A Google a Day: Google’s new trivia puzzle has an ulterior motive

Apr. 11, 2011 (4:18 pm) By: Jennifer Bergen

googleAday


As someone who used to host trivia nights at my local bar, I can’t tell you the number of times I called a team out in front of everyone for using their smartphone to look up the answer to the question. Using technology to look up an answer in trivia is a no-no, but Google has come up with a daily trivia game that encourages the player to use its search to find the answer.

A Google a Day is your new daily time-waster. The questions are designed by a team at Google and require you to use the search to find the answer. These aren’t the kind of questions anyone just knows; these are definitely ones you have to look up. Google is basically training us to use its search like a pro. We guarantee you’ll  learn something new about Google Search from the answers Google provides.


googleAday


You can find the puzzles online at agoogleaday.com, but Google is mixing old with new and is printing the daily questions in the New York Times in the ad space above the crossword puzzle. This three-month-long trial will list the questions and the previous day’s answers, much like the Times’ crossword does. Also similar to the NYT crossword, the puzzle will get more and more difficult as the week goes on.

So, what’s going to stop someone from just posting the answer online so that a simple Google search will bring a frustrated, or lazy, person the answer? First of all, looking up the answer straight up defeats the purpose of the scavenger-hunt-like game. To deter people from just posting the answer, Google has actually set up a separate search engine that excludes any real-time updates. That way, while you’re searching, you won’t accidentally come across someone else’s answer.

The puzzles are definitely educational, and I’m fairly sure that if I were in high school today, my teachers would make me do these puzzles as homework so that students could learn to use Google better.

via Official Google Blog

 

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