Unless you’re THAT perfect child, you’ve probably been on the end of a deserved rant about your lack of general knowledge. I feel you, because I was once there too, drifting helplessly in the abyss of criticism with no solution in sight. But then, swooping in like an albatross, the savior to my dire (ok, it wasn’t THAT bad or dramatic but nonetheless serious) situation came along. No, it wasn’t the newspaper, or wikipedia. It came by the name of sporcle.com.
Founded in 2007, sporcle.com is a website that provides quizzes. These…WAIT! Don’t stop reading, because these aren’t the quizzes you get at school, the sort of quiz that is responsible for 53% of all disputes in my house. In fact, these quizzes are, as sporcle’s motto says, “mentally stimulating diversions”, and my god are they great diversions. The majority of these “mentally stimulating diversions are trivia quizzes, with the simple goal being to answer all the question before the time expires. However two other types of quizzes are available on the website. The first one is the “word ladder” quiz, a slight twist to the regular quizzes in that each answer differs from the previous answer by just one letter. The other is the “mixed word” quiz, where the goal is to unscramble letters based on the provided description.
One thing that is great about sporcle is that through years of continuous contribution by its many users, essentially every “quizzable” piece of information is available on the site. From academic quizzes such as “countries of the Spanish Empire” to seemingly absurd ones such as “largest U.S cities without a Walmart”; from quizzes like “movie by chase scene” to quizzes like “Club of Serie A”, absolutely everything is covered. To add to this, sporcle does a great job in making their quizzes accessible: One can not only choose to find specific quizzes by searching its name or browsing through the genre lists, it is also possible to use the “random” button to stumble through all the quizzes on the site or within a specific genre.
The other great thing about sporcle is its “view stats” button. After every quiz, this button makes it possible to see what percent of previous players got a certain question right and, most importantly, what percentile you are amongst them. For me, it is this feature that allows me to improve on my general knowledge, because when I see that I am ranked at a lowly 15th percentile on a certain quiz, my self-esteem takes a little hit. As a result, I will end up redoing the quiz until I feel like I have sufficiently redeemed myself. In the process, I will, without any frustration, torment or bore, achieve my goal of adding something to my reservoir of general knowledge. With its large quantity of quizzes and addicting element of competitiveness, sporcle.com is the best place for people like you and me to improve our general knowledge. Ok, maybe this isn’t the most orthodox way to improving your general knowledge. But hey, whatever floats your boat right?