Cool website quizzes and tests

Several years ago, I wrote about the annoying quizzes which would pop up at the time in your facebook feed. The type which would tell you which Game Of Thrones character your friend was most like, which actor would play them in a movie of their life, or which industrial universal joint they were most like.

However, not all quizzes on the internet are annoying, and some of them can in fact be quite interesting. So this week the Charles Fudgemuffin blog takes a look at a variety of quizzes, tests, and other data themed websites found on the web.

1) The 100 most common English words

Here are three clues, and also a red herring.
Can you guess which is which?

This is an interesting quiz where you have to guess the 100 most commonly used words in the English language. It starts off really easy as you go through most of the obvious common words, but as the clock ticks down it gradually gets more tricky as you try to think of the remaning words.

I guessed 72 of the 100 most common English words, but then at the end when it shows you the full list my reaction was, "How did I not get those!?" There aren't really any surprises in the list, but I suspect most people will probably miss quite a few really obvious words.

You can take the test at the link below:

Can you name the most 100 common words in the English language?

2) Surname heat map around the world

Fudge and a muffin; the two components of
my own surname, which is definitely real.

Have you ever wondered how common your surname is around the world? Well now you can find out, thanks to the forebears website.

I tried it out for my own surname 'Fudgemuffin', which is totally genuine and definitely not made up (**shifty eyes**), but unfortunately the website claimed my surname didn't exist! The closest I could find was 'Fudge' which is most prevalent in the United States, and most frequent in Canada. It's also the 49,544th most common surname in the world!

Fudge surname distribution

3) Are you male or female?

An old man and woman, pictured in the olden days
before 'science' got hijacked by insane people.

Have you ever wondered, 'Am I a man, or am I a woman?' Fifty years ago the answer to that question would have been, "No, of course not. Are you insane!? What sort of idiotic question is that!?" Nowadays, however, with the increasing amount of propaganda that kids are subjected to, in some cases sadly you may get a different answer.

Anyway, if you're incapable of following simple science, then you can find out with this quiz!

Do you think like a man or a woman?

4) Your age on other planets

Find out how old you would be on the
eight planets of the Solar System.

On Earth one year lasts for 365 days. However, every planet rotates around the Sun at different rates, so years last for different lengths of time on other planets.

If you've therefore ever wondered how old you would be on other planets, then wonder no more! The exploratorium website does all the hard work for you and calculates your age on the eight planets of the solar system, plus the dwarf planet Pluto.

Without giving away my real age, I can reveal that on Mercury I'm over a hundred years old whereas on uranus I'm only a toddler, as I'm less than one year old!

Check out your own age on other planets at the website below:

Your age on other worlds

5) Phonetic Associations Test

An example question from the test.

This is a really cool test which asks you what you think a series of made up words sound like they should mean. You would think the results would be quite random, but surprisingly, most people associate nonsensical words to mean the same things.

The test is an example of the Bouba/Kiki Effect, and demonstrates that people subconsciously associate made-up words with specific meanings. When I did the test 49 of my 50 answers corresponded with the expected result, and the average score is 42.1 out of 50, so the test definitely confirms that the human brain is preprogrammed to connect seemingly random sounds with distinct meanings.

Interestingly, people who have been blind since birth don't follow this pattern, and it's also less prominent in autistic people.

You can take the test at the link below, and as you answer each question you'll probably find that many of the words just feel as if they correspond with one of the suggested meanings.

Phonetic Associations Test

6) Quick, draw!

My six sketches.
In my defence, I used my laptop mouse.

To round things off, here's a website which tests both your doodling ability, and the ability of the 'neural network' to recognise your sketches. The website asks you to draw an object, such as a tent, a sheep, or a cell phone, and then a computerised voice will guess what you've drawn.

I'm not the world's greatest artist, and yet it guessed all six of my very basic sketches, in some cases before I had even finished drawing them. To be fair, the website does tell you what to draw, so maybe it cheats!

Anyway, you can try it out for yourself at the link below:

Quick, draw!

The tests and quizzes featured in this week's blog post are all pretty cool. However, if you'd prefer to read about annoying quizzes, you can find some silly examples in my previous blog post below:
How to make facebook even better!