Sporcle is a website I would probably never visit if not for its fun games section. I found Sporcle’s games via StumbleUpon (which I highly recommend if you are not already using it). With some practice, I can name all the countries of Europe and South America. I can get most of the countries of Asia, Africa, and North America, but I stink at Australia/Oceana. I do pretty well with the United States and their capitols. My score on the US presidents was abysmal. I did respectable on Shakespeare’s plays, but should have done better as I am an English teacher. I aced Star Trek: TNG crew, but forgot Sulu on the Star Trek crew (and Nurse Chapel, too). I only did OK on Bible books, both Old and New Testaments. I stank at Tom Hanks films. I didn’t even try British Prime Ministers (although if there had been a quiz on British monarchs, I feel confident I would have aced it).

The games are addictive, especially the geography ones. I found myself remembering better each time I played. I always liked geography and used to spend hours looking through my stamp collection and examining my globe. So many changes have occurred with countries created and names changed. Names I remember from my stamp books, like Dahomey and Upper Volta are no longer used, and the break-ups of the USSR and Yugoslavia have changed the the map considerably. I thought it was interesting that the Asia quiz accepted either Burma or Myanmar and the African quiz accepted either Côte d’Ivoire or Ivory Coast, although whichever answer you type, the map will read Myanmar and Côte d’Ivoire respectively. And I learned how to spell Kyrgyzstan, but I still don’t know how to say it.

[tags]geography, games, sporcle, stumbleupon[/tags]