Marginalia and Madness: A Writing Quiz

It's pretty rare that a storygame with "Quiz" in the title will meet anything but the lowest expectations around here. With the hefty weigh in at 12k words and of course Fabrikant as the author though, this one promises something a little more substantial.

First thing to know is that while some of the questions are quite challenging or obscure, it doesn't actually matter if you get a question right or wrong; in the event of a wrong answer you're taken to an anecdote about another author your selection applied to, then allowed to go back with the previous choice helpfully stripped away.

The structure that rewards you with interesting tidbits from wrong answers more than even the right ones reminds me of Kelly Unicornstrider, my other favorite "quiz" on the site. Except this isn't a creepypasta about a show that never existed, it's about real world authors so as the blurb said, all the bizarre incidents and insanity and death are actually quite real.

Some of these I'd heard before if not in extensive detail, some (like the first two) were possible to guess with a little logic, others were completely new to me. I'd also been blissfully unaware of Marienbad My Love until now, and after glancing over the author's site I can only guess that they (and Fabrikant!) might be trolling with that one?

Everything in this game on the other hand is very well put together, clearly written, and even includes illustrations. There's a lot of good info here, both about the writing process and about history; this would've been a contender in End's edutainment contest, and it seems likely to end up a standard recommended to noob children to help them be less dumb.

If I had any complaint it'd be the extreme understatement of the title, already mentioned on the forum. I think "Writing Quiz" is dry enough it's going to have a lot of people passing it by without a second glance.

urnam0 had a point about the score system I guess, it seems like an afterthought with it being almost impossible to get through without a perfect one. But clicking every option is kind of the point here to read it thoroughly, and it wouldn't make any sense to punish readers who did that and reward those who guessed well enough to see less of it. (And it would absolutely have to depend on guesswork, there's no way everyone knows all of these and that's again kind of the point.)

Only one error spotted: "failry accurate" when discussing the Dead Marshes. Though Lord of the Flies fwiw is also usually interpreted as being set during a fictional future war?

Anyway, great game and a very unexpected one. The time for slaving over the contests/avoiding starting the entries does not usually see anything else notable pop up at random like this.

(If you ever expanded, can we get some love for Robert E. Howard btw? His work is really admired by a few of us on the mod team. Influenced heavily by Lovecraft, invented sword & sorcery in the last five years of his life before tragically ending it, seems like he'd fit right in.)

I liked this quiz. It's well-written, interesting, and takes up very little time to complete from start to finish. I got an 8/12 the first time and replayed it a few more times to see what else was in store for the perfect score.

I think the organization of the questions is a major strong suit; rather than haphazardly throwing trivia questions at the reader in an arbitrary order, the quiz tells a "story" of sorts with the reader as the protagonist. We are the ones writing our fresh new story, and the questions follow along the natural writing process while providing intriguing tidbits of information about authors and literature from across the various eras of writing.

The questions themselves are interesting and filled with detailed answer pages that support the choice that you selected earlier. I found it satisfying that even the incorrect options still had facts to glean rather than just being a blanket "you're wrong, try again" page, so in this case it might actually be worth "throwing" on some of the questions just to see what else you can learn.

I will echo urnam0's sentiments about the scoring system though. If you get a question wrong, you have the option to either proceed to the next question or go back to the last question and try again, with your incorrect answer being removed from the option list. If you get the answer right this time, you will receive a full point as if you had answered correctly the first time. While I understand the simplicity and graciousness behind this decision, I also agree with the commenter that it may be more reasonable to allow the reader to redo the question, but not for a full point, as it isn't *quite* the same as getting it right originally (especially when there are only 4 answers per page anyway and the incorrect options literally disappear from the screen).

Overall this was a polished piece of work with little to no problems in the realm of spelling and grammar too. My only qualm is that I think the formatting/sizing for the quotation marks got messed up somehow, as they are much smaller than the rest of the text. This is a non-issue in terms of enjoyment but just something I wanted to point out.

I will give this a 6/8 and I highly recommend it for those who have a spare handful of minutes and want to learn something new (or test their literature knowledge) about the writing world in a well-organized setting. Fantastic job!

I will say, I think that if you Try Again on a question after you get it wrong the first (or more) time and get it correct on a later attempt, then it shouldn’t be counting as a correct answer toward your final score.

I did better than I thought I would.

Nice quiz. Got 7 out of 12. Guessed for 6 of them.

This should be featured.