Catfishing.net: a daily trivia game that has nothing to do with that other thing

https://catfishing.net/

This one has become a favorite of mine. It's based on Wikipedia articles -- you're given a list of categories, from which you have to guess the article title. For example, you might be given American Presidents, founding father, American slaverholder, and Virginian, and the answer would be George Washington.

They range in difficulty and getting a question right where < 10% of people answered correctly is immensely gratifying. (This game already has paid dividends in other trivia contests for me, too, and I have greater retention of the facts I learn about than something like maptap.gg.)

I learned about this game a while ago but forgot about it for a while and coincidentally just started playing it again a couple of days ago. It's pretty fun. Might need to add it to My Daily Games (currently: Wordle, Connections, Cinematrix, MapTap.gg).

Got 7/10. Happy with that considering the ones I got wrong were largely VERY American things I wouldn't have guessed

I play this every day, I enjoy it though you feel very stupid when you miss one that you actually know

How often is it about American Things?

IME it isn't really though with user submissions involved things can shift. When I started playing I assumed it was UK-based, though I don't think that anymore.

It is anglo/euro/white/western-centric to some extent, likely mirroring or maybe bettering English-lang wikipedia's own content biases, but I'm largely okay with that since I learned from playing this for a while that I don't know some super obvious stuff about other parts of the world.

My personal complaints are that there is way too much videogame content and for a while there was too much internet culture/memes though that seems to have lessened a bit.

this game also made me consider posting "the names of historical ships" on the things you don't care about thread

Xp yes there do seem to be a high frequency of video game / animated film / Internet culture related questions in there, which is great for me but maybe not so much for others.

This is all great training for the pub quiz or when I one day get invited on some sort of Uni Challenge Amateur Edition

True, it's "geek culture" in general (plus STEM, though I can't complain about math and science questions...except that often they're the ones with like only 4 categories as clues). I just only bristle at it when it's things I'm not very geeky about lol. I did get the internet culture one correct today.

Having played a decent amount in the archives, I find the list of answers that you were among the best at pretty revealing. Mine are almost all from the humanities, so now it's interesting to see which humanities topics have crossed over into the average catfishing player's world.

There's also a young millennial/ older gen z feeling to it overall I think, which is interesting in abstract but annoying when I don't know anything about early 00s cartoons or w/e

sorry for barrage of posts. I've been playing this for months and have more thoughts than I realized!

A very cool aspect to this is clicking through to the article. For a while the #1 most clicked-through one was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing, which I was impressed by as very very few Americans know about that and informing people is a genuine public service.

yeah my archive best answers were mostly literature-based too (though erasing cookies wiped out my archives and now my best answers are nas and the neptunes lol). I have no clue on most of the video game questions, which I can see aren't a problem for most people playing this.

Just a heads up: I've taken to answering questions looking for Chinese people with their full names because the game has a defaults to last name = surname.

7/10 today... but yes in the world of fast moving non-monoculture, asking me to know a 2026 meme about a monkey is maybe stretching a bit far. would be better to lean on articles about things that have maybe had enough staying power in the public consciousness to be remembered a few years later

justice for harambe.

7/10. also missed the monkey.

catfishing.net
#739 - 4/10
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Not so great today

catfishing.net
#739 - 6/10
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should have gotten #2 but I unthinkingly entered "Melies brothers."

catfishing.net
#739 - 8/10 🎉
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an annoying thing is when I remember someone's first name but not their last (#1). otoh a bit of luck on #5: I thought "hmm a Sondheim musical about presidential assassins. maybe it's called Assassins lol? I think that fact must have actually been lurking in my memory somewhere, but still

catfishing.net
#739 - 6/10
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I really ought to have gotten q7 right.

catfishing.net
#740 - 7/10
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Studying paid off for q10.

woo hoo

catfishing.net
#740 - 9/10 🎉
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explain to me how the kinsey scale is an "introduction" wtf

i'm like how am i supposed to know the name of the introduction to one of kinsey's books and then it's just the most obvious name of the general concept

I think that's just wiki category-speak for when something was introduced. see also "YEAR establishments"

not that the category system doesn't have its flaws. for a while it felt like 50% of the people questions were tagged with "[NATIONALITY] anti-communists"; someone must have been obsessively zealous about adding that to biographical entries

what would wikipedia be without zealots and pedants

otm. I decided to make an effort to find it charming

catfishing.net
#741 - 7/10
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catfishing.net
#741 - 9/10 🎉
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I think I would have been good at this 20 years ago but I've let my brain get mushy on general knowledge. 4 today, 4 or 5 yesterday.

catfishing.net
#743 - 7/10
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JFC at q7.

yeah I read a series of increasingly shocking articles after clicking through on that one

Today was tough. I'm not posting my score

catfishing.net
#743 - 8/10 🎉
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got the number (totally) wrong on #7

catfishing.net
#744 - 8/10 🎉
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full disclosure: yesterday I answered "tiger" instead of "lion" for #1 and was so annoyed with myself, I gave up on the day.

had the wrong movie by the right guy which is annoying

catfishing.net
#744 - 8/10 🎉
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yesterday I answered leopard for #1, extremely annoying. today I would have had 9/10 but I referred to #1 by only her first name, I thought she has achieved mononym status

catfishing.net
#744 - 9/10 🎉
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Hot diggity dog! (Sorry military history knowers, I will never be one of you)

In most trivia games, one-name answers are only accepted if the mononyms have some official standing, like Madonna or Cher. Names like Kendrick or Ariana usually are pretty clear in casual conversations, but aren't enough in trivia contests.

catfishing.net
#744 - 7/10
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Rude to Greta Gerwig

catfishing.net
#744 - 9/10 🎉
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catfishing.net
#745 - 8/10 🎉
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Surprised at how old q7 is!

catfishing.net
#745 - 7/10
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Had the wrong final word for Q10 :(

catfishing.net
#745 - 7/10
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catfishing.net
#745 - 8.5/10 🎉
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My answer to 5 was obviously correct (I said Flanderize), only my confusion about FM album release dates kept me from perfect score

catfishing.net
#746 - 9/10 🎉
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Day to day, I've noticed that Q7 tends to be interesting to me in some way, and today was along the lines of, "It'd be funny if this was Jesus," and then I kept on reading the categories and it WAS Jesus.

catfishing.net
#746 - 7/10
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Probably should've gotten #3 but would never have gotten #5 or #9.

catfishing.net
#746 - 7.5/10
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My bad experience with "Flanderize" vs. "Flanderization" yesterday made me second guess on #3 and change "Olmecs" to "Olmec Empire"

boo

catfishing.net
#747 - 5/10
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catfishing.net
#829 - 7/10
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Should've got 2 really, annoyed about that one.

catfishing.net
#829 - 8/10 🎉
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maybe should have given a "good enough" for #10 since I listed the monkeys in the wrong order but I did give myself one for dodgy spelling on #6

catfishing.net
#829 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
829 - 7/10
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Also did the same as Sean for #10, since I did see it accepted multiple orders.

catfishing.net
#829 - 8/10 🎉
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is there a particular reason people know #6? or is it something your average computing nerd would know?

catfishing.net
#830 - 8/10 🎉
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10/10 was in reach today but I was rushing it

catfishing.net
#829 - 8/10 🎉
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#6 has been brought up as a “most mysterious and fascinating ancient artifact” for a long time, though only

in the last few decades have people been pretty sure what it was for. Probably more an archeology nerd thing than computing nerd thing

*or rather, pretty sure of the details of how it worked--people had long figured it was for astronomical calculations

catfishing.net
#830 - 6/10
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first one in a while that I did ok with:

catfishing.net
#830 - 7/10
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I was familiar with #1 but just couldn't come up with the name

catfishing.net
#830 - 7/10
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the categories for #7 are ridiculous.

catfishing.net
830 - 8/10 🎉
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catfishing.net
#831 - 6/10
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classic 6, had peyote for #4 maybe that could have been close enough

catfishing.net
#831 - 6/10
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So many elementary errors - I went for ayahuasca, then dérive instead of flaneur, parsifal, golden path...

catfishing.net
#831 - 7/10
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catfishing.net
831 - 8/10 🎉
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Lol at one of the accepted answers for #7, if only of just entered an incredibly mundane name.

catfishing.net
#831 - 9/10 🎉
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apart from monday I've been on a hot streak this week. slightly miffed about #4 (I did the same thing as seandalai)

catfishing.net
#831 - 8/10 🎉
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wish I had actually read the categories for #2!

catfishing.net
#832 - 3/10
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abysmal!

catfishing.net
#832 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
832 - 4/10
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Got a DYM for #8 but decided not to because peace != love.

catfishing.net
#832 - 3/10
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tough one!

went "tune in, turn on, drop out" for #8, which clearly didn't make much sense

haha same, and when you look at the clues it's so obvious

same

catfishing.net
#833 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
833 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
#833 - 5/10
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catfishing.net
#834 - 8/10 🎉
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never heard of the other two so this is as good as I was going to get

catfishing.net
#833 - 6/10
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it's been rough going for weeks now, 6 seems to be my limit

catfishing.net
#834 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
834 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
#834 - 6/10
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catfishing.net
#835 - 8/10 🎉
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catfishing.net
#835 - 5.5/10
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I'd give myself 6 - great aurox instead of aurochs. us sports will always be my achilles heel though.

catfishing.net
#835 - 7/10
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catfishing.net
835 - 7/10
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Had a chance at #5 since that's a pretty unique set of clues but they're also confusing lol.

Also the (presumably) one person who keeps submitting mathematicians has got to stop.

catfishing.net
#835 - 7/10
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catfishing.net
#836 - 9/10 🎉
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10/10 was in reach but I blew it

gave up in disgust after q6, which is not about a prostitute, yes i should have guessed it anyway.

yes, that threw me completely but i figured it was the only possible answer. 7/10 today which I'm now at peace with as the best I am ever likely to get

catfishing.net
#836 - 9/10 🎉
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I also hesitated over #6 for a minute before wisely going with my "most obvious" rule. I was extremely displeased to see the words "1932 in Australian cricket" just when I thought I might get a 10

yeah that last one was rough. i also guessed wrong on 6, but i laughed out loud when it was revealed. i was so close!

def a funny moment of wondering if I've misunderstood a song for 42 years

should've gotten q9 but had no hope on q10.

catfishing.net
#836 - 8/10 🎉
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re 6, the lyric that supports that category is "love for sale." but it's a stretch.

catfishing.net
#836 - 7/10
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cricket!

catfishing.net
#837 - 5/10
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not for me today