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I'll contest a few of these, which I thought were good.

Breviary: this was, to me, known and not uncommon. It's widely known to Catholics, but also, if you have an interest in medieval art or books, you'd likely know it too. It was one of the main types of books before the invention of the printing press. Think of an image from an illuminated manuscript, 50% chance it's from one.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: it's not that you're expected to know the whole word, but they're looking for you to recognize components of it and infer the meaning from that. I knew sesquippedalian (sometimes jokingly used in "long word" contexts) so that was easy: but phobia is also easily identifiable, and hippo, from the latin root, I knew was not as obvious as the animal, but probably something like "large" (clue: the Hippodrome). So you could, even knowing only "phobia" and being able to guess "hippo", have a good basis for your choice.

Complacent and gauche: have heard both these uses, I think that's straightforwardly correct. If this was a dictionary that would, at worst, be the 2nd or 3rd definition. No complaints.

Source: I used to place in spelling bees and could've been a contender but I didn't have the discipline to study the dictionary for hours on the weekends, which is the next level.

For explicit comparison: kinetic and metamorphosis are ~10x as common as breviary, and 10,000x as common as hippo….

See NGRAMs: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Breviary%2CHip...

To me, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia feels less like vocabulary and more like trivia

Yes. It is a word which seems to only be used as an example of a long and obscure word. I have never heard it used expressively, other than as a joke.

Yes, breviary is the only word in the first 80 that I hadn't ever seen before but I understand that if you're Catholic it's probably not that much weirder than "rosary" or "Eucharist" or whatever which are words I did know, so fine.

In the last batch there were a few words that I was vaguely confident of but a lot more of them seemed like "stunt" words I would never see because every time they'd need defining so why bother.

Also I was assuming it was picking from a huge set, but it seems everybody was shown the same words, so while it's supposedly a "sample" any bias, even if unintended, shows up in the results, if you wanted to be scientific perhaps you'd do this for 1000 words and then sample 100 questions from that for each participant or something.

In many books from 1800s the priest is always described having his breviary at hand. It's also often featured when priests appear in jokes.

> Also I was assuming it was picking from a huge set, but it seems everybody was shown the same words

I don't think I got "breviary" when I tried. Maybe it's using a decision tree, but everyone's ending up on the same branch by getting most of the words right?

> So you could, even knowing only "phobia" and being able to guess "hippo", have a good basis for your choice.

Except "hippo-" is from Greek and means "horse".

I will say that breviary it showed up in "advanced" for me, and was one of only two words below "grandmaster" I missed. In the modern era it is jargon, it's just that the in group (practitioners of liturgical Christianity) are in the ballpark of a quarter of the English speaking world.

I'll remark that "if you have interest in [some particular academic pursuit], you'd likely know it" is a pretty decent description of the sort of word that shows up in "grandmaster" tier.

(I have joked that, living in Japan, my English is getting worse faster than my Japanese is getting better, but breviary might well be a concrete example.)

> and hippo, from the latin root, I knew was not as obvious as the animal, but probably something like "large" (clue: the Hippodrome)

Well.. Hippos is greek for horse, and Hippopotamus is a "river horse". Same for Hippodrome, a course for horses. And in latin, hypo means small (and not large), as seen in e.g. hypoglycemia.

Hypo is Greek too, not Latin "small" for a latin radical would be "mini" (from "minus") like in miniature, minuscule, etc.

And I thought in German Nilpferd (horse from the Nile) sounded ridiculous. It is almost the same as the original. TIL

Ucalegon was perhaps the most ridiculous to me, much more a factor of your knowledge of classical literature than vocabulary.

I was, as was gp, confused by “complacent” as I haven’t typically used it or thought of it to include a smugness and immediately went to the ol’ Google only to find that “smug” appears in Oxford Language’s* definition as well. The key though is “smug or uncritical”, so while smug may not be typical for some it does make sense now that I have that added knowledge.

And iirc “gauche” had more than just “socially awkward” in the correct answer but speeding through it again I didn’t get gauche as a word. That said, something gauche, to me, has always been something glaringly “not ok” in a social sense so again, that tracks. Oxford Language defines it as

> lacking ease or grace; unsophisticated and socially awkward.

Which is closer to the quiz’s definition and again, tracks with my internal thinking of the word’s use.

> Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

Was just plain fun - as soon as I saw the “fear of long words” I was like of course that’s it

*I mistakenly put “Merriam Webster” the first time around - while MW doesn’t include the word smug itself, the 1.b definition is simply “self-satisfied”

Yeh, it had 'kerfuffle' as one of the last words but that's very common. Yet it had Zenzizenzizenzic (which I'd never heard of but I think I guessed it right)

It really could do with a summary showing the answers you made and corrections for what you got wrong.

Ha, a Wikipedia article link to Zenzizenzizenzic was on HN earlier today! I don't think I would have gotten that one right otherwise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48603664

Yep, 'panacea' was grandmaster, but 'quire' was intermediate?

The dictionary they’re using seems to pre-date the printing press.

> complacent ("smug satisfaction with oneself" - I disagree that complacency is intrinsically smug)

I agree that it doesn't seem 'smug', but weirdly both dictionary dot com and Wiktionary give 'smug' as a synonym or part of the definition.

But they also analyze 'smug' as equivalent to self-satisfied or self-complacent, so maybe that's the word whose meaning is not as expected.

(I would think of "smug" less as "self-" anything - it implies a relation, it's more like exulting in a superior situation one has over someone. And 'complacent' is at base being content with one's situation, but often with the negative implication that one should be acting to make things better instead)

In my mind "complacent" means the opposite of "pro-active" - not taking actions or decisions in the face of an issue. That could be because of feeling panicked or uncertain. So I was also surprised by the "smug" and "self-satisfied" parts.

I don’t get the smug. But complacent has always has the “self-satisfied” and “a bit lazy”. Not exactly what is in your comment, but someone that is rooted in his behavior, but not for stubbornness or arrogance, just “it is ok that way because I’m happy and there’s no reason to change”

The test hardly seems adaptive (if at all) and yet it made the HN front page. That’s impressive.

Of the words people are commenting on here, I only remembered one of that (maybe that's just because I got it wrong), zenzizenzizenzic. I guess if I'd realised zenzi was relating to squaring, I might have guessed it.

I think some of the, were flawed - I can't remember what it was now, but one word two of the meanings were kind of appropriate, but I chose the wrong one, and I think there were 2-3 words I didn't know but guessed from the components in the words. At least one I also guessed that way, but got the complete opposite meaning!

I like this kind of test, but for me, the first 2 sections (which I aced) were kind of redundant. Maybe they needed to stratify it more or do it more dynamically, e.g. maybe do half the layer 1 questions, and if you get all them correct, move on to half the layer 2 questions. If you get one wrong, you get the rest of the layer 2 questions, and maybe if you get more than a certain number of those wrong you also have to go back and do the rest of layer 1. If you ace the first half of layer 2 as well as layer 1, maybe you jump straight into layer 3, etc...

> what high schooler doesn't learn about kinetic energy?

95% of Americans.

Sick burn bro.

I can assure you that just about every American that has made it through middle school has been taught about kinetic energy. Let alone high school.

Oh interesting, is it actually covered as part of the standard compulsory public school curriculum? Genuinely surprised, because here in Canada (Ontario) it's covered as an elective in 11th grade physics, which roughly 15/120 people in my graduating class opted to take.

Each state maintains its own public school curriculum, so generalizing about US education in the first place is a fool’s errand. But certainly in many states, students will take a generic science course covering the basics of Newtonian mechanics, the periodic table, and Mendelian genetics in middle school (roughly ages 12-14) before more specialized courses become available in high school, such as Physics or Biology where these subjects would be covered in greater depth and breadth.

I think the generic idea of kinetic energy can be explained much much earlier and to everyone, while how to calculate it can come later on.

Perhaps they were taught about it, but did they learn it?

Have they retained that knowledge beyond the test at the end of the semester?

Anecdotal observations would imply that they have indeed been taught it, and indeed have failed to retain the concept.

I have no rigorous data regarding either; but the generally poor outcomes which appear as result of a lack of retention of scientific, math, socio-economic, and anthropological instruction do seem self evident both from within and outside of the US, in headlines and actions, writ large and for all to see.

Is the problem the use of teaching methods which focus on short-term memorization rather than conceptual comprehension? Is it the lack of support for instructors? Is it a lack of focus in the student body? Is it some or all of the above in varying degree? Or something else entirely?

Being taught something has little correlation with learning it, and even less with remembering it years later.

Perhaps just because it suits my learning style, I find learning is actually easier if I attempt to work something out or guess it, and then am corrected when wrong, because then I have a memory to anchor it on. If I skip that part and just try to learn some facts, very little is retained. One consequence of this is that I prefer science / logic based subjects to things like history or geography (as in places, etc, not the science parts) where it's just a bunch of arbitrary facts that you can't just guess or work out for yourself.

Not to bring up the topic de jure too early, but this seems like a very lazy usage of AI. Especially egregious when it’s to redo something that’s been done a thousand times…

I used <tab> and <space> and left the mouse hovering over the continue button, and it went very quickly.

Unfortunate bullshit asymmetry here. Taking the time to thoughtfully point out inaccuracies in a piece of vibesludge excreted in seconds.

“vibesludge”

^_^ hah what a great word, first time seeing it.

Another one I came across recently - “sloptimization”

If you didn't already know what Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia was, it's very easy to guess from four options.

I agree there were too many clicks per word, I took me too long to finish. But I also found it too easy to guess the few words I did not know

Does the ability to guess the meaning of a word (from four options or context) is the same as knowing the word and using it in your speech?

It is more like an ability to recognize the word when it is used in context.

I got ~1/3 that is very generous estimate even for "recall" case (recognize), and it obviously false for the "generate" case (using in speech) where I guess my vocabulary is likely ~1/90 of all English words.

No, absolutely not, and that's my point. A real test would be having to type the definition, or pick from ten options

I think that picking the correct (or most correct, which is trickier) use of the word in context (out of, as you say, many options) might be a good way to test for receptive vocabulary.

It is not. Vocabulary is far from the binary of "you know this word or you don't". At a minimum, it is usually split into passive and active vocabulary, with passive being the words you understand when encountered, and active being the words you can use effectively. Wikipedia's entry is a pretty good overview.

In particular, I got a bunch of guesses correct because there's a pattern that several options are often related to each other, and either only one is different, (e.g., "Do good", "Do bad", "Be evil") -- in which case the answer is obvious -- or at least there's a contrasting pair which narrows it down to a 50% chance.

My man, it’s a slippy sloppy app claude coded possibly in an afternoon at best…

One interesting observation: If you’re unsure of the correct answer, select the longest option, and you’re almost always correct!

69400 for me, and I knew I fucked up on ~ 5 I really did know.. or perhaps I didn't know them as well as I thought?

"Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia"

Hippopotamus does mean river horse and I was caught out by that (note the o instead of a in ...poto...). I think that word is really a joke - lol - a bit like floccinausilihilipilification, which I wont bother looking up the speling 4.

I was gonna say, you spelled that wrong :p

Various sources suggest it's a literal joke, e.g. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hippopotomonstrosesquipedalio...

"what high schooler doesn't learn about kinetic energy?"

A lot of them, because being an anti-intellectual is 'cool'