
Hello everyone,
and welcome to door number 8 – the second week of the Advent Calendar is starting.
And what better way to kick off the week than with a little bit of activity.
A Vocabulary Quiz
Today, I want to try out a new type of quiz that might be useful for building vocabulary. I’m curious what you’ll think.
Here’s how it works:
I’ll give you four words that together kind of “encode” an thing or idea.
- mouse
- keyboard
- typing
- screen
The word here would be computer.
You task is basically to find out what word I am looking for and to type the answer.
And of course the four words are in German.
The idea is to kind of explore words belonging to a thing or idea. Maybe you can already guess the target word just based on two of the options and then you can maybe infer what the other options mean based on that guess.
Anyways, all this sounds super theoretical and boring, so I think it’s best to just give it a try.
Viel Spaß :)
Oh… just one thing for the typing: do keep capitalization in mind.
So, how’d you do?
Let me know in the comments how you liked it and if it was too hard or too easy or just right.
Also, let me know what you think of this mode in general and if it’s a good way to explore vocabulary maybe. I’m not sure how “scalable” this is, in a sense that I’m not sure if it’s possible to create lots of questions that are unambiguous enough. With these types of exercises there’s always a chance that another answer also makes sense, which should then of course also be valid but isn’t and that can be super frustrating.
Anyway, let me know your thoughts in the comments.
I hope you enjoyed it and learned a word or two, have a great day und wir sehen uns morgen.

My vocabulary is abysmal. However, the one with the verb was brilliant, a real light-bulb-over-my-head moment when I got it. A concept worth using again. Good work.
These connection exercises are helpful for me and provide useful descriptor words which are useful for everyday conversations.
I like the idea of finding a common thread in a group of words. Also, it was fun!
100%, wrong that is. Good quiz but I’ve been away from German for too long.
I got 2–4 right, once I realized that the answers were much easier than the questions, if that makes sense. On question 1 I didn’t know any of the clue words, so I figured the answer might be a harder word, one I might not know. So I tried to think of specific ways those 4 words were related, so I came up with a complicated scenario where someone put their blinker on and steered off the road because the tire was flat (because of “die Felge”), but I couldn’t think of a word for that whole narrative! Once I realized the answer was broader and simpler, I got the rest right.
Ich liebe die Quizfragen. Die Herausforderung macht Spaß und ist hilfriech.
Yeah, that’s part of the fun to have the solution be a really simple noun. It’s like a reverse mind map where you see all the branches, but not the center.
Great exercise! Also good to know that spelling errors are my bane in two languages now.
Look at it as you being consistent. That’s a great trait
Das Fahrzeug! nur das Auto! Ya vielleicht Fahrzeug ist zu algemein, aber. . .
Welches Fahrzeug hat denn noch einen Kofferraum außer dem Auto ;)?
Meine Antwort Blumen war nicht akzeptiert. Aber do hast deine Description in plural geschrieben.
Hab’ ich? Wo denn?
Frage Drei: meine Antwort “Blumen” – falsch markiert. But your description is all about ‘they and them’ (no gender pronoun jokes I am assuming).
“The word is die Blume. They comes from buds, we can pick them, and make a bouquet with them and they smell good typically.”
İt was confusing
Das hat viel Spaß gemacht!
I really liked the quiz! Hope to see more vocab or grammar quizzes. They’re really helpful
Not sure what it says about me that I guessed tätowieren for the last one XD (didn’t know what Kraul was)
Lolololol, omg, that is so funny to me!! Very very creative mind!
Great quiz format. I only got the last two right. I don’t understand what a rim has got to do with a car however!
The rim is the part that holds the rubber wheel. die Felge in German. You can check on image search, that’ll give you the quickest impression :)
Ich mag die Quiz
I really liked this quiz! I needed the hints and still got 2 wrong but I do think it’s a great way to help learn vocab :)
I got them all, probably because I love word games like this. I can most easily recall the vocab from the hardest question, the last one, I think because I had to spend more time thinking about a possible relationship. So, even though Kraul was the only new word for me, what I learned was that these words are all used to describe swimming strokes in German. New information that I will definitely retain.
Of the four questions, I couldn’t recall one of them at all after completing the quiz. I went back to check which one it was (#3). This was the question I spent the least amount of time on. So, it seems when the association is a bit difficult, and one spends more time figuring it out, the vocab sticks more than the easier questions. So, I say: The harder the better :)
Yeah, in my opinion, it’s either rapid fire, spaghetti on the wall, or something that makes your brain think and ” puzzle solve” – those two approaches work best.
The puzzle solving gets better if the puzzle was created with “intent” and not just randomly or quickly.
I’ll play around with AI a bit to see if it’s capable of reliably drawing up questions in this format. If it does then that’s a path pursuing :)
I needed the hints, but I really liked the quiz! And I’m a swimmer- had no idea the stroke words translated from German, so that was fun to learn! Vielen Dank!
Dann werfe ich mal noch Freistil dazu, damit alles komplett ist. Und Schmetterling wird auch Delfin genannt.
I got the first one wrong because I included the article. I was confused when I read the answer and you said “it was [article][noun]” because that was exactly what I’d typed!
I had added a little note not to write the article, but many people missed it, so that was poor user guiding on my end :). Sorry for ruining your score. Ultimately, it is because I was too lazy to add more options to the “correct” choices field.
This was fun. I just think it needs to be made very direct that you are not looking for the definite article in addition to the word. I missed the first one cause I had the wrong noun completely, but when I did the check, it came back and told me the word it was looking for was das Auto – so I figured it wanted the article. Then I missed all the other ones because I used the definite article, but it didn’t really want it. Lol. I did get schwimmen however!
Yeah, I should have added both versions (with and without) as possible answers. I did that now and will do so in the next round of this.
That was fun. I got them all right but the last one. I knew it had to do with swimming but I guessed Stil because I thought that was the word for swim stroke.
You’re completely right, it is Stil for that. I did mention that I’m searching for a verb there, but many people missed the part under the 4 words. That’s interesting feedback actually. If I have any special instructions or hints, I need to put them BEFORE the 4 words or chances are that people will not read them :).