Game Week 1 Analysis: Trickster Gods, Tinkle Characters, and... Types of Wood
Also, our first musketeers of the season!
Week 1 is a wrap (it was a wrap several days ago actually) and we wanted to share a little more than the usual data in the analysis this time. More of the thinking behind some of the questions, reactions to the answering rate, and also a tidbit about ‘quad convergence’.
If you’d rather stick to the raw data format, you can find it here: Game Week 1 Raw Analysis
Let's go quad by quad. Here’s a quad-wise game set in case you want to refer to the questions again: Question Set.
You can share your feedback on this set by leaving a comment, or using the Feedback Form.
1. Banksy Artwork
Tough quad to start with (the hardest one this week in fact) since the L1 itself relies on people knowing that Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant.
Napalm faired a little easier, the Vietnam photograph being a bit of a giveaway.
The other two, well, that was probably a mistake. Only 2 people managed to answer the obscure Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, and while a lot of people had seen Love is in the Air, only 1 person knew what it was called. Oof. Well done Aswath Venkataraman!
Trickster Gods
A quad that fared much better.
Loki and Coyote were both answered over 80% of the time, with too many hints sprinkled into the questions.
Maui did okay for an L3, at 42%.
Anansi surprised me. I had assumed that the character's prominence in American Gods by Neil Gaiman made this an easy one, even thought it might not work as an L4. But the other question setters were sure, and rightly so.
SYL
A personal favourite of mine (some obvious bias here). Quizzes can sometimes act as an unlikely way to reconnect with old areas of interest, and I got a great deal of satisfaction from quizzing 160 people about the significance of Sidhu Moosewala's last song.
The questions fared better than expected, with the only error being is the estimation of the L1 and L2 questions.
The quad intro fared a little harder than the L2, presumably because the Aam Aadmi Party is more widely known than Moosewala.
Satluj-Yamuna Link resulted in several nice moments in Week 1's quizzes, where quizzers were able to score a point by just guessing water bodies starting with S and Y (we didn't underline 'Link').
General Arun Vaidya was tough for most. Fun fact: 8 of the 10 people who got this correct were aged 40+. And nobody under 30 got it right 😅
Single Malt Scotch Whisky
In terms of difficulty gradient, this quad was pretty much perfect.
Glenfiddich got a few smirks, largely thanks to its placement towards the end of the quiz, at which just showing the logo is enough to give an answer.
Royal and Loch Lamond resulted in some nice cracks, one being workable and the other being a reversal of a familiar funda ("Which foul-mouthed character drinks...")
Campbeltown was answered just 8 times, which seems appropriate for an L4.
WHO List of Essential Medicines
I misjudged the difficulty of codeine vs zinc (sulphate) here, even though that's how the quad was submitted. Sorry about that.
Ivermectin had some nice cracks as people figured out the covid hint in the last few seconds of their turn.
Nicholas Sparks Novels
We heard mixed reviews about this quad, perhaps because it was a movie quad masquerading as a lit quad
The Notebook and Dear John were workable.
A Walk to Remember is full trivia, but a famous-enough movie that it was answered over 10% of the time.
Safe Haven was...I'm sorry. 2 corrects, shame on both of you.
Expensive Jewellery in Films
An unusual topic, and one I quite enjoyed watching people attempt.
House of Gucci was the most workable, with the movie year itself being too big a hint.
Ocean's 8 had some nice cracks, as people quickly sorted their mental lists of "recent heist movies".
Death on the Nile had a lot of wrong guesses, with many people going for the OTHER Kenneth-Branagh-as-Poirot movie, Murder on the Orient Express.
How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days was probably too easy for an L4.
🎯 The first musket (i.e. all 4 questions of a quad answered by the same person) of Season 3 was scored by Abid Abdulla in Game 33, for this quad. An unlikely topic for a musket, Abid ended up scoring over 20 in this game!
NBA Families
This week's 'experiment' was doing only 1 sports quad instead of the usual 2, and the one we went with was NBA families. This is as core sportsy as it gets, with very few hints available for folks who don't follow basketball.
Curry was the easiest one, you can't say "greatest 3 point shooter ever" and not get at least a 50% answer rate.
Ball and Gasol fared unexpectedly since the Ball family is a lot more current than the Gasols: Lamelo Ball is frequently touted as the next being thing, and Pau Gasol won his last championship 12 years ago. I think this just means most of our quizzers last watched NBA a long time ago.
Gary Payton was tough, but not too tough, with the 'real' NBA fans coming out of the woodwork to answer this.
🎯 We had 3 separate muskets in this quad, with Ronak Gupta, Subrat M, and PS Rajagopal all answering 4/4 questions on this topic, and the latter two also reaching a score of 20 in their quizzes!
🙈 One of our less scrupulous googler players gave himself away this week by answering Gary Payton correctly, but not knowing who Steph Curry is. Sigh.
Types of Wood
Warning: Difficulty all over the place.
This quad got easier rather than harder from L1 to L3, and then suddenly dropped a bomb for the L4 cherrywood.
Mahogany was probably the only one with a really good, workable hint.
I’m still not sure how Teak got answered so many times.
Named Gemstones
I will confess that occasionally we make quads just cos we have 2 nice fundas, or sometimes even 1 good funda, and the remaining questions need to be added as filler.
Here JP Morgan was that one good funda, with the ‘American financier’ hint being enough and the middle name hint just acting as confirmation.
Amazon and Afghanistan are just filler geography questions.
Musgrave Ranges was honestly something I expected nobody to get. But behold, 3 people are familiar with the mountain ranges of Australia. Oh well.
Blackpink Collabs
The answer rate here might lead you to believe this was intended to be a non-ascending quad, i.e. equal difficulty for all questions. That is not the case. This is just poor estimation on our part again, with Dua Lipa at L3 being slightly easier than the L1.
Lady Gaga makes her second appearance in this set, after House of Gucci.
Cardi B was tougher than the others, but not tough enough to be an L4. Most of the incorrect guesses I saw were always Nicki Minaj.
If you're taking part in multiple Mimir leagues, you'll often sees cases of 'quad convergence': where a question appears to fall into multiple quads being covered that day. This is usually unintentional, with the setter not realising that their reading habits have led them down two distinct but related rabbit holes. Here it happened with House of Gucci being only one of two Lady Gaga fundas in this Game Week 1.
Game Week 2 has some quad convergence two. Watch out for both the Cine quads dovetailing at some point in the quiz!
Important Cookbooks
B612 is probably the only league doing 2 F&B quads per week right now, so there's some responsibility to do a good job with them
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat reached only 28% in answer rate, perhaps cos asking for 4 parts in an L1 is never fair.
Mooncakes required some prior knowledge.
Jerusalem could be answered without any interest in cooking whatsoever.
Domestic Goddess was unexpectedly the hardest question in this quad.
Roman Numerals
The first of our supposed non-ascending quads is a topic I have wanted to use in a quiz for a long time. The end result isn’t exactly what I was going for, but I’m still glad it’s out of my system.
Excel and Liberty had comparable difficulty, which was intended. I’m glad so many people were able to quickly read the Roman numerals as ‘1776’.
Jupiter (or IVPITER) was too nice a funda to not use in a quiz, but saying “chief god” and accepting Zeus probably made it a little too easy.
3999 was… okay fine, it was an IIT-JEE question, and making people answer it in 60 seconds was maybe not cool. Such a great funda though, isn’t it?
Tinkle Characters
This week’s dose of nostalgia was brought to you by Tinkle Comics.
Most people had no trouble dispatching Suppandi and Shikhari Shambu.
Naseeruddin Hodja was perhaps understandably a little harder.
But what is this hate for Tantri the Mantri friends? Why do you not remember him? What is this behaviour? Please, do better. /s
🎯 Pranay Jha did do better, answering all 4 questions in this quad and scoring his first musket of the season!
GLAAD Comedies
The final quad for the week was the winners of GLAAD Media Awards for outstanding representations of LGBT characters in comedy shows. This is basically just an excuse to ask about popular TV programs in a way that keeps difficulty level, and it did work.
Brooklyn 99, Saved by the Bell, and Glee all had comparable difficulty and a good number of hints in the question.
Schitt’s Creek was a surprise for me, since it had quite a lot of hints, but was still answered only 40% of the time, which seems low. I think there might be such a thing as too many hints, that end up acting as a distraction.
🎯 Daniel Fullard scored his first musket of the season by getting all 4 questions in this quad correct!
Seat Averages
X’s, or direct questions missed by all 4 seats.
Seat 1: 4.00
Seat 2: 4.58
Seat 3: 4.78
Seat 4: 2.75
Owns, or direct questions answered by each seat.
Seat 1: 6.10
Seat 2: 5.80
Seat 3: 5.68
Seat 4: 6.25
You can share your feedback on this set by leaving a comment, or using the Feedback Form.
Many congratulations if you made it this far, and see you next week!
Enjoyed reading the analysis- easily the most fun analysis I've read of a game week. One small suggestion to make things better- there were a couple of typos which might distract spelling/ grammar nazis. Otherwise, great job.