“Misfits“
Hello everyone,
day number nine of our Epic Advent Calater… uh… I mean calendar.
I’m a little late today because yesterday I had to work, and after that I was out for a few drinks last night and then I realized that I actually hadn’t finished the post yet. So now here I am with my coffee introducing you to door nine, behind which we find… something to wrack your brains a little :).
We’ll do a quiz that we did last year once which I think is really fun. At least it’s fun to create it. I call it “Find the Misfit”.
Here’s how it works:
I will give you three words and you have to pick the one that doesn’t fit. You might know this format from intelligence tests, but there’s a small difference.
Today, the difference has NOTHING to do with the meaning of a word.
Let’s say the example is
Mensch, Maus, Tisch
If we look at the meaning then we can give all kinds of answers. We could say Tisch doesn’t fit, because it’s not alive. We could say Maus doesn’t fit, because it’s the only item we do NOT want in our kitchen. And we could say Mensch doesn’t fit because it’s the only one who destroys the environment. #sad
That’s actually why I hate these questions in intelligence tests. Because the answer is never as clear or unambiguous as they think.
In this quiz, the correct answer would be Maus, because it’s die Maus, while the other words are both der.
But it’s not always the gender, of course. Sometimes it’s the plural, sometimes the words’ function, sometimes the preposition they go with, and so on.
But it’s always a grammatical aspect and NOT the meaning. Oh and also not the spelling.
The quiz starts out easy and then it gets pretty hard. But you can always get a little hint if you need one.
Oh and there might be more than one correct answer to the questions. I tried my best to avoid that but often there are things you don’t think about.
So if you find an alternative solution, just leave it in a comment. And of course also your questions and how you like this quiz.
Cool… so I’d say, enjoy the brain work and I’ll see you tomorrow :)!
EDIT: Hints aren’t showing :/. I don’t know what to do, I’ll have to see later if I can fix it!!
Hey Emanuel,
I don’t normally comment because I find everything spot on and super useful and it seems silly just to write that. But yeah, I find your usual articles spot on, the quizzes mix it up a bit to keep it interesting and of the right sort of difficulty.
This quiz for me felt a bit more “trying to guess what the examiner wants” than learning so much, so I’d say I preferred the others.
Cheers and keep up the good work!
Matt.
Ha, yeah I can kind of see what you mean. I can’t really imagine how it is to get this quiz as a non native speaker :).
Thanks for the great overall feedback!!
Quiz worked beautifully on my iPhone. Shame my answers were an absolute disaster! Monkeys on typewriters would have done better. Great quiz though! Keep up the good work!
That was an awesome quiz
C
this quiz is super fun, thank you :)
Glad you like it :)
The hints were working for me! (Well the first one was, I didn’t try the others.)
I got 5 out of 8 by sheer guesswork and often for the wrong reasons! Fun and interesting but way above my level.
Well, as long as the reasoning makes sense logically, it’s perfectly valid. I tried my best to make it unambiguous but it’s REALLY hard actually :)
No. 8: I thought the answer is pfeil as the other two can be verb. Dah…silly.
Not silly at all. “seilen” is not really a verb by itself, but “abseilen” is, so your logic works :)
Very interesting quiz. I received a score of 7 out of 8. I have to admit that I scored one as being correct but for the wrong reason.
There aren’t really “wrong” reasons here. What matters is that the reason makes sense. If you want, you can share them and I can give you feedback :)
Will you give us the answers tomorrow?
You can see them at the end of the quiz. Just click “show questions” and you’ll get an answer there.
Ich finde es schön, dass du, deine Geschichten erzählen. Schön, dass es dir gibt
Danke dir für die lieben Worte :)!
I had diffrent logic to others but I got 7 out of 8, but I ain’t spoiling it. The one I got wrong was Q5
Wow, that’s awesome then!! But please… share your logic!!! You have a unique way of thinking about language and I’m really curious about how were thinking here!
I want to share it , but won’t it spoil fun for some ppl?
I will write it. Approve it if you think it won’t spoil it for people.
Q1, “wann” doesn’t send the verb to the end
Q2- Q4, same logic as you and Q5 was wrong
Q6, the first two options seem like methods of measurement
Q7,Ein weiser Mensch ist wendig, aber ein schöner nicht (unbedingt)
Q8,Du ziehst an einem Seil, um auf den Pfeil zu schießen
Q1: NICE! It can send it to the end, if it is used as a side sentence.
– Ich weiß nicht, wann der Bus heute gekommen ist.
But the other two ALWAYS do it. So, your reasoning is perfectly valid.
Q6: Yes, that makes sene, but it’s bound to what they mean, so it’s not really what I was going for. Anyway, well done!
Q7: You can have a wise man in a wheelchair. Think Steven Hawking. So here I’d say… nope, your logic doesn’t work :)
Q8: It’s actually a “Sehne” what you pull. But very creative thinking!!!
Q7 : I did not mean it physically though ;). I mean that you could have discussion and the wise person would be open minded and flexible
Nah, most people have taken this quiz already. And then you’d need to read through all the comments and find this thread :).
Well, I was shocked at how well I did (6/8), but a couple of them I got right for the wrong reasons. :D Very interesting quiz!
I dont know which ones were right and why, by luck??!!!
You can see the answers at the end of the quiz. At least you should be able to, in theory.
Well, if the reason makes sense, then it’s not really a wrong reason. It’s just one I didn’t think of. It’s really hard to come up with words where one differs in exactly one aspect :)
My results? 3 correct out of 8. That would count as flunking at school. Please, tell me there is a prize for getting the LOWEST grade of all! haha!
The price is that you have to do it again, but this time you’ll see the answers at the end, for some facepalm and some “How the hell are we supposed to find that out?” :)
Well, THAT is an improvement – knowing WHY one gescheitert miserably ist, is always helpful.
i declined to take mein cause it seemed like the ich ‘n’ mich were on their own fine.
guess not! ;)
Wait, no.. “mein” is the correct answer there. Did I mess something up?
For question #7, I chose wendig as odd one out because they are all adjective/adverbs but weise and schön are the base/root for verbs and nouns and well. (althought wenden and Wende are the verb and noun associated with wendig, its not as if the Germans say weisig or schönig) I am eager to find out why schön is your answer.
“weise” and “wendig” are used as suffixes (ausnahmsweise, auswendig, aufwendig) .
This one was really hard, though.
Icy hat dreimal falsch antwotet . Aber weiß ich nicht warum und könne ich die Gründe finden . Indem die ” knopf” hint fonctionert nicht.
I added the explanations now. You can see them at the end of the quiz with the questions. No idea what’s wrong with the “hint”.
Yes, I want to know why I was wrong too. 5 out of 8
Ugh… I know… I’ll add that as a message now. You can see it at the end of the quiz.
Toll! 6 of 8!! Aber ich wollte wissen, warum habe ich falsch gemacht!
6 von 8 ist voll gut!!! Welche hattest du falsch?
:-D!! Ich freue mich!! Ich habe 5 und 8 falsch.
I also can’t see which questions I answered wrong
That should work now (the wrong answer display at the end of the quiz).
Hiya,
Got 5 right and 3 wrong (4, 7 and 8). The problem is I don’t know why the wrong ones are wrong….
Bis Morgen!
I don’t know what happened! I need to speak to the people who made the software, why the hint isn’t showing. It does show on Opera browser but neither on Chrome or Edge. I’m pissed, actually!!
Pissed drunk? Or pissed off (angry?) I hope you’re not both – not a great combination!
Haha… no, I was pissed off. But now back to baseline.
Are you supposed to be able to see which ones you got wrong?
Yes, I forgot to activate that. It should work now.
(not the hints though. Something is wrong there, and I don’t know what)
The hints work fine for me. (On a laptop using Chrome, in case that’s useful info.)
Ah, weird, it doesn’t work on my Chrome.
That actually makes it more complicated :/