Harry's Blog

The time has come to reveal the results of the third iteration of the Most Popular Answers Contest! As in previous editions, everyone had a list of 10 prompts and they had to give what they thought would be chosen the most. This time around I tried asking a few more subjective questions, and it definitely led to some interesting results, including what is easily the least agreed-upon prompt in the short history of this contest. I’d like to thank all 58 of you that took part, and I’d love to see everyone back next month for the Least Popular Answers Contest.

Let’s go through each of the prompts:

What did you have for dinner last night?

Italian food was the meal of choice apparently, with almost half of people choosing either pizza or pasta. A good seven of you went with the generic answer of “food” while two more went with “dinner” (and one person had breakfast for dinner). Chicken was by far the most popular meat answered. Interestingly enough, the popularity of each food didn’t seem to be influenced by the day of the week the answer was submitted.

Name a country bordering the Pacific Ocean

Unsurprisingly, most people picked the country they reside in when it was available as an option. The tricky part about this question is that the first thing that comes to mind to many people when they think of “Pacific country” is somewhere in eastern Asia, not the US, which is probably why Japan took a comfortable #2 spot.

Name a color

This turned out to be fairly straightforward. Almost everyone picked red or blue, and the latter ended up slightly more popular. To my selfish disappointment, no one answered with my last name (White), but then again it’s oftentimes not really considered a color.

Name a spacecraft, real or fictional

Of the 58 answers, only 12 were of real-life spacecraft. The rest were split with 23 people picking the USS Enterprise (but declining to specify which iteration) and 23 opting for something from Star Wars. This conclusively proves that both franchises are equal and one is not better than the other. Four people ended up misspelling “Millennium”, although none of them would later admit that they had a hard time spelling that word.

Name a college or university

Harvard, being the stereotypical snobby university in America, easily gets the #1 spot. My alma mater, Virginia Tech, comes in at 2nd place, though it should be noted that only about half the people who answered it actually went there. I also know a decent number of people who went to JMU, so that would explain why that school got the 3rd-highest number of responses.

Pick a famous year

This one wound up being very close, with 1776 (known for the publication of the groundbreaking work The Wealth of Nations and absolutely nothing else) and the current year being only one point apart. The only other year given that was before the 20th century was 1492. While most years were selected for significant events that took place (1918, 1945, etc.), 1984 was most likely picked because of the book of the same name, and 1999 and 2000’s significance are more related to the end of the millennium.

Name a website

Google, easily the most ubiquitous website on the Internet, takes the top spot by a landslide. Since most people were linked to the contest via Facebook, it would naturally make sense that it would be #2. Three people picked this very site, which only goes to show that this is in fact the third-most important site on the Internet. Youtube, despite being the second-most visited site according to Alexa, was not answered by anyone, but then again it is owned by Google.

Name a song that you’re sick of hearing

Out of 58 total submissions, there were a total of 34 unique answers, with not a single song picked more than 6 times. Most of the songs on this list can be described as overplayed recent pop songs, with the Rickroll itself being the only exception among the top 6. Eight different people are apparently sick of hearing Christmas songs despite it being late June.

In other news, I have created a playlist of all these songs, for the next time you’re throwing a party and you really want everyone to leave.

Enter a word that you frequently misspell

This one also had a ton of unique answers, with a full 30 words that people can’t seem to spell correctly. Misspell received the most answers, probably because it was conveniently the last word in the prompt. Interestingly enough, there doesn’t seem to be much of a correlation between misspelling “misspell” and eating “food” for dinner last night. Eight people ended up misspelling the word they frequently misspelled and in other cases people put multiple spellings of the word. For the record, I misspelled four of those words when putting together that table, and I had to really think of how to spell “bureaucracy”.

Name a fairy tale

Cinderella’s iconic status as a straightforward fairy tale with perhaps the greatest impact on the modern-day cultural lexicon propels it to the top answer. Hansel and Gretel as well as Little Red Riding Hood were 2nd and 3rd despite neither having gotten a Disney adaptation. It seems that people were more likely to think of childhood stories as opposed to movies when asked for a fairly tale.

The Scores

We have a new winner this time! Montana finished with a grand total of 40.91 points out of a hypothetical top score of 43.71 while getting 7 out of 10 most popular answers. Victor Prieto finished 2nd with 39.75, while “you” got top marks in all but 2 questions. The top 10 were very competitive, with 5th through 8th being separated by 7-hundredths of a point.

Once again I’ve included a comparison of the answers of the top scorers, the complete standings, and the raw data below.