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Happy New Year and a 2022 Recap

On a personal level, the past couple of years have been very busy so I haven’t been keeping up with the blog. Many apologies. We added a new family member, moved across the province, completely renovated an older home, and more, including pouring a lot of time and resources in Random Trivia Generator. Over the course of 2022, the site was re-built from scratch with React to improve performance on newer devices and browsers. The rebuild also allows for additional features with 2 being finished and deployed in 2022. The site now has a search features and tags! Oh, and another 5,000 new questions.

Search

Searching sounds so simple…and it is. But simple search functions are dumb and spit out lists of mostly useless results. Custom search functions are not easy to implement. Look at Google. There were dozens of search engines when they emerged on the market but by developing a useful engine, they became the leader, and still are. I am not comparing Random Trivia Generator’s search feature to Google but it took a while to develop a mostly useful custom search engine based on tags, categories and a crafty filter. I say mostly because it is better than the default search feature the back-end database has, but still can’t read your mind and give the exact result you want. You should now be able to find questions a lot easier!

Tags

Tags are finally here! What are tags? They are like sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories that can better organize questions by more specific themes. The tags page is not randomized, but it rather shows the questions that have tags in order they appear in the database. With close to 30,000 trivia questions, I have only been able to tag about 6,000 of them so far. But I am continuously tagging questions so the entire database should be tagged soon enough for your browsing pleasure. Give tags a go by clicking on the menu and navigating to the tags page.

New Questions

Since the last update, about 2 years ago, approximately 5,000 new questions have been added to the database. A big thank you to all who have submitted questions! I have another 1,000 to review and approve. It shouldn’t take long to cross the 30,000 unique questions mark, thus making this database one of the larger ones online. None of the questions have been obtained through scraping or an API. All are either written by me or submitted by users.

Canadian Thanksgiving 2019

A short trivia round on Canadian Thanksgiving. A few easy and a few hard questions to stump the family with.

[accordion] [accordions title=”1. What year marked the first annual celebration of Thanksgiving?” state=”closed”] 1879 [/accordions][accordions title=”2. When in October is Thanksgiving celebrated?” state=”closed”] Second Monday [/accordions][accordions title=”3. Which sports league holds games each Thanksgiving?” state=”closed”] Canadian Football League [/accordions][accordions title=”4. Which holidays do the United States observe on the same day as Thanksgiving?” state=”closed”] Columbus Day and American Indigenous People’s Day [/accordions][accordions title=”5. In which provinces is Thanksgiving not an official statutory holiday?” state=”closed”] Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia [/accordions][accordions title=”6. Which former Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Rangers hockey player celebrates his birthday on October 14?” state=”closed”] Sylvain Lefebvre [/accordions][accordions title=”7. What is Thanksgiving better known as in Quebec?” state=”closed”] Action de grâce [/accordions][accordions title=”8. What province often serves Jiggs’ Dinner instead of turkey?” state=”closed”] Newfoundland [/accordions][accordions title=”9. In 2000, Thanksgiving coincided with which safety-related week-long event?” state=”closed”] Fire Prevention Week [/accordions][accordions title=”10. On what day in 1957 did Queen Elizabeth II open the 23rd Canadian Parliament, making it the only parliament formally opened by the Queen of Canada?” state=”closed”] October 14 [/accordions] [/accordion]

November 2018 Recap – Random Trivia Generator by the Numbers

Hello dear readers and fans of the Random Trivia Generator and welcome to another monthly update.

Hello dear readers and fans of the Random Trivia Generator and welcome to another monthly update. The purpose of these posts is to provide a peek behind the curtain and all the action that takes place to bring the tens to thousands of trivia questions to users. 

New Questions

Since the last monthly recap in October I added 69 new questions to the main Random Trivia Generator website. As of this post, the site is sitting at 20,200 trivia questions. 

I want to thank everyone who sent in questions and corrections.

New Developments

Due to the surprising usage of the old site, I have started to slowly add more questions and tag older questions. In November I added over 100 new questions, dozens of new tags, and tagged hundreds of questions. Right now the tags are accessible via the sub-categories link, but I am thinking of changing that in the future.

Stay tuned for even more questions next month.

September 2018 Recap – Random Trivia Generator by the Numbers

Hello dear readers and fans of the Random Trivia Generator and welcome to another monthly update.

Hello dear readers and fans of the Random Trivia Generator and welcome to another monthly update. The purpose of these posts is to provide a peek behind the curtain and all the action that takes place to bring the tens to thousands of trivia questions to users. It has been a couple of months since the last update but I have had a busy summer and was away for a while. Now that Fall is here, I am back to spending time on writing trivia and working on minor updates in the background.

New Questions

Since the last monthly recap in April we added 111 new questions to the main Random Trivia Generator website. As of this post, we are sitting at 20,081 trivia questions. The 20,000 threshold was broken at the end of August and was celebrated with a round of questions focusing on the number 20.

I want to thank everyone who sent in questions and corrections. I am still tackling the submissions but I am down to the last 20 at the moment.

New Quizzes and Rounds

Since the last update in June, I only published the celebratory round on the number 20.

Stay tuned for even more questions next month.

2017: The Year in Review

Hello 2018! How much do you remember about 2017? Check out these 3 short rounds.

Good bye 2017 and hello 2018! My holidays were pretty busy the past couple of weeks, but I was able to hide from the festivities for long enough to come up with a few rounds below. Have a great 2018!

Round 1

  1. Which day of the week did January 1, 2017, fall on? – Sunday
  2. How old did Canada turn on July 1, 2017? – 150 years old
  3. What country was host to the “2017 World Expo”? – Kazakhstan
  4. What name was given to the tropical cyclone that destroyed large parts of the Houston metropolitan area in the United States in August of 2017? – Hurricane Harvey
  5. Which popular US actress died on January 25, 2017, at the age of 80? – Mary Tyler Moore
  6. Which campaign was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its work to promote the full implementation of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons? – The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
  7. What iPhone models were announced and released in 2017? – iPhone 8, 8+ and X
  8. What game won the Game of the Year award at The Game Awards 2017? – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  9. Who won his eighteenth men’s singles Grand Slam title at the 2017 Australian Open? – Roger Federer
  10. Approximately how much was the price of a single Bitcoin on January 1, 2017? – $1,000 USD

Round 2

  1. What day did Donald Trump assume office as the 45th President of the United States? – January 20, 2017
  2. What month did North Korea fire a test missile across the Sea of Japan, prompting international condemnation? – February
  3. Which rock and roll pioneer passed away on March 18, 2017, at the age of 90? – Chuck Berry
  4. What critically, and commercially successful indie game released in 2017, borrowed its art style from 1930s cartoons? – Cuphead
  5. What phone did Android co-creator Andy Rubin, design and unveil in May, 2017? – The Essential Phone
  6. What highly awaited Japanese hot hatchback went on sale around the world in 2017? – Honda Civic Type R
  7. What soccer team won the 2017 FIFA Club World Cup? – Real Madrid
  8. What month did the United Kingdom begin Brexit Negotiations? – March
  9. Which Bond actor passed away on May 23, 2017? – Roger Moore
  10. Who directed the highly anticipated film “Blade Runner 2049”? – Denis Villeneuve

Round 3

  1. Which month saw the release of the film “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”? – December
  2. What did the United Nations General Assembly designate 2017 as? – International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development
  3. Which US actor, widely known for his portrayal of Batman, passed away on June 9, 2017? – Adam West
  4. Whose concert was the target of a terrorist attack in May, 2017, in Manchester, UK? – Ariana Grande’s
  5. What big budget game was the subject of monetization controversy and government interference in the fall of 2017? – Star Wars Battlefront II
  6. While filming a segment for the show “The Grand Tour”, what car did Richard Hammond crash in June, 2017? – Rimac Concept One
  7. What cartoon character did artist Matt Furie decide to kill in 2017, after it became associated with white nationalism against his will? – Pepe the Frog
  8. Gord Downie, who passed away on October 17, 2017, was the lead singer of which Canadian rock band? – The Tragically Hip
  9. What three gaming consoles did Nintendo release in 2017? – Nintendo Switch, New Nintendo 2DS XL, and Super NES Classic Edition
  10. Which key button did Apple remove in its flagship iPhone X model? – The Home button

Image credit: Adliterate