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BBC GCSE quiz

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Well done!

I got 6/7 - having misunderstood the French question!

Are *all* GCSE questions multiple choice these days? If so, that's not a proper test of *real* knowledge since it's easy to know enough to be able to pick the most likely answer without having a clue if no answers were provided.

Wasn't like that in my day!

Reply to
Roger Mills

I got 3/7 but I couldn't be bothered at this time in the morning to actually think about the answers.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

I got 6/7 because I know nothing about Greek and Latin literature (the language (*) and the culture bores me rigid) so I had to guess about the queen in the Aeniad. That was one of those "you either know it or you don't" questions, whereas all/of the others could be worked out by applying a little knowledge and extending it or by using a technique that you have learned rather that dredging up a fact that you have learned.

The French one was sneaky because the correct answer was inferred from what was said whereas one of the incorrect ones was more or less an exact translation of part of the French wording but with the crucial word ("reduce" instead of "increase") changed to reverse the sense.

(*) I think one of the main reasons that I found Latin so hard was because I couldn't distinguish nouns from adjectives from verbs in Latin. And that's because Latin has no redundancy - no little helper words like articles (the, a), no pronouns (he, they) and no defined word order. And in the languages I've learned (French and German) you rely on these - anything followed by a pronoun or person's name is likely to be a verb; anything immediately before or after a noun is going to be the adjective that's associated with it; anything following an article is a noun (and German even helpfully capitalises these!). And you usually get all the words for one clause next to each other, whereas I remember my Latin teacher going into raptures about some weird "chi-rhoic form" in which the words from one clause are deliberately mixed up with those from another (so "the red cat sat on the blue mat" might put "blue" next to "cat" and "red" next to "mat", with only the adjectival agreement - assuming it's not ambiguous - allowing you to untangle the sentence.

Reply to
NY

Ah! I cheated on the binary number. Had to be even and there was only the one:-)

Agreed.

Nor mine. My wife needed *O* level maths as a mature student. Looking over her shoulder, I found some of that very difficult.

Reply to
Tim Lamb

That's not cheating. That's understanding binary.

Reply to
F

That's two of us then.

Reply to
F

Three.

I did guess at the Greek question, although I then recalled the opera named after the two main characters.

Reply to
Halmyre

There are 10 types of people...

Cheers

Reply to
Syd Rumpo

But of which gender.

Reply to
whisky-dave

But the Aenied is written in Latin ... it's a *Roman* classic ...

Reply to
Jethro_uk

Didn't have Scooby about the classics question

Had never even heard of the three queens I was supposed to choose from (except in the sense of other people with the same name).

My knowledge of the subject was such that if you'd asked me if they were all real classical queens I still wouldn't have a clue.

(and FWIW I consider my knowledge of ancient history to be above average for the population)

Do they really do this as a standard subject at school? Or is is just something that the smart arse Humanities biased students do, just like, as a smart arsed science student, I did AddMaths - and the token maths question in the test was trivial by comparison, I'd expect a 12 year old to get it right.

tim

Reply to
tim...

Me too, but I wouldn't have done so well at school age. I read The Aeneid in my early twenties, but would have shuddered at the thought at age 16 :-) I guessed the one about the village.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

But how can yuo tell a male rabbit from a female one ? What if one believes it's in the wrong body ?

Reply to
whisky-dave

But the question is about an English translation, and includes the words "We are the few left alive by the Greeks". If you aren't familiar with Virgil and are trying to work out what it's about just from the question, that it's about Greek history/legends/mythology isn't unreasonable. (It's a Roman classic about a time hundreds of years before Rome was founded.)

Reply to
Alan Braggins

Managed 7/7 which is err, rather surprising;!...

Reply to
tony sayer

Only 25% (1 in 100) have heard of binary.

Reply to
PeterC

So did I, but I chose Dido for The Aeneid as the only one I'd heard of, and guessed "Commuter village" as being some current fad description that should never have been required to be learnt and regurgitated.

Reply to
Dave W

I understood the French one perfectly. Then debated which wrong answer to pick. _None_ of them matched the French properly.

They weren't that hard really.

Andy

Reply to
Vir Campestris

Clearly aimed at Rabbits:-)

Presumably a sight challenged person suffering from St. Vitus Dance could have got 33.33r?

Reply to
Tim Lamb

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