Almost all of our users know how to find and play a quiz. Most can probably find comments, challenges, groups, even showdowns. Quiz creators use a whole other set of features on top of all that. But some tools are a little tougher to discover on your own, and in this post, we’ll highlight some these hidden features.
Hidden Features for Gameplay
Scores by percentage
By default, we display scores on the site in numerical form. But if you’re hunting down badges with certain percent requirements, studying for a test, or just generally prefer percentages, that’s an option too. The toggle for this feature is on every quiz page.
Stopwatch Mode
Stopwatch mode is also easily accessible on every quiz page. It’s a perfect choice for when you don’t want to race the clock. The slow countdown of the default timer could be stressful, or maybe you just like having that extra minute or two to rack your brain for that one guy… you know, he was in a movie with Tom Hanks maybe? The poster was orange?
Anyway, keep in mind that stopwatch mode isn’t allowed for completing challenges and achievements. So if you’re working on a long badge streak, keep an eye on the way you use this feature.
Snark
Snark (or more generically, the post-game message) is the witty, sarcastic, or congratulatory message you see at the end of a quiz play. It varies from quiz to quiz and generally reflects how well you did. You can use the (Hide) button if you’re not a fan of seeing it, or you can toggle the feature on and off under the Settings page, within the Gameplay tab.
Unplayed Quizzes Tab
It may seem a little odd to highlight a feature that’s on the home page of the site as a “hidden” feature, but it’s often overlooked! The unplayed quizzes tab gives you a different way to find quizzes on the site. The “unplayed” element of the tool is unique from most browsing and searching options on the site.
Hidden Features for Quiz Creation
Coordinates for Picture Click
Picture click quizzes can be incredibly fun to make – if you have a knack for drawing the shapes. If you don’t, or if you have a complicated map of detailed shapes to create, things can get overwhelming. Coordinate systems for shapes are used in other settings – in particular, if you’ve created image maps in HTML, you’re likely familiar with the general process.
Changing complicated shapes can be easier to do mathematically – especially when it comes to scaling or shifting shapes around the canvas. It takes a little experimentation to learn to use the coordinates if you’ve never used a system like it, but it allows for more fine-grain and complex control over the shapes. If you’ve got some crazy quiz ideas, that could be exactly what you need.
To get to this tool, just hover over the space by the numbers in the Data tab of a Picture Click quiz – an arrow should appear. Click on the arrow and you’ll get access to the Hint Shape and Answer Coordinates fields.
Hexadecimal Cell Colors
Another place where you might recognize some HTML knowledge coming into play: classic quizzes with different colors for each cell. In quizzes like Ben & Jerry’s Flavors by Any 3 Letters or Godly Typing Challenge you can see the stunning results.
To accomplish this, you just need to make sure that you have “Use extra column for color values” selected under the Options tab, and then put the corresponding hexadecimal codes in the extra info tab. You can even find the hexadecimal codes for colors you like right in the normal color picking tools under the Style tab.
Copy Published Quiz
When it comes to some of most popular quiz formats, you’ll see some of the same concepts and images come up over and over: maps of the various continents, the US States, logic puzzles, criteria quizzes, bunkers. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel (or redraw a world map by hand) when you’re making a quiz based on a popular format or map.
For these formats, we introduced the “Copy Quiz” feature. You can find it under certain quizzes near the comments:
For more detailed advice and a full list of the copyable quizzes, check out our full post on the feature.
Quiz Management Dashboard Search
If you have hundreds of contributed or published quizzes, your quiz management dashboard will look much more daunting than this one. If you’ve forgotten the title of a specific quiz that you’re searching for, or if you want to seek out every quiz you’ve created that fits certain criteria, you want to be able to do something a little better than a keyword search. That’s where the ‘category:’ and ‘type:’ options can be a huge help. If you know the category (sports, geography, etc) or type (classic, clickable, map, etc) of what you’re seeking, you’ll be able to narrow the field significantly.
For a full list of the categories and the types of quizzes we have, check out the left bar and dropdown on this page.
Other Hidden Features
Team Name Generator
If you find yourself struggling to come up with a name for pub trivia week after week, the tool at the bottom of this page is going to be a lifesaver. Or, if you want something a little more tried and true, we’ve got some ideas for all different kinds of situations and themes.
Badge Tool-Tip Pop-Up
Badge hunters take note: the badge tools have been updated. Both the grid and list view now give tool-tips when you hover over a badge name. The requirements for the badge, your progress so far, and links to relevant pages on Sporcle will show up in the tool tip.
Can you think of any fun hidden features of Sporcle? Make sure to let us know in the comment section below!
