Entertainment Weekly and My Litmus Test

This week’s Entertainment Weekly features its annual Pop Culture Quiz; over 100 questions ranging from the mundane to the insane. Every year I look forward to the quiz and every year I’m disappointed. Now that I’m writing a blog on pop culture I figured I better score well.

So Monday night, I took a few minutes before the start of 24 and delved into the quiz. As an annual quiz taker and as one who takes the results to heart I have a few rules I try to follow:
• Set aside 15-30 minutes to take the quiz. I know that’s asking a lot from the short attention span generation but its far better to take the quiz in one sitting.
• Read the instructions…carefully. I know it’s an EW quiz but seriously they don’t make these things easy. There are multiple part questions and bonus questions all over the place that you might miss if you don’t read the whole thing.
• Don’t study. To get true results you must be of clear mind and soul. A true pop culture fanatic can spit random useless facts at will.
• Cut yourself off from things that might give you clues. Turn off your TV. Stay away from your computer. Take the test away from your DVD collection.
• Mark questions you’re not sure of and go back.
• Be a tough grader. For example, just because a recent comic you read referred to Bizarro’s home world as Earth-0, doesn’t mean that you should get credit for an unlisted answer.
• Don’t add up your score until you’re completely done. You wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise, would you?

I was only up to question 20 when I began to feel a pit in my stomach. The Superman section in the beginning proved a little harder then I thought and the first few questions told me this would not be a walk in the park. By the time I hit the halfway point I had left many questions blank which I never remember doing in the past. Although, I don’t believe there’s even been an EW quiz with so many open ended questions.

By the time I got to the bonus questions I figured I was gasping for 70 points, which while respectable certainly doesn’t qualify me as a fanatic. I went back over the questions and figured out a couple more answers that had been plaguing me. For example, how in the world could I forget the name of Ron Weasley’s pet rat? After racking my brain I filled in some more blanks but still had over 10 no answers on the paper.

I started the grading and all of a sudden things were looking up. The multiple part questions sure were helping and the two bonus sections on superheroes weren’t going do anything but help this geek. By the time I’m done, I’m left with a respectable 85 which improves on the 74 I got last year. According to EW this makes me the pop culture equivalent of the guy from Numb3rs. Now I just wish I had his hair.