letters

sennomulo: I had no bismuth attempting this quiz. I feel like a total boron. I was really sulfuring there, since all the elements without “-ium” that were once in my brain now argon.

5. From: Country by Unique Starting Letters

harvey68: When GREE came up. I started to type GREENLAND, my brain yelling at my fingers “It’s not a country!!! STOP typing”.

You might have noticed a small change to the leaderboards in our User Created section. We’ve replaced the old ‘Most Commented Last 7 Days’ with a new board that displays quizzes with the highest ‘Joy Factor‘.

So what is the Joy Factor? It’s a magical combination of fancy math and fairy dust based on data from our user created section (Special kudos to Rockgolf for the idea). In the past, we’ve had complaints that quizzes on the most played board have low ratings, and quizzes on the highest rated board are easily downvoted with just a single bad rating. The Joy Factor solves these issues and presents only the best of the best that the User Created section has to offer.

Have an opinion on the Joy Factor board? Let us know in the comments.

We always love to read all the funny and insightful comments you leave throughout the week, so much so that we’ve decided to highlight our favorite five each and every Friday. Check out our favorite witty comments below:

1. From: Drink Up!

stephmoxie: You mean there’s other ways to drink besides a red solo cup?

2. From: States in Sentences

Fiop: Baby Coco was just weaned off her bottle. The little miss is sipping her cup now.

3. From: That Movie Was Terrible…

jrstocker: The most difficult thing for me was finding the correct terrible Eddie Murphy movie. I tried Norbit, Harlem Nights, Vampire in Brooklyn, Daddy Day Care…

4. From: Swapped Logos

tighe: Doing well on logo quizzes makes me feel like such an obedient little consumer. It’s quite depressing really.

5. From: 4 Letter Girl Names by Decade

unamuno: Missed my girlfriend’s name & my mother’s name. Other than that I did terrible.

It was a busy month here at Sporcle, and if you skipped a few days of Sporcling, you might just have missed one of the best quizzes of the month. Instead of just feeling bad about it, we thought we’d put together a monthly recap of all the most interesting games on Sporcle in June.

Take a look at our full list of top games below, and let us know about your favorites in the comments.

Top Featured Quizzes

• Harry Potter Bunker
• Clickable 1-100 Mines
• Risky Clicking: Biggest States (A-Z)
• A Minefield Puzzle
• City Clicknames
• Scrambled Eggs
• Disney Movie Roundup
• Symbols Blitz
• Exploding Elements
• Did They Go to Jail?

Fun Non-Featured Gems

• Northernmost Capitals by Continent
• Rue’s Lullaby
• Animated Disney Scores (Audio)
• Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes?
• Guess the Beanie Baby Animal
• MLB: Were They Teammates?
• Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote Pseudo-Taxonomy
• Star Trek Crew Members
• Nintendo Console Challenge
• Finding Nemo Address

Top Blog Posts

• Back to the Future is (Not) Here
• 800 Million Plays and Counting…
• Animaniacs’ Countries of the World
• Sporcle Summer Games 2012 App