Can you name the past tense forms of the following verbs?

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Past Tense Race Quiz

by snewms

Created Oct 19, 2011 in Language
Featured Nov 15, 2011
Game Plays 85,528

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Archived comments: show them

	Commodore:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:14 GMT	52 points
	By the time I hit column 2, I was marveling at how oddly the brain* works. (*OK, maybe just MY brain.) All those funny words I just thunk up.

	Dmags22:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:15 GMT	61 points
	Very nice quiz. This could make a pretty interesting minefield...

	bzq:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:16 GMT	56 points
	forwent? Never heard of that.

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	torerodrizzle:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:23 GMT	31 points
	If this had been a minefield, I definitely would've failed very early on. Hilarious how the mind works and comes up with ridiculous words.

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	gonzaga:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:30 GMT	78 points
	The takeaway here is, if English is your 2nd language, good luck with this one.

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	Yalcnot:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:35 GMT	47 points
	This quiz just reminds me of how many irregular verbs there really are in the English language...good luck ESL learners ;)

	volkstraum:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:35 GMT	51 points
	It's official. English is a hopeless mess.

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	british:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:38 GMT	21 points
	And now you know why English is the most difficult language to learn.

	WeaselKing1000:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:41 GMT	16 points
	@swill128 Maybe, but 'undone' and 'forgone' at least are adjectives – for example, a 'forgone conclusion' – or parts of the perfect tense: 'you have undone all my good work'. As for 'striked', I've never heard of it at all. In every context I can think of, 'struck' is used. Not to say that it doesn't exist in some context, however.

	JLKeip:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:50 GMT	23 points
	68% are getting 100%; that high a percentage of perfection always bugs me as there is so little differentiaion. It tells me the time is too long for the given quiz. As 1 minute for all these might be a little too tight, I would have added 5 to 10 more words and left it at 2 minutes, or cut it down by 5-10 and made it a one minute quiz.

	jimmydoom:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 18:59 GMT	6 points
	add more words!

	Bobman1:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:01 GMT	5 points
	SNEWMS really brung his A-game to this quiz! I thunk it was awesome! Further evidence of why I love and why many more hate the English language. Problem is, I work for a large company that has standard reporting forms we send to clients as our work product--The word "forecasted" is used as past tense of forecast about a half dozen times. Nationwide, I bet I am the ONLY person to correct it each time in text and tables. I've notified the people who create the templates to no avail. And in 20 years, after such abuses become the norm, the new past tense will be, de factor, casted. grrrr.

	chikka2:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:10 GMT	8 points
	This quiz will be useful to any Sporclers who are also teachers of ESL. Any sequels coming up?

	WyvernSabres:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:15 GMT	11 points
	Very good quiz, but it would be good if "Lead" were included, for comparison with "Read". I frequently see "Lead" written as the past tense of "To lead", but it should be "Led". Lead should only be pronounced LED when it's a metal.

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	Arrie:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:30 GMT	13 points
	Actually, English is my second language and I thought it was very easy. I did most of them good in one guess, and had lots of time left when I finished. The first thing I thought of was: this must be really really easy for a native speaker.

	caramba:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:32 GMT	47 points
	Now that's a URL!

	EmYanks2001:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:49 GMT	2 points
	i finished with 44 seconds left and i made loads of stupid mistakes... time could def. be brought down to a minute... but still a fun quiz

	ArtFever:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:55 GMT	5 points
	I never thought grammar would be this entertaining.

	Wes_Mantooth:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 19:56 GMT	5 points
	Given the NBA work stoppage, I was thinking of the wrong sense of the word 'strike.'

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	ivyagogo:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:02 GMT	5 points
	Oooh, that was fun.

	evilcheeba:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:14 GMT	14 points
	Forgo almost did me in.

	cyrano1313:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:27 GMT	19 points
	Good quiz. "ring" however, has multiple meanings and more than one past tense. When an army has surrounded another castle, they have ringed the castle. (Had they walked up and pulled the bellrope on the drawbridge, then they'd have rang.) Either that should be switched out, or the alternative allowed.

	bostonbeliever:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:36 GMT	-4 points
	haha such a good example of why english is such a terrible language to learn! there's really no pattern! I'd love it if you could include pluperfect versions of the verbs on the next quiz (swim, swam, swum))

	ecu_pirate_91_:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:39 GMT	3 points
	Fun quiz. Maybe a little bit too much time though. Since well over half the people have been able to finish the whole thing

	LeBluu:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:41 GMT	2 points
	Got all with 20 seconds left, and English isn't my first language. Although I did write "forwent" pretty much as a joke :D

	Tice:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:42 GMT	9 points
	@emilkr: *means of communication....how ironic

	disorienteer:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 20:50 GMT	3 points
	This would have been even more fun with some more challenging, less common strong verbs, e.g., thrive, bide, beseech, writhe. A lot of those have developed weak alternative versions because the original strong one just sounds so weird to modern ears...

	Chocolatl:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 21:10 GMT	10 points
	Cyrano, if they pulled the bellrope they'd have rung.

	randmperson2:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 21:23 GMT	1 point
	I have never heard of the word "forwent"...took me a moment to figure that one out because it sounded so awkward.

	ffi:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 21:32 GMT	8 points
	The past tense of “fly” in the context of baseball is “flied,” as in Johnson flied out to left field. I’m not sure why, but I feel as though some more unusual words could have been chosen to make this quiz a lot harder and more interesting—not that it wasn’t interesting, but you can tell it could be a bit tougher when missing one answer puts you in the 34th percentile.

	koopa08:	Nov 15th, 2011 at 21:50 GMT	1 point
	Couldn't 'shaven' and 'rung' work as past tense...or at least bonus answers? And this is why English is one of the hardest languages to understand, both for foreign learners and domestic.