17/18, but only because I forgot that Crispies starts with a K. Very, very sad.

13.

13, after spending a long time being confused. "Good to the last drop" isn't Folger's? "Zoom Zoom" isn't Nissan? "We bring good things to life" isn't Dow? Apparently I can only place slogans within some sort of equivalence class.

16!

I AM THE WINNER.

Except for 1.

17. Missed Avis.

18/18 with 1:30 to spare. I'm a consumer whore.

18. Fucking memory.

7/18, and two of them were products I hate. Fucking Big Sellout Brother.

15 of 18. I'm really, really good at the job of being an American.

The countries of the world one is more challenging. I could only get 117/195.

16. Missed Staples and, uh, I forget.

Geez, some of you people are nuts. I thought my 16/18 was disgusting enough. Couldn't get the Staples one, though it sounded familiar. General Electric completely evaded me. How can such a gigantic multinational try to brand itself?

Might as well be "You've already used 8 of our products today. Mwuhahahaha!"

I got GE, bitch. I was actually tempted to throw this because I hate it so, but lying to unfogged is like lying to your doctor, except your doctor can get you drugs.

This game is more fun and less soul-destroying.

This is also more fun and less soul-destroying.

I did a fair number of the problems that then existed right before I left Chicago.

10: I got 148. It is challenging. I wasted way too much time typing variations on French Guiana and wondering why it wouldn't accept any of them before deciding it must formally be not a country but a French territory. (Similarly, Western Sahara: what's with that one?) And it's funny how names of familiar places completely escape you when you're staring down a clock.

Mr. B. and I missed two. We missed Avis--I was sure that was an investment firm, dammit--and Bounty, which I thought was a food product of some sort but Mr. B., being a man, properly identified as having to do with cleaning.

10 is right. Oi. I think I got about 123, but I must've hit a button by accident that sent me back right after time ran out and it gave me the answers (I know I was at 121/195 with about a minute left, and I know I got Honduras after that and was fumbling with Lichtenstein when time was called).

Also, it totally wouldn't take my answer of Guinea-Bisseau. WTF?

Mr. B. knew Staples and GE. I got everything else before asking for help.

I have to say that Staples slogan is just really stupid.

Right, it's "Liechtenstein". I re-typed that about four times before I figured it out.

16: Oh yeah, French Guinea / French Guyana / French Guiana...

I had trouble with that one, too.

I also had trouble with French Guyana. And I remembered Kyrgyzstan, but not Belgium (which I've actually been to)

I was really happy to remember all seven of the -stans.

I got a lot of the Indian Ocean island nations thanks to diving and it being in the dead center of the map, but neglected to pick up any of the easy stuff in the South Pacific (Tonga, Vanuatu, Fiji, Micronesia) or the Caribbean (Trinidad, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands... dammit!)...

Between those, a few missing names in West Africa, and a bunch of Eastern Europe, that was pretty much everything I missed.

FFS, I couldn't remember a Midsummer Night's Dream. I got a pathetic 22. And I could remember speeches from Julius Caesar but not the title of the play; I kept tying in "Caesar" and getting it wrong.

So much for Slack's assurance that that one wasn't soul-destroying.

All the little Micronesian and Caribbean ones always kill me. And there's a few I always forget are independent, like Mongolia, Taiwan and Mauritius. I'm disappointed to have forgotten Poland, Ukraine, Kenya and Uganda, though.

Also, there's actually one country I've never heard of. San Marino? Huh.

24.2: Uhh, sorry.

Bissau, not Bisseau. It was Portuguese. I got almost all of them...damn you Monaco, Lebanon, Kuwait, Vanuatu, Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde, and Seychelles.

I got all of the slogans except Staples. Have never even heard that slogan so I didn't know what industry it was, unlike "good to the last drop" (some sort of coffee) and "we try harder" (some rental car company).

Shakespeare, I got 31 out of 38! And only one of the ones I missed was TOTALLY OBVIOUS. It helps that six of the histories start with the first five letters.

NES games, I got 11 out of 15. The other 4 are all extremely generic words that I did not know were also NES games. Time for bed.

Apparently I have trouble with Shakespeare plays that start with 'T': Twelfth Night, Two Noble Kinsmen, Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida. Also King John.

Odd that I remembered 'Pericles' but not 'Twelfth Night'. Oh well.

The soul-crushing bit of the Shakespeare one, though, is that I typed in almost all of them and then had three minutes remaining to stare blankly and be unable to think of the last five.

Bissau, not Bisseau.

Fuck! But at least I know my ultra-tiny Western European countries, my South Pacific internet havens, and my Indian Ocean diving paradises.

And now Ben's got me solving these damn Euler problems. This is really annoying, though I'm also surprised how few truly elegant solutions I'm finding for a fair number of their prime number questions. (Elegant factoring? Oof)

This NES games one is insane. Metroid wasn't a top-selling game? Donkey Kong wasn't? Castlevania? Kid Icarus? Ninja Gaiden? Final Fantasy? Dragon Warrior? Bubble Bobble?

It didn't even occur to me to try Dragon Warrior II through IV when just typing "Dragon Warrior" didn't produce any result. And what's with all these bland-sounding games outselling all the ones that I remember as classic games of my childhood?

Mr. B. got 41/47 European countries. Beat that.

The Olympic cities one is good. Just guessing every city in Europe is not COMPLETELY effective. Strasbourg? Marseille? Zagreb? Stuttgart? Oulu? Apparently the Olympics have been in none of these places. I failed on the 1956 Summer Olympics and 8 of the Winter ones.

32: Um, OK? Monaco took me a minute to think of, but I got them all.

The Olympics one is good. I only got a little over half.

42/48, Mr. B. He missed Kyrgzstan (wtf kind of name is that??), Quatar, Bhutan, the Maldives, and fucking Timor Leste, which I swear I have never even heard of.

I think Timor Leste is just the pretentious way of saying East Timor.

34: Okay, well, *I* was impressed.

That's East Timor. I typed "East Timor" and it gave me credit. But I forgot Kuwait and as you say, the Maldives. They'll be underwater soon enough.

37: Oh right. Well, they're all starving to death or something anyway, right? So who needs to know the name of their country?

38: Yeah, sorry, apparently I become a competitive ass after 2 AM. Why am I not asleep? I should do something about that.

41: Well, I'm the one that said "beat that." I'm a competitive ass all the time.

Well, they're all starving to death or something anyway, right?

Currently going through some tough times, some connected to dealing with the aftermath of the US supported (illegal & brutal) invasion & occupation by Indonesia.

Which is kind of why you should know the name of their country -- your gov't helped to fuck it up.

Also -- is it pretentious to follow the lead of the actual country, as in the case of Timor Leste?

25
there's a few I always forget are independent, like Mongolia
i so feel i failed my mission :(
what i did here for full one yr

Adverts: 15/18. I'm surprised I did that well, as I was struggling and I quit watching TV awhile ago.

I did the whole world map and sucked at it (115, but should be + 30 for all the countries I typed in and it wouldn't accept) because it seems like a spelling contest. Doing it continent by continent: EU: 47/47, NA: 17/23, SA: 11/12, Asia: 46/48, Australia: 9/14 and Africa: 20/53.

I suck at tiny island nations and African countries which used to have different names. (No to Zaire, no to Republic of the Congo, no to Belgian Congo, but after failing, yes to Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

Blech. 25 of 38 on Shakespeare. I can remember the histories, the tragedies and none of the comedies but the Tempest.

max
['Gotta take more vitamins.']

44: I'm sure everyone else remembered Mongolia, read. It was probably just me. If it's any consolation, my dad would have even more reason to be disappointed; his family hails from Mauritius.

25: Read, DS is a Chinese imperialist. He wants to reclaim the lost territories.

I don't know why thinks Mauritius is a lost Chinese territory though.

I did meet a Mauritian Chinese in Taiwan once, but how could Slack have known that? Someone should tell the Mauritians; apparently Slack knows something we don't.

I also met a Chinese Mongol in Taiwan, or a Chinese who could speak Mongoil,anyway.

Sino-MauritiansSino-Mauritians

I just expect most people to have met Sino-Mauritians. Hasn't everyone?

When China has control of Mauritius' highly valuable postage stamps, she will truly rule the world.

I got 9 slogans and 165 countries. Probably would have been more countries if all the labels didn't obscure the map; shapes jog my memory.

my best friend's best friend in Moscow, where she was a student, was a Mauritian who married a Russian Jew, they live somewhere in the US she said, so she recently found them on the skype coz her friend has an unusual name

I got all 18 slogans, but don't feel all that crushed. Shit happens, you know? They spent millions of dollars to teach me these things, I'm happy for them that it wasn't all wasted.

Of course, for about half of them I simply entered similar businesses til I got it right, which is a sign of FAIL. Brawny? Oh, Bounty.

Once I figured out that it was alphabetical, that helped some.

OK, off to do countries.

OK, now I've looked at the list of other games there. It splits maybe 1/3-2/3 between things I would get effortlessly (12 Greek gods? My preschooler knows those) and ones I wouldn't even get started on (popular IM chat names? WTF?). The only ones where I would get a good number but not all are the long lists, like the periodic table and the countries.

I would like to think that I'd bomb the Tom Hanks test, but I suspect I'd do pretty well.

OK, before I start Shakespeare, I just want to note that the dates is like a reverse hint - it makes me feel like I must not have a clue. Mind you, I think I've actually read all of them - maybe skipping a couple comedies. We'll see.

7 slogans, mostly the oldest ones (Avis and Rice Krispies go back 50 years or so).

Now that I know about Slack and his Sino-Mauritian masters, I'll have to be looking more closely at everything he does.

Stereotype alert: The Sino-Mauritian was the jolliest, most gregarious Chinese I met in Taiwan. Not much different than a fully assimilated American Chinese of the jolliest sort, but not like a ny Taiwan Chinese. According to the Wiki the younger Sino-Mauritians had lost their Chinese -- the guy I met was in Taiwan to learn Mandarin (not his ancestral dialect) for tourism purposes.

I also met an Australian Chinese there who was an athletic good old girl, as you would expect an Australian woman to be.

i knew only 4 of the slogans, then i dropped doing it altogether to not get upset in the morning
it's b/c i don't watch tv i guess

I first guessed Walter Mondale for "Where's the beef"?

Read, it's like golf. We were competing to get the lowest scores -- I've won so far. You might have won if you'd finished.

OK, I got 23 plays (technically 22, because I couldn't apostrophize Midsummer Night's Dream correctly). Turns out I haven't read the ancient tragedies, so I missed almost all of those (Timon, Titus, etc.). Got every history but Henry VIII (I assumed it was too recent, and didn't even guess it), forgot a lot of comedies I knew (plus I though Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night were the same. Oops).

Anyway.

Ben's euler link would be great for my dad, except he doesn't actually know any programming languages - he was a math major, and is a good logical thinker, but his primary programming experience has been with spreadsheet macros. I assume that would be too blunt an instrument (although perhaps not).

Last on Shakespeare: I feel like I could/should have gotten 32. I really choked on the comedies.

I got four then gave up when that thing insisted "Eveready" wasn't the answer to "he keeps going and going and going". It wouldn't go ahead to the next question until I put in the right answer either. So then I hit "give up," thinking it would go to the next question but instead of doing that it showed all the answers and ended the test.

61: Probably you're not college material, Kiernan. We've never seen a 450 SAT before here at Unfogged.

Outside the US the bunny rabbit is Duracell's creature.

I have never heard of the guy who just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Should I have heard of him?

Zero. Entered "Rice Crispies", got no response from the game, concluded it was a stupid game, and exited to send feedback to that effect to the game creators.

I feel better that so many other people also got burned on Rice Krispies.

Me too. And whichever was the battery bunny. And "Think Different".

I haven't even tried the countries -- I'd embarrass myself.

Woof. I ended up with 119 countries, but I utterly bombed Africa - Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, I'm sorry! Seriously, I was forgetting almost everyplace there. Whereas the South Pacific I mostly didn't know, but drew a blank on Samoa and Fiji, which are easy. I got screwed by Dominica/Dominica Republic - I was typing in the latter, it accepted the former, and so I thought, "Huh, I guess that's the name somehow?" So I never retyped the latter (the bad map didn't help - there were at least a half dozen countries I missed because I didn't know the spaces were blank; show me a map of the Balkans, and I'll show you Albania). I knew of San Marino, but couldn't quite get it - San Remo?

I'm basically happy with how I did outside of Africa, but I don't know what the hell happened there. I think I only got 16 African nations out of what, 40+? Yuck.

Wow, you guys don't watch enough TV. 18/18 with 2:05 to spare. Of course, it helps that these are almost all slogans from before the age of TiVo.

Read, Kiernan and Jesurgislac cheated by quitting. I still win with 7. They're all aliens, too.

OK, now that I see that I missed fucking Indonesia, I demand a map that colors in. I put in Malaysia, and vaguely thought, "that's the one with all the islands, so I'm covered there." Dumb mistake, but in the context of trying to recall 150 countries (there are a couple dozen I've never heard of - Comoros? - and another couple dozen I don't feel bad about missing - sorry, Moldova), not such a bad one. And one I'd never make if the islands had been still uncolored.

Anyway.

For the Shakespeare one, I got all the Histories (which are easy enough) all the Tragedies I'd seen performed (which left out Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline) and all the Comedies I'd seen performed plus two or three I hadn't but had read (which left out The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, All's Well That Ends Well, The Winter's Tale, Pericles, and The Two Noble Kinsmen). 29 out of 39.

Er, that's 28 out of 38. Literate yes, numerate evidently no.

70, I don't look on it as quitting but as winning in a different way.

I don't care how the brand spells it, everyone in the UK writes "Crispies" with a C.

I guessed 17/18 of the slogans, missing only "Rice Krispies" because of the "K." Of Shakespeare's plays, I remembered 25 of 38: all of the Histories, most of the tragedies (I remembered Cymbeline and forgot Othello), and embarrassingly few of the comedies. I really choked on those, too.

OK, now that I see that I missed fucking Indonesia, I demand a map that colors in.

Okay, I did the countries now (132) and this. I missed some easy stuff in Africa (Angola) that I would have gotten if I'd noticed it not colored in. I missed Turkey.

OTOH, there's a whole lot of countries I just don't remember. I got hurt bad in West Africa, the Carribean, and embarrassingly in the Pacific.

||

I think we need to hear more about this from our friends in the financial sector:

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert reports a jump in sex-addicted men at his Manhattan practice in the past six months.

"Since early spring, maybe late winter, there's just been an increase, and I believe it might have something to do with the economy," he says. "A lot of the Wall Streeters use sex as a way to cope with stress. Bankers do tend to rely on pretty unhealthy ways of coping with stress - drugs, sex.

|>

and embarrassingly in the Pacific.

Wait a few years to retake the test, and you'll have no worries.

15 slogans. 165 countries. Some of my misses are pretty funny--the map got too full & I started panicking guessing random islands. So, I got Comoros & Tonga, but missed Afghanistan & China.

149 countries. That's as fast as I can type. Looking at the ones I missed, though, I think 160-165 would top me out. Micronesia is a country?

Micronesia is several countries, and not only that, the spelling of some of them changed when they gained independence: Ponape became Pohnpei.

But wait: maybe the "Federated States of Micronesia" is one country.

32 plays.

Yeah. Micronesia is a country, particularly after they stopped being a mandate, much like the Marshall Islands. French Polynesia is not a country, in the same way New Caledonia is not a country, no matter how many times I type it in.

And let us not overlook the noble people of Narau, like I did, lest we go, 'Damn.'

max
['All these name changes are tragic, I tell you.']

I got 9 out of the 18 slogans. Stupid test wouldn't recognise ANY of my spellings for M and Ms. M 'n Ms? No, M&Ms. And since when has "Apple" not also been "MacIntosh"? Fuckers.

I'd feel boastier about having gotten 34 of the plays if I had actually read more of them. I'm familiar with plays like Cymbeline and Pericles and Timon of Athens -- not to mention the interminable series of Henry plays outside of Henry V -- mostly as "the ones I keep skipping in the Collected Works."

77: Bankers do tend to rely on pretty unhealthy ways of coping with stress - drugs, sex.

No, no, the bankers know what they're doing.

I wonder if "sex addiction" is becoming a dubious diagnostic category.

77: Or maybe, just maybe, his practice is taking off through word-of-mouth and he's blabbering to get press?

No, no, the bankers know what they're doing.

But, per LB, one wonders why they can catch Eliot Spitzer yet somehow can't catch the guy who parks in the hotel room with the mound of cocaine while awaiting steady stream of hookers.

It's like they're not even tryin'.

max
['Surely the R's wish to crack down on the white collar criminals, yes?']

I think that 90% of addiction talk is wrong. I'd limit addiction to conditions involving physiological withdrawal symptoms, and call the rest of the obsessive bad habits something else.

This is not to disagree with Slack's implicit point, which is that "sex addiction" is a good thing.

BTW, one of the shearpest regulars at Language Hat is from Mauritius. Goes by Si/ganus Su/tor and I know nothing else about him.

not to mention the interminable series of Henry plays outside of Henry V

Hey, no! The Henry IVs are great.

Maybe you are the shear pest!

Well, okay, I've read 2 Henry IV (some years ago), Pistol is a great character. I just can never get motivated to plow through all of them, though.

1/18 -- but that's cause I couldn't get the second one, and there's no "pass" option. There were only maybe two others I would have struggled with.

I still get a woody whenever I hear the St. Crispen's Day speech in Henry V

1/18 -- but that's cause I couldn't get the second one, and there's no "pass" option. There were only maybe two others I would have struggled with.

You don't have to do them in order, actually.

94: Oh.

1/18 because I'm dumb and can't follow directions.

Boy, my scores were bad.

14 slogans
92 countries
22 Shakespeare plays.

I'm particularly bad at tests that ask you to come up with a bunch of names with few prompts. Like, I forgot Poland. If the test had asked something like "Poland is a (a) country (b) state (c) city" I'd have no problem, just like anyone else. But when asked to pull up the name "Poland" my mind blanks.

I wounder how these tests relate cognitively to other aspects of concept mastery. There are all sorts of ways to test knowledge of a concept: ask someone to recognize new cases, explain the concept in their own words, relate it to other concepts, etc. How does "name as many instances of this as you can" fit in?

18 slogans, but the thing is they allow guessing, so if, for example, you know the slogan is for a cell phone company you can simply try multiples of them. So I knew all the categories and guessed on some specific answers. I will say the "Where's the beef" one is pretty old and I dunno if the youngsters would know it.

93: Damn straight. Some people were sending around a mediocre Al Pacino monologue from Any Given Sunday as motivation for the final month of the campaign. It was highly disappointing. My roomies replied with the motivational duo of the St. Crispins Day speech and a New Zealand All-Blacks haka.

96: I wounder how these tests relate cognitively to other aspects of concept mastery.

Do they test any aspect of concept mastery, really? I don't think of the ability to memorize lists of names (or pairings of phrases with names) as "concept mastery."

Some people were sending around a mediocre Al Pacino monologue from Any Given Sunday

For real? Like, the "I spent all my life savings on whores, now let's go win this game" speech?

We can NOT give up! We will WIN this election!

100: Yes. And LL Cool J's impassive face as you could see him thinking "stick out your lip a little... yeah... tense that jaw a bit... Now You're Motherfuckin' Acting!".

You can see why I was very very very sad.

a New Zealand All-Blacks haka

Oh, right on! That is seriously rousing stuff.

99: It shows you are very familiar with the extension of a concept.

None of us here sat down and memorized the list of Shakespeare plays. Differences in performance reflect amount of experience and perhaps some ability to retrieve names.

98. Olivier or Branagh?

I liked that Pacino speech, just because it sounds like he's going to say "fuck it, let's just throw in the towel" before he switches gears. It's not much competition for the St. Crispen's Day speech, though.

I had a friend from New Zealand who was forced to do the All-Blacks haka at every single party we went to, so I have become desensitized to its rallying properties.

104.1: Or maybe have just had lots of repeated exposure to certain words, names, phrases. (And associations with same, which I guess is a form of concept mastery, isn't it? Ergo, someone who can associate MasterCard with the single word "Priceless" probably on some level has internalized the whole "borrow from us in order to access the things in life which should be free" concept behind the ad campaign. Gotcha.)

Also -- is it pretentious to follow the lead of the actual country, as in the case of Timor Leste?

That's why I like to worry aloud about whether our country can manage it's trade deficit with Zhongguo.

"Zhongguo" in Mandarin does officially call itself "The People's Republic of China" in English. Timor L'Este doesn't. There's no reason not to call Timor L'Este like the Timorese call it.

I think that when the All Blacks do their haka the opposing team should move behind them and do the humping thing.

Timor L'Este doesn't call itself East Timor, that is.

motivational duo of the St. Crispins Day speech and a New Zealand All-Blacks haka.

Throw in the 24th Foot's rendition of "Men of Harlech" in the face of the Zulu hordes and you've got the Imperial trifecta.

Bagpipes also make me want to go "over the top" at the Huns, or the perfidious Frogs, or the fuzzy wuzzies, but I don't mention that in polite company.

128: I say the apostrophe aloud too, and everyone sneers at me.

109: oh, all right!

105: Branaugh, actually. I don't like his renditions of a couple other major monologues I've seen, but I've got a soft spot for his version of Henry V since it was shown to us in a super kick-ass mini-class I took on medieval British kings back in high school.

Branagh's Hamlet adaptation was preposterous, but his Henry V and Othello movies were both superb.

There is, of course, an ISO standard for official short names of countries in English. This standard says that "Timor-Leste" (with hyphen, without apostrophe) is the official English name for that place that split off from Indonesia. Note that this document also says that we are to call that West African country next to Liberia "Côte d'Ivoire" and not "Ivory Coast."

If obeying ISO standards is uppity and pretentious, then I don't wanna be Joe Sixpack.

Actually, I rather like Branagh's Hamlet.

I am partial to Burlingame's exhortation of Ebenezer Cooke from The Sotweed Factor myself. Have actually used it on a couple of occasions at work when it seemed appropriate.

My dear fellow, we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? .... We are dying men: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!"

99, 104, and memory:

Perfect memory is highly overrated. I was about nine or ten when I realized other people actually forgot things. I thought they meant they misplaced them in their memory and couldn't find them for a minute or two.

Now that google and wikipedia are around pretty much everyone has a photographic memory. The hard part is knowing what to look for and sifting through all the dreck. And understanding it. And knowing which of it is hooey.

Also there are things one would rather forget.

This made me sad. We used to be a lot better. 18.

My grandmother's brother had a photographic memory and passed the bar after his second year at stanford law.

It's not even 9pm and I'm drunk as Michael.

It's not even 9pm

It would be if you were hanging out with me.

123: Perhaps, then, it's the perfect time for a little light-heard stock market crash humour.

I'm drunk as Michael.

Oh, I doubt it. Keep drinkin' and report back.

If you can believe it, all my liquor except the quince brandy is in a closet whose door is obstructed by someone else's boxes at the moment.

127: And if I can't believe it, Mr. Biscuit Man?

Then I'll bite you in the torso and give you a disease.

ben w-lfs-n: mange you can believe in.

Jeez, get a chat room you two. (Or am I missing like 30 goddamn Simpsons' references.)

I would do better at matching screenplays with quotations. Coffee is for closers.