In the first day or so when hardly anyone has taken the quiz, often you'll score a 5. Check again now and it'll probably have settled down to a 4 or a 3.
Oh yeah, that part of the song always bugged me because it was so blatantly wrong. To be fair, though, the most recent cartoon incarnation, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, DID in fact have Raphael as the team's leader. Well, until the finale, anyway.
I debated the Odysseus question, but settled on lecherous, given the amount of time I remember him cavorting... Maybe a less apt option would be better? "Greedy," say?
This one has a clear correct answer since Ulysses is specifically described as cunning many times throughout the texts. It is even used as an "epithet"... aka the bard would say "cunning Ulysses".
I did as you did and went with lecherous too. Given Odysseus had children with many different women (checked, this was at least 6 according to Wikipedia), I thought it was a fair call. My suggestion would be to remove lecherous as an option or specifically mention Shakepeare's epithet in the question.
Not that bard, lol... I meant the bards who would recite poems from memory in ancient Greece. The actual text of the Iliad says "cunning Ulysses".
As far as I know, Ulysses/Odysseus is not portrayed as lecherous which would have been shameful to the ancient Greeks, who placed value on being able to control their passions. That said, if someone can point to a specific passage in the Iliad or Odyssey which can defend the "lecherous" suggestion, I'd be happy to change that one.
As I was thinking about Question #7, I just *KNEW* that it could be contentious and that I could possibly get it wrong, and that the "right" answer is also questionably wrong.
At first, I did think that "misanthropy" was the word not like the others, because the other 3 all connotate some sort of boldness or recklessnes. However, "hubris" is clearly negative - no positive association, whatsoever. "Audacity" can be either positive or negative. "Misanthropy" is clearly negative.
Although "chutzpah" did enter into English/American/Western vernacular as being generally the same as audacity, actually more in the negative sense, in recent years, its meaning has changed considerably. From the current Wikipedia entry "The word is sometimes interpreted—particularly in business parlance—as meaning the amount of courage, mettle or ardor that an individual has." (cont'd)
Yes, "misanthropy" was my first instinct and guess, however I did think about it more, as you can see, and I honestly think that "chutzpah" is different from the others because it has the most positive connotation of all of them - in contemporary use, it really is the ONLY one with a positive *denotation*.
The fact that "hubris" is in here complicates matters even more. I do think that "audacity" and "chutzpah" are very similar (although I think that "chutzpah" has a more positive connotation), but "hubris" is a totally different animal from either "audacity" or "chutzpah". Audacity and chutzpah can be either positive or negative and don't necessarily have anything to do with an impact on other people. But there is a real classical and psychological association of "hubris" with doing harm to others.
It's not the only question that I got wrong on this quiz - there were two others. But *this* particular question is one that I have a problem with as it is not well-constructed.
But the meanings of "hubris," "audacity," and "chutzpah" clearly have much more closely related meanings to each other than to "misanthropy," even if they're spun in more or less positive directions. It'd be like if the question gave the words "slender," "thin," "scrawny," and "messy." The first three are clearly synonyms, even if the first has a more positive connotation than the others.
Milo74: with thinking like that, it must take you hours to get anything done. Are you aware that you contradict yourself, or are you just too obsessed with making things complicated?
Only got the machiavella wrong, had no idea.. Had no idea about the opera either btw but guessed right. And used common sense/logic for the macron one.
Raphael, he's the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop."
The song lied!
As far as I know, Ulysses/Odysseus is not portrayed as lecherous which would have been shameful to the ancient Greeks, who placed value on being able to control their passions. That said, if someone can point to a specific passage in the Iliad or Odyssey which can defend the "lecherous" suggestion, I'd be happy to change that one.
At first, I did think that "misanthropy" was the word not like the others, because the other 3 all connotate some sort of boldness or recklessnes. However, "hubris" is clearly negative - no positive association, whatsoever. "Audacity" can be either positive or negative. "Misanthropy" is clearly negative.
Although "chutzpah" did enter into English/American/Western vernacular as being generally the same as audacity, actually more in the negative sense, in recent years, its meaning has changed considerably. From the current Wikipedia entry "The word is sometimes interpreted—particularly in business parlance—as meaning the amount of courage, mettle or ardor that an individual has." (cont'd)
The fact that "hubris" is in here complicates matters even more. I do think that "audacity" and "chutzpah" are very similar (although I think that "chutzpah" has a more positive connotation), but "hubris" is a totally different animal from either "audacity" or "chutzpah". Audacity and chutzpah can be either positive or negative and don't necessarily have anything to do with an impact on other people. But there is a real classical and psychological association of "hubris" with doing harm to others.
It's not the only question that I got wrong on this quiz - there were two others. But *this* particular question is one that I have a problem with as it is not well-constructed.