Ho was taken aback by the popularity of his work. The part-time research assistant at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University woke up at noon the next day to find his inbox flooded with messages, ranging from a secondary school geography teacher asking permission to share the quiz with his students, to a media interview request. Responses kept rolling in well after midnight, with answers still being submitted at 5 a.m. Staring at the back end of the online form, Ho was astounded to see new responses to his questions when he refreshed the pages every minute. He first shared the test as a Google form on his personal Facebook account and later on his page with public access. The 26-year-old came up with the idea of the online quiz as entertainment for his friends – some were geography and map-reading whizzes – who he could not meet in person due to a fresh and deadly wave of Covid-19. “Some people thought they might not find the quiz as difficult … they started it out of curiosity, but finished it feeling a bit disheartened,” he said, laughing. The “Hong Kong Geography Expert Challenge” was released on Maas a Google form. He set the pass grade at 150 instead of 500, as difficult questions carried more weighting and he did not want to discourage people.
The quiz designer and map enthusiast Kieran Ho, better known as Xotarios, told HKFP the average score was around 300 out of a maximum 1,000 marks.
Social media platforms were swamped with results of the test, as people challenged their peers to have a go at the 13-page assessment, often described as “insanely hard.” The quiz has taken the internet by storm since its launch on March 17, with more than 340,000 people completing it as of Monday morning.
Are you a God of Hong Kong geography? Viral quiz tests citizens' knowledge of their city - Hong Kong Free Press HKFP Close