Curator Knows Best: bhenderson79

(Last Updated On: November 15, 2019)

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Good kitty
bhenderson79’s profile picture may be a cat, but he’ll never be catty with quiz feedback.

When it comes to Sporcle, curators truly do know best. In this blog series, some of the great curators of Sporcle share their expert opinions on curating, top-notch quizzes, up-and-coming Sporclers, and a wee bit of trivia.

This week we feature bhenderson79, curator for the Arrested Development and Lord of the Rings subcategories.

How did you first get involved with Sporcle?
I’ve only been around for about a year and a half now and I don’t remember exactly how I came upon the site at first as a player – but my play stats indicate I spent my first day on Sporcle playing quizzes about Queen songs, insect taxonomy, the Hobbit, and metal bands. That sounds about right for me.
I began to get really involved with the site around November 2015 when I decided to create a few quizzes and El_Dandy and Stanford0008 gave me my first CP & EP. Having early success with my contributions encouraged me to keep creating & to apply for a curatorship a short while later.

Why did you decide to be a curator for your subcategories?
It wasn’t a tough choice for me – of all the subcategories that exist on the site, I think the three that are most relevant to my own nerdy interests are Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Arrested Development. I was extremely fortunate that two of those were open when I was looking to apply last year, and I was able to take up curatorships in topics of extreme interest for me.

What’s your favorite trivia fact having to do with your subcategories?
Arrested Development: I think my favorite piece of Arrested Development trivia will occur when I learn an official date for a fifth season or a film. I miss it so much, and would love some more show content to help ramp up contribution in the subcategory, which has been slow without any new episodes for a couple of years!
Lord of the Rings: It might be that Galadriel is Arwen’s grandmother. I bet a lot of fans (at least those who follow the movies rather than books) would find that surprising.

What are some of your favorite published quizzes from your subcategories?
Lord of the Rings: As a big fan of both geography & fantasy literature, it also makes sense that I’m quite keen on fantasy geography. I always love studying the maps when I read Tolkien or the Wheel of Time series (and this is probably also apparent from the large number of map-based Harry Potter games I’ve created on Sporcle). With that in mind, one of my favorites is MrChewyPoo’s Tolkien’s Middle-Earth Map.

What are some of your favorite contributed quizzes from your subcategories?
Arrested Development: In part, I wanted to become Arrested Development curator just so I could CP this quiz: Arrested Development-Picture to Season Match.
When I first played it, I immediately went back and played it again to get them all wrong on purpose because of the amazing use of in-jokes from the show on the wrong-answer text for every slide.
Lord of the Rings: I’m lucky to have Caltac around as a contributor of very dense & well-researched Tolkien quizzes. I suspect that they might generally be a bit too in-depth for the casual Hobbit fan, which would explain their contributed-rather-than-published status – but as a committed Tolkien-nerd, I love them.

What are your favorite quizzes from an entirely different category?
When I’m in the mood to spend a good chunk of time testing my memory on a couple of my favorite topics, these are some of my go-to quizzes:
The Harry Potter ‘Periodic Table’
Capitals of the World

Which Sporcle Group do you frequent most often?
I check the Recent Discussions across all groups, and regularly visit the General Discussion/former Sporcle U.

How can Sporclers in your subcategories best contact you?
I originally had my personal email on my profile, but it was made obsolete by the wonderful addition of the private messaging feature on Sporcle. Considering that I check Sporcle about as often as I check my email these days, it’s a very effective way to keep up with everybody on the site.

Are there any Sporclers whose quizzes you think merit more attention than they get?
I think the Sporcler with the highest percentage of quizzes on my favorites list is Scuadrado. He’s still only got a fairly small number of published quizzes at the moment, but does a ton of outstanding wildlife & science quizzes that I adore.

Haiku or favorite Dad Joke (or both):
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Hi, Hungry. My name is Dad,”
I told my daughter.

I am literally going to say that to my kid the next time she asks me for something to eat. 🙂

About the Author:

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Pearl does a variety of media-related tasks at Sporcle, including blog writing, video production, and social media maintenance. She does research on penguins, enjoys snail mucus in her skincare, and once turned herself Sporcle Orange from eating too many carrots.

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