I Love Sporcle and You Should Too

In my daily unemployed house-bound daze I have been obsessively playing geography games on Sporcle. As of this past week I have learned all the countries in the world, their capitals, how to spell them, and where they are. At trivia last week at Red Hook Brewery, I told my friends that I would be utterly useless unless there was a question on countries, in which case I would own it. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as I dug into my nachos, only to have my friends' friends show up soon after and spend a good five minutes listing off all the European countries that end in -ia. Eff my life.

This afternoon I was playing a game on Sporcle in which I had to list the top baby names from 2000-2009 that are also countries. (Can you tell how much of a life I don't have?) I guessed the obvious ones--Chad, Jordan, Georgia--before I ran out of ideas and started listing Slovakia and Liechtenstein and St. Kitts & Nevis. If you guessed a country that was not among the top baby names but about which the creators of Sporcle (to whom I will collectively refer as "Mr. Sporcle") found something snarky to say, they would include the country at the bottom of the list, unnumbered, with their comment.

I guessed China and Mr. Sporcle told me that "Grace Slick named her daughter this, but it never caught on." After Cuba he wrote, "I loved him in Jerry Maguire." (And holy crap, Mr. Sporcle, did you see Radio?) After Cameron, "The country is Cameroon." Thanks, jackass. I know.

My favorite was when, running out of time, I guessed Seychelles and he pointed out, "Someone should name their kid Seychelles." The same went for Kyrgyzstan. "[Duke basketball] Coach Krzyzewski should have totally named his kid Kyrgyzstan." Yes and yes.


There was sass shooting in from all angles on some of the tamer countries, but Mr. Sporcle was disappointingly silent on such guesses as Democratic Republic of the Congo, North Korea, Kiribati, and Cote d'Ivoire. And seriously, over 7 billion people in this world and not one of them is named Federated States of Micronesia?

Unrelated to this topic, but related to Sporcle: I just found a game called "A-less countries." The directions tell you to "name the countries that do not contain the letter A for each letter," followed by a list of all the letters with a blank space after them. This list of letters? It starts with A. Now, I know some pretty damn intelligent people in this world but I don't think even they could name a country, beginning with the letter A, that does not contain the letter A. Correct me if I'm wrong.