This is the home page for my May 2024 book titles picture quiz. The Quiz is now closed, I am afraid, as of 1st June 2024, so everything you read below this lead paragraph, is retained purely for reference in case I decide to set up something similar in future and so you can see how it worked if you didn't do it (until I take the page down completely). "So what were the answers?", I hear you cry (metaphorically). Have a look on the top right of this page at the drop down arrow under "Home" and you'll find the Quiz Answers page with every answer and the final scores of all the players. I'll keep this page up for a month or two, to allow everyone to read it, who wants to and bring it down in the autumn.
Here's a book themed picture quiz you might enjoy which is open to everyone who has reached this page. This means you!
It's pictures. It's book titles. Nothing more complicated. You don't need to have read the books to connect the pictures to the titles so anyone should be able to give it a go if they'd like to try. Feel free to forward the link to this page to whoever you think might be interested at any time up until the end of Saturday 1st June. The results will be posted on Sunday 2nd June.
I've put the quiz together in support of the UK reading charity, "The Reading Agency" which seeks to foster improved literacy in a variety of settings. You can find out more about their work here:-
I'd like to encourage everyone who wants to enter, to make a donation to the charity and anyone who does that will be eligible for a small mystery prize funded by me when the competition closes on June 1st. The prize is a mystery to me too at the moment, but I'll think of something before the end of May! If you don't feel willing or able to donate, then you can still take part in the quiz purely for fun, you just won't qualify for the prize.
How to Play
Decide if you want to play just for "fun" or donate to the charity and compete for the prize.
If you are competing, I've set up a "Just Giving" page, which you can find here:-
https://www.justgiving.com/page/david-worton-1713273259000
I'm suggesting £5 as a minimum entry "fee" but of course you can give more if you want to. Whatever name you use when donating, should match the name you use on the quiz form so I can confirm eligibility for the prize.
The quiz will ask for an email address which is used to ensure there is one entry per email address and so that I can contact the winner at the end to arrange delivery of the prize. The email address is optional. I don't need one if you are playing just for fun.
The questions are at the bottom of the page and the answer to every one is a picture clue to either a book from the BBC top 50 list, or a book the Southend Big Readers group either have already read in 2024, or will be reading later this year.
All the answers can be found on one of these two links, so the quiz is fair to everybody.
southendbigreaders.info/BBCTopList.aspx (The first page only, which is all of the top 50)
southendbigreaders.info/OurChoicesList.aspx (The books for 2024 only, which are at the top of the first page)
Your job is simply to decide which book from those pages matches each picture question.
Enter the book titles exactly as they are spelt on those pages (including capital and lower case letters) to give the overly simple marking rules I've attached to each question a chance of scoring your entry correctly. A computer is doing the marking and it won't be as generous as I might be, so I suggest copying and pasting from the web pages above to be sure your spelling matches mine :-)
Click submit once you have answered as many questions as you can and final results and answers will be revealed on 1st June. In the event of a tie, the winner will be whoever answered first.
Good luck and have fun!
P.S. This is a quiz not an exam and I am aware that there may be ways to cheat a little, since the quiz gives some feedback. I could have blocked this, but thought it was more interesting for you to leave in. Someone might put in multiple anonymous "fun" entries and use the responses to triangulate the answers before entering a "competitive" one. I'm not saying anyone actually would do that, but if you are thinking about it, all I can say is please don't, since I don't want to lock down the responses further. An attempt like this will show up in the answers I get to review. I can safely assure you that the prize won't be life changing, or worth anything like the loss of your moral integrity :-)
About the Art Work
As members of the bookgroup have seen in recent meetings, I've been using a custom Zoom background made for each book with an AI art engine. For those images, I've come up with a description for a scene or an element in the book and then tried to obtain something that's vaguely close to part of the story or at least the theme of it. For this quiz I've done something a little bit different (and much simpler).
Using the title alone with no other words to cue in the AI, I simply asked for 4 images for each book and picked the one I liked best. I haven't cheated with any of them by providing any other context for what the images should be, so the AI (something called Midjourney) doesn't necessarily even know they are books, let alone what's in them.
The interesting thing about creating these pictures, from my perspective, is that where the title is a really well known cultural landmark, the data model is obviously aware of it and will zero in on the style and content of existing popular representations. These ones, you should hopefully find are easy to identify.
When the title is not so obviously a book and might just be a simple phrase, then the output is some artistic representation of the phrase but won't be specifically connected to the novel (except by accident). For titles like this, you'll have to use your imagination and play a game of "say what you see" as they are going to be more cryptic, but hopefully still guessable with a slice of luck.
Finally when the title is not well known and more abstract in nature, the output is a free style interpretation that may or may not succeed in capturing some tenuous aspect of the request, but you can certainly be forgiven for not understanding the connection. Good luck with these, they are very hard and it was not always clear even to me (knowing the answer), why the generator, generated what it did. Since these questions are particularly difficult and require a combination of lateral thinking and divine inspiration, I've set the quiz to award two points for correct answers of this kind and one point for the easier questions. Each question shows how many points it is worth so you know when they are going to be extra tricky and you shouldn't get too despondent if nothing occurs to you. Just do some free association and guess. You might be right!
With these extra points taken into account, there are fifty two questions and a maximum possible score of sixty two points, which is most unlikely to be achieved. In the event of a tie, whoever sent their answers in first will be the winner.
If you would like to browse all the images alone at a bigger scale, then I have set up a google album for them here:-
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6iKeFV3v2ggsLMf79
These are not necessarily in the same order as the questions. When I post the answers in June, I will do it by adding the book titles to the images in that album so you will be able to see them there.
Final short playing note. Your entry will only count when you click the submit button at the bottom of the quiz. This causes the questions to collapse and the bottom of the page then appears blank, but if you scroll up you will see a confirmation that your entry has been accepted and some feedback on how many points you scored.