English for Wizards

Taming the Fact Monster

By John Moore

イラストがかわいい「ファクトモンスター」

My son Peter and his school friends are in a trivia fad right now. At the oddest moment, he would suddenly ask: "Hey Daddy, what was Goku's name before he came to Earth?" I didn't even know what TV show that was from, but I guessed, "Rumpelstiltskin?" Maybe I didn't know Dragon Ball Z, but Peter didn't know the Brothers Grimm, so we were even.

Trivia quizzes are an easy way to practice your English, and the Internet has not only lots of quizzes, but also lots of answers. One colorful, content-rich quiz Web site is Fact Monster (www.factmonster.com). Peter likes their little devil mascot because he looks like Kaiketsu Zorori, the fox detective.

Anyway, let's click on the "Games and Quizzes" icon toward the bottom of the main page. There's a bunch of math puzzles and word games listed at the top, but we're looking for the quizzes at the bottom of the page. There you will see a big list featuring dinosaurs, Pokemon, Harry Potter etc. Take your pick.

The great thing about trivia quizzes is that you're not expected to get the right answers. Since this is really an English exercise, it's enough just to understand the question. Peter made me explain each question, and then he tried to read the three answer choices. After he clicked on the "Continue" button, it said whether he guessed right or wrong. There are 10 questions per quiz.

OK, but what if it's really important to get the right answer, like with your school homework? Well, we've got the Internet at our fingertips. We can search the whole wide world.

For example, I'm starting the Summer XGames Quiz on Fact Monster (click on "More Quizzes" to find it), and it asks what the difference is between a tailwhip and a face plant, when you're doing bicycle stunts. Hmm. We open another browser window and go to Google (www.google.com), a search-engine site. We enter "tailwhip" in the blank. The third or fourth result is a site called EXPN (expn.go.com/tricks/Tailwhip.html) that shows you how to do a tailwhip, and it even has a video.

Back to Google. This time we can search for "face plant" and "bicycle." Make sure to put "face plant" in quotes like that to find an exact match. Then put the word "bicycle" after a space to look for a site containing the words "face plant" AND "bicycle." Great! The top result is The Dictionary of Mountain Bike Slang (world.std.com/~jimf/biking/slang.html), which explains that face plant means "hitting the ground face first." Ouch! This is not a trick I'd like to try.

Shukan ST: March 21, 2003

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