Play the game: Can you identify the book from its map?. I got 9 right out of 10 (I didn’t have the slightest clue on #5, and just guessed).
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Play the game: Can you identify the book from its map?. I got 9 right out of 10 (I didn’t have the slightest clue on #5, and just guessed).
Too easy. I got 10/10 and was a bit more lucky taking the correct guess at the question with the Curious Dog Incident. (Well, I was able to exclude two choices beforehand.)
I got 7 out of 10. Not too bad for someone who hardly reads any fiction – and no, I’m not proud of that. Although many answers I got right because of good judgment calls and just knowing a few things about classical literature without having read it. Again, something I’m not proud of.
And likewise with #5. WTF is #5? I’ll be busy reading wikipedia again, but probably not the actual book.
9 out of 10 also. #5 was also a big guess.
70% I beat the Turing test. That’s how it works, right?
I got the first 5 without a problem, then struggled afterwords. The curious incident of the dog… is an outstanding book, I would thoroughly recommend it to one and all.
Nine out of ten, also guessed wrong on #5.
Gawd I’m lame…;-(
I only got LOTR map. M0rd0r is such a give away (hint, hint). Winny-t-Pooh was obveeus, but the rest were baffling. I need to enhance my library a bit…
9:10 by guessing wrong on #5. I guessed right on a few others. Only half where I was sure.
9 out of 10; guessed right on number 5 partly because of knowing that, if there were a diagram in “Murder on the Orient Express” (I’m pretty sure they drew one in-book, not sure if it’s actually shown), it would be of the train itself.
Rats, only 6 out of ten and I had read 3 of the ones I missed. In my defense though, the maps were so small on my mobile device that I could not make out the labels. I will second the recommendation for the Curious Incident book.
Well… I submitted my answers and got 6/10, but cheated with the “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” answer. so really 5/10. But really those other 3 (not mentioned in my previous note) were pure guesses, So, lucky I was, I guess. My results follow:
——————-
V = correct || X = incorrect || 0 = no answer
1. V
2. 0
3. V
4. V
5. V
6. v [cheeted]
7. X
8. X
9. V
10. X
I will second the recommendation for the Curious Incident book.
Ordered!
I’m surprised so many missed #5. My special-ed English class read Curious Incident, so it was one of only 2 that I was completely sure (the other being Lord of the Rings; I got 6/10). I’ll add my voice to the recommendations.
I did not do well! I haven’t read many of the books. But I did know enough to laugh at the inclusion of House of Leaves as a possible answer, because having a map is pretty much the antithesis of the book itself. (also it is the most pretentious, full of itself book I’ve ever read, but anyway)
Well, I’m just average (5/10). Howsomever, in my defense, two of the maps didn’t show up at all so I used the SWAG method, which I also used on the several books I haven’t read.
I missed Dune, though I read the book. I couldn’t read the map and it did not look at all familiar.
I really enjoyed Curious Incident, and heartily recommend it.
I got 7 of 10 even with guessing on most of them. I didn’t bother looking to see what I got wrong.
I’ve read Curious Incident so I actually got that one. The train station incidents are a substantial part of the later plot. For a lot of the others I guessed after being able to eliminate some I was familiar with; ended up with 9/10, so I guess I matched the prof.
I got 8/10. Some I knew at a glance (i.e. Middle Earth, Arrakis, Westros) others I figured out by comparing place names with what I knew of the stories listed, only a coupleI had no clue about,
6 and 7 were the only ones I wasn’t entirely sure on, though I figured them both out correctly. I figured 6 was by Verne (place names in French), and the course shown was clearly 20k Leagues rather than Around the World. 7 was mostly process of elimination, though the other 3 were all pretty obviously wrong.
For the rest of the books, I recognized them because I’d read them. Sometimes repeatedly (LOTR, Dune, Winnie-the-Pooh, ), sometimes just slogging through the series (AGoIaF), sometimes because the choice of map was just odd enough to be memorable (Curious Incident).
OK. So I got 6 out of 10.
I have no idea what this means. Perhaps a study should be commissioned.
8/10
I was able to get #5 by process of elimination (I know Orient Express & 39 Steps, and I figured Dog must be a mystery and thus would likely have a map of a crime scene). Gulliver’s Travels tripped me up b/c it looked like the coast of California, and I didn’t think there were any actual sites that Gulliver visited. Dune’s map was just too blurry to make much out, although Mt. Idaho gave me pause. I couldn’t remember Duncan Idaho getting a mountain named after him.
8 of 10.
I missed #5 and #8. i’ve never read flatland or house of leaves or I think either of the other answers in #8.
I had read murder on the orient express and knew #5 wasn’t that. I think I also eliminated another choice there.
There was one other answer where I had to guess between 2, though I got that one right.
So in 2 questions with a 50/50 shot, I got 1 right – an adequate representation of my knowledge. One question where I had no clue I didn’t get it right through guessing, also an adequate representation of my knowledge. So the 8/10 is very fair to me.
Looks like an amazingly perfect normal distribution – and that I’ve got a z of at least +1, maybe more like +1.3-+1.5. Nothing special, but decidedly on the knowledgable end. I’m happy with that.
8 out of 10, and it should have been 9. I can’t believe I got the Dune one wrong, it’s one of my favourite books.
I got 9/10 even though I’ve only read LOTR, ASOIAF, and Winnie the Pooh. Just familiar enough with the rest to make edumucated guesses.
8/10 which is not bad considering I never read two of the books and had not read most of the others in 30 years or more. My favorite was the Flatland map.
10/10 — though luck played its part, I remembered the styles of many of the maps without even focusing on any names. Dune, Treasure Island, and Gulliver’s Travels all used the original published maps. The LotR coastline is burnt into my memory, even if I hadn’t recognised the place names.
The Curious Incident map was familiar, and that book was the only one among the options I’d actually read, albeit a while ago and I don’t recall the circumstances that require the map. The Flatland one I guessed just on the basis that long thin triangles would be an odd way to represent policemen unless they actually were long thin triangles. I’ve never seen the GoT map, nor read the books, nor seen the TV series, so that was a complete guess.
8:10, missed Gulliver’s Travels and Flatland. I got the Dune one mainly as a guess based on the circular “shield wall”.
Nth-ing the Curious Incident recommendations.
10 out of 10 although I guessed at Gulliver’s Travels.
I missed Flatland and Gulliver’s Travels. But I aced the Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime (which is an amazing book, the main character is a boy with an austism spectrum disorder who attempts to solve the mystery of the neighbor’s murdered dog)
If you can, go see the National Theatre ‘Live’ broadcast of the “Curious Case of the Dog in the Night time”.
It’s broadcast to movie theatres (a la ‘Live from the Met’) I enjoyed it more than the book, but it is very intense.
Needless to say I got #5 right. But then I got them all right, with a bit of judicious guesswork
Only 5 out of 10 — but I don’t read much modern fiction. It would have been 4 of 10, but I examined the map of Arakeen & environs with a magnifying glass. The Shield Wall was the giveaway.
4/10 – But I haven’t read half of those books. I’m fairly sure my copy of Dune didn’t have a map in it, though.
3/10. Dang it.
*google*
*google*
*google*
10/10.
First try!
I was lost on the Dune one, until I saw the word “Erg”, which is a desert landform, and realized the grid was polar, which implied the polar region of a hot world. So that was my guess out of the multiples, and yay for my cartography classes.
I read the book once, but dang if I can remember when.
8/10.
I knew 7 of them, somewhat confident guess on number 5 was correct, it’s been a while since I read it.
Total guesses on 7 and 8, got both wrong.
The polar projection was a mighty clue, even if you didn’t remember exactly what the Arrakis map looked like. But there was also a big arrow saying something was “10 thumpers” away.
I mean, sure, Ergs, & Shield Walls, but when you get to thumpers…
I’ve never seen ‘Funeral Plain’ anywhere other than Dune.
I only got 5. Then again, I pretty much read only Sci-Fi and Fantasy and which 5 did I get? Those 5…
5/5 … and while I’ve read a large number of books, and seen a large number of maps in them, I haven’t read most of the books in the proposed answers, and never even heard of some of them before.
Plus, some of them, I’ve read them a long time ago (something like 30 or 40 years), and don’t remember ever seeing a map. (Such as several Gulliver books, for example.)
Hint: I’m rather unlikely to have read original editions of anything non-paperback, and US (or indeed any non-German) children’s books specifically.
I might recognize illustrations (not maps, as I’ve never seen any, except maybe of the last of the three) from Struwwelpeter, or Max und Moritz, or Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer[*] …
[*] At least the author of the last one should be recognizable internationally, after The Neverending Story.