"WRONG! -1 LIFE"
How to describe this game? Hrm... well, what I Wanna Be the Guy is to platformers, the The Impossible Quiz series, made by old-timer Newgrounds creator Splapp-Me-Do,
is to puzzle games. Mainly composed of trick questions, with the answer occasionally not in the answer box, it has frustrated many Let's Play hosts and amused many people. The games develop a storyline as they go on, and it's surprisingly engaging considering its roots as a silly flash game.
You can play the first game here. Its sequel, The Impossible Quiz 2, is here. The episodic The Impossible Quiz Book can be found here: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3. The Impossible Quizmas can be found here. If the finished games are too hard, try the prototype version here. Note that the games require Adobe Flash to run.
How many holes in a trope?:
open/close all folders
#-G
- The Alleged Car: Question 84 of Book Chapter 2 has one as part of the question.
- All of Time at Once: Chapter 3 of Book slowly but surely becomes this, thanks to Chris and Norman creating rips in the fabric of spacetime as they hop around different eras in time. It starts out with clashes between previous Impossible Quiz installments, and then snow from the Ice Age starts leaking into Ancient Egypt, then it devolves further and further until the last few questions become a mishmash of several different eras and time periods lumped into one.
- Animation Bump: In the third installment, the animation has improved considerably, and it develops a rather engaging (but still very silly) storyline about aliens and time travel.
- Annoying Pop-Up Ad: Book's Question 94 has browser windows show up every few seconds, promoting things like Frank emotes, power-ups, and dead animal photography. None of the answers are actually correct and most of the ads are too good to be true, so you have to click on the one with supposed X-rated pics to proceed.
- April Fools' Day:
- The Impossible Quiz 3. Try updating your Flash player.
- The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter Two trailer. Hope you know how to work a ZX Spectrum.
- The Impossible Quiz 3.
- Arc Number: 69, as in the Running Gag phrase "LOL, 69".
- Arc Words: More like Arc Answer, but "Blue, Red, Blue, Yellow". Appears twice in TIQ, once in TIQ2, as the antepenultimate question in a severely destroyed state in Book Chapter 3, and as the final question in Quizmas."Can you still remember?"
- Ascended Extra: Chris, who was a nameless cat in TIQ1 used for a single question, gained star status in the sequels.
- Back for the Finale/Back to the Early Installment: Quite a few old questions reappear in The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter Three, with new twists.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Some of the questions (along with the answers) in Book Chapter 3 are written in hieroglyphs (because they are set in Ancient Egypt).
- Question 145, also from Book Chapter 3, is written in German.
- Boom, Headshot!: Choosing the wrong answer will just shoot you by losing one life, complete with gun firing sound effect.
- Question 91 of second quiz has Amy Rose attempting to kill herself with her gun.
- But Thou Must!: One of the questions from the first quiz is "Can you get this question wrong?", to which the answers are "No", "Nope", "Not really", and "Of course not", any of which lets you pass on to the next question.
- Button Mashing: Some questions require you to do this (for example, the "CHARGE UR LAZER" question in TIQ1).
- Call-Back: The final question of Quizmas requires you to find and save up all the Skips, just like in the very first game. Although this time missing some of them will only result in a loss of 1 life instead of an outright game over, and you can still continue (albeit with an imperfect score). You will then be asked if you can "still remember" the color sequence from the first game.
- Cartoon Bomb: Some questions in all of the games have these, acting as timers. If they explode, the game ends immediately, regardless of how many lives you have left.
- Caused the Big Bang: Question 108 in The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 3 requires the player to start the Big Bang and create the universe, by typing "B-A-N-G" on the keyboard.
- Checkpoint Starvation: There are no check points in any of the games, and one of the questions from the second mocks the player for wanting one.
- Averted in the iOS version, where "Moron Marks" do appear.
- Chekhov's Gun: The gimmick behind the Impossible Quiz Book Chapter Two trailer above figures into the actual chapter. If you don't know how to solve it, you won't be able to continue the quiz.
- Your skips, in the original. If you don't keep them all until the end, you can't win. Which is why that (as stated in the instructions from the sequel) they are actually useless.
- Also in the original, question 50 tells you: "Remember: blue, red, blue, yellow" and "108 = 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42". The first part comes back as the answer of question 56, and again for question 98. The second part is the answer to question 108.
- Christmas Episode: The Impossible Quizmas, a short 25-question quiz which also doubles as the Impossible Quiz's 10th anniversary.
- Common HTTP Status Code: In Book Chapter 3, after wiping the Impossible Quiz from history and ending the game, you're shown the message "Error 404 "The Impossible Quiz.swf" could not be found".
- Continuity Cavalcade: The ending of TIQB Chapter 3.
- Cue O'Clock: Question 18 has a clock with some of the numbers replaced with pictures of a bucket, a banana, a house and a hammer.
- Death by Genre Savviness: After you do some questions and understand how logic works in this game, later questions will appear to have tricks, but are supposed to be taken at complete face value. "PRESS THIS BUTTON TO KILL YOURSELF BEFORE THE BOMB DOES!"
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Question 81 of the first quiz has you basically giving a lightning rod a handjob to the point where it spurts out white semen-like lightning.
- Elephants Are Scared of Mice: One question gives you the prompt "elephants don't like mice!" and you have to get three elephants into a mousehole. To win it, you have to move your mouse cursor off the game window, and three elephants will walk in.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Subverted. They're near-impossible, but seem to be completely so until you master them.
- Excuse Plot: The Impossible Quiz Book has a plot that involves the abduction of Chris and his Impossible Quiz Book.
- Face Palm:
- Frank does this on question 49 in the second quiz if you type a letter that Frank says while the "Frank Says..." prompt is not on the screen.
- Chris does this on the game over in The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 2.
- Fission Mailed:
- Question 107 of the first quiz has a fake game over. You have to actually wait it out before moving on to the next question — clicking "Try again?" will take you back to Question 1 again, and the game will chastise you for it.
- Also a variation for Question 79 of Book's Chapter 2; after choosing the "epic sword" you think needed to defeat Yoglett Salmon, the game will be "glitched", giving you a fake Blue Screen of Death. To pass this question you have to find a pixelated key which can be found in any two groups of zeros.
- Flat "What": One of the answers to Question 50 (the one that tells you to remember a sequence of colors and numbers).
- Fun with Homophones: When asked to "choose food", you have to pick a set of teeth, the option that chews food.
- Gainax Ending/The Ending Changes Everything: The ending of Quiz Book Chapter 3. Lampshaded/parodied when the game cuts to a (potentially fake) error screen due to the Impossible Quiz being erased from history.
- Game-Breaking Bug/Guide Dang It!: One of the questions makes you forces you to get your cursor from one island to another without touching the water. At the time the game was made, right-clicking will bring up a drop-down menu that works as an overlay, as a "bridge" to the other island. However, because of some update to flash that has come since, the dropdown no longer functions as an overlay, meaning that other exploits have to be used meaning the question is impossible to solve the normal way. It is possible to solve: click your mouse buttons and drag your mouse to the other island with the mouse button still clicked in. Or using alt-tab with plenty of open stuff (at least 10 to make a bridge). Or mousing around the outside of the window.
- Gameplay Grading: When
and if you reach the end of The Impossible Quiz 2, the game ranks you on how many Fusestoppers and Skips you found, how many of each you used, and how many lives you lost. A perfect run—that is, all Fusestoppers and Skips found, none of them used, and no misses—nets you an A* rank. - Gameplay Roulette: Among the more traditional-style questions, you are frequently thrown into minigames where you have to click on things, navigate a maze, etc.
- Giant Enemy Crab: One appears (even called Giant Enemy Crab) in question 88 of the Quiz Book. It is bothering a city and spitting out water.
- Grand Finale: The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 3: Spatula Future
H-Z
- Halloween Episode: Invoked with Question 12 of Quizmas, which asks if the player is down for a Halloween special game next. The question itself is Halloween-themed.
- Hostile Show Takeover: Chris, having gotten beaten up during an earlier question in The Impossible Quiz 2, marches in after Question 100 and conducts the final 20, several of which are specifically about him.
- Hurricane of Puns: Some of the correct answers in the quizzes are puns.
- Idiosyncratic Menu Labels: The second installment has "GO GO GO!" as the button for starting the game.
- Insane Troll Logic: Some of the tests run on this.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: At some points, the questions are in either faux-Japanese Engrish or faux-German Engrish.
- Just Ignore It: Question 94 of the original features a bomb counting down and the words "Stop it!" and a "Detonate!" button at the top above the bomb. How do you pass the question? Ignoring it. The bomb is a dud.
- Also, question 107. It's a Fission Mailed example, because the "Game Over!" screen comes up, but as long as you wait a few seconds, it will disappear and say it was a fake.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The Impossible Quiz 2 spoils the fact that, in its predecessor, you can't use skips before the final question or else the game becomes Unwinnable by Design.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Question 83 of the first game asks what DNA stands for. One of the answers is "National Dyslexic Association."
- LOL, 69: The Trope Namer.
- In the first game, question 69 asks "Are you enjoying the quiz?" The correct answer is "LOL, 69".
- In the second game, question 69 asks "69-67=?" Surprisingly, the answer is not "LOL", but clicking 2 on the bomb.
- In the second game, the final question is a grid of numbers from 1 to 100. The exact question is randomly chosen, one of which is simply "LOL". The answer is, of course, 69.
- In Chapter 2 of Book, question 69 simply says "LOL 69" with an arrow pointing to the question number to signify this even further. The question number must be pressed 69 times to proceed.
- Luck-Based Mission/Final-Exam Boss: The last question on Impossible Quiz 2 calls back to one of the first 100 questions in the quiz (a random question each time), and the answer is the number of the question which is being referred to.
- Mind Screw: The game frequently switches between three main methods of answering: Yes, Baaah, and Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! It also has a few other settings that come up all of once.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: When given enough thought, most of the answers in the game make a good amount of sense. The problem is, the answers are so obtuse that they require some sort of abstract thought process to understand them, whether it be a Literal Metaphor, a Visual Pun, or Fun with Homophones.
- My Name Is ???: Norman Mapping, from Book Chapter 2.
- Mythology Gag: Many bits and bolts in the Quizzes are originally from Splapp's previous comics and Flash movies:
- The recurring character Mars debuts in Space: Serious Business singing "What is the Light?" by Flaming Lips, just like in Question 92 of The Impossible Quiz.
- The minigames where you help Dr. Eggman break Sonic the Hedgehog's leg (in the first quiz) and help Amy Rose commit suicide (in the second) come from the Flash movie Sonic Breaks his Neck.
- Multiple questions between the many installments references Splapp's "Badly Drawn Dawg" series (first appears in Question 31 of The Impossible Quiz).
- The two rivaling alien races Phlovomites and Spatulons first appear in these drawings.
- Question 9 of The Impossible Quiz 2 is a reference to this old animation made by Splapp.
- Question 21 of Quizmas is a direct reference to Splapp's short animation, "Organ Story."
- The recurring character Mars debuts in Space: Serious Business
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: Question 42 of the original requires you to choose the correct answer (42) in the middle of a whole screen of 42s. It's the 42nd one.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: Question 114 of Book has a very similar setup to Question 68 of the original Quiz, giving you a cat to pet and stroke. The catch is since you're playing as Chris in Book, touching the cat this time means you're interacting with your past self, creating a temporal paradox that causes a Game Over.
- Ninja Prop: The first quiz has a question where your cursor must reach a goal, except both your cursor and the goal are stuck on spots of white surrounded by pink, which you're not supposed to touch. You have to right-click and use the context menu as a bridge to get to the goal.
- Nintendo Hard: WRONG! -1 LIFE
- No Fair Cheating: Press Tab in any of the games after the prototype."CHEATER! Tabbing is for TWATS!" (TIQ 2)
"NO TABBING YOU CHEATING BASTARD!" (TIQ Book Chapters 1 and 3)
"ZOMG!! HAXXOR DETECTED — CALLING INTERNET POLICE..." (TIQ Book Chapter 2)
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE TRYING TO CHEAT ...But it is Christmas... So here's a Game Over gift!" (TI Quizmas) - No Item Use for You:
- The original Quiz disables your Skips on some questions. Not that it matters, because you need all seven Skips for the final question.
- In the second Quiz, only the final question disables your Skips. Also, some questions in the Quiz Book disallow skips.
- Nostalgia Level: A random question from the first quiz (e.g., the "What flavour is cardboard?" one) is reused in Question 43 of the second quiz, complete with the exact same button design.
- Then, on question 117, it reproduces a question from the Impossible Quiz prototype, again with the same graphic design. Considering that at the time few people even knew of the prototype's existence, this threw a lot of people for a loop.
- The Impossible Quiz Book: Chapter 1 features a question from one of the previous quizzes, and one of the possible answers is "Wait a minute... this question is familiar...". It's so wrong, isn't it?
- Any time the blue, red, blue, yellow puzzle appears. Book 3 throws you for a loop, as you have to perform the button sequence as the screen is getting swallowed in lava and general temporal destruction, with the broken-off REMEMBER? sign almost serving as a dark reminder of the chaos that has been wrought in the timeline due to your actions.
- Obvious Rule Patch: In early releases of the first quiz, people would cheat their way through question 106 by right-clicking and then waiting until it got to the end. Later versions patched it so that now right-clicking on that question kills you.
- One-Hit Kill: Bomb questions will bypass the lives system and end the game if you run out of time.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: Quite a few questions require some lateral thinking skills. For example, one question is a simple math question, but none of the choices given are the correct answer. However, the question number itself is.
- Subverted a few times in TIQB where an outside the box option is available as an answer, but the correct answer is instead one of the given choices.
- Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: In Question 121 of The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 3, one of the questions requires you to open a time portal in the "It's the End of the World!!!!!" question (previously seen in The Impossible Quiz 1) to send a meteor through to the dinosaur age and wipe them out.
- Press X to Die:
- Pressing the tab key will instantly kill you, since it is the key used to highlight clickable objects in Flash, and the game has detected that you're trying to cheat your way through.
- "If you press this button, it's game over," from Question 35 of the first quiz.
- Question 94 of the first quiz has a bomb with a "Detonate" button.
- "Press 'Yes' to Exit" from Question 74 of the second quiz, "Please don't press this" from Question 26 of TIQB, and "Shut Down" from Question 94 of TIQB. Choosing these answers will restart the Flash player.
- Question 80 of Quiz Book has the tip "Press R to asplode."
- Press X to Not Die: Press Tab 50 times! Actually, don't bother. You'll DIE!
- This game has a bad habit of disguising Press X to Die as Press X to Not Die, or vice versa.
- Pun: The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 3 has the subtitle "Spatula Future."note The game calls it "an awesome pun!"
- Punny Name: The name of Norman Mapping (the Spatulon) is a pun on normal mapping.
- Red Herring:
- The skips. You need every single one of them to complete the game. The fact that you're given the option to use them for their supposed purpose is just meant to throw you off.
- The Sorry, No Skipping! sign that occasionally blocks the skips. Again, you cannot use the skips at any point in order to complete the game. The sign is just there to reinforce the idea that the skips won't be necessary.
- Retraux: Questions 61-70 of The Impossible Quiz Book are loaded and styled like a ZX Spectrum program.
- Revenge of the Sequel: One of several unofficial Fan Sequels: Save the Death Star from premature destruction in the Revenge Against the Impossible Quiz. Set in 2007 and during the events of the 2007 Death Star novel, but before A New Hope.
- Running Gag:
- Blue, red, blue, yellow. Can you remember it?
- LOL, 69. Actually used as one of the possible last questions to The Impossible Quiz 2. In Question 69 of Chapter 2 you literally click the question number 69 times.
- Lemurs (They were even mentioned 5 times in "The Impossible Quiz 2").
- The color brown.
- Schmuck Bait:
- One question in The Impossible Quiz Book has an answer labeled "Please don't press this." You'd better not, since doing so resets the game!
- From the original: "IF YOU PRESS THIS BUTTON, IT'S GAME OVER..." "Alternatively, Click This Button to carry on"
- Self-Deprecation:
- In The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 1:Q25: Why is the sand wet?
A: Seaweed
Q26: So... the sand is wet because the sea weed on it?!
A: Yes
Q27: How is that even possible? I mean, the sea is just a huge mass of water, how could it urinate on a beach?
A: Wow. The Impossible Quiz has sure gone downhill! - In The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 3:Q109: What does T.A.R.D.I.S. stand for?
A: Titting Arsing Retarded Dicking Impossible Shit-Quiz
- In The Impossible Quiz Book Chapter 1:
- Series Mascot: Chris the Cat.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Take That!:
- Question 63 of The Impossible Quiz asks "What are Chicken McNuggets made of?" The answer is "Tasteless white filth".
- One of the first Quiz' questions asks how many times Michael Jackson had a nose job. The correct answer was "nonce"—a British slang term for a child molester—referencing his allegations of inappropriate conduct with minors in the early 2000s.
- Take That, Audience!: Question 92 of The Impossible Quiz 2 asks the player how many lives they have left. The correct answer is "None - I'm on Question 92 of The Impossible Quiz 2 :(".
- Time Crash: The eventual end of Chapter 3, thanks to Chris and Norman creating time scars as they hop through different time periods. You are given a choice to fix the timeline by wiping out the entire Impossible Quiz series.
- Timed Mission: Bomb questions; run out of time and it's an immediate Game Over regardless of how many lives you have.
- Time Travel: Chapter 3 of Book has Chris and Norman going through various points in time in an attempt to escape the Phlovomite ship. These periods and eras include:
- Prehistoria
- Ancient Egypt
- The Ice Age
- World War II-era Nazi Germany
- Ancient Rome
- A Steampunk rendition of Industrial-age Victorian Britain
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: This is mostly how the game is played, since the correct answers are not as obvious on the first try; they can be either puns, wordplay, or just something completely random.
- Most answers make sense at least in retrospect, so if you catch the author's train of thought you will answer it correctly. Though there are exceptions like question 64 in the first quiz, which is
confirmed by the author to be totally random, and has no explanation for its answer whatsoever.
- Most answers make sense at least in retrospect, so if you catch the author's train of thought you will answer it correctly. Though there are exceptions like question 64 in the first quiz, which is
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: On Question 92 of the first quiz, if you complete the task too quickly before the bomb appears, it will kill you. Otherwise, the bomb countdown stops once you complete it.
- Unwinnable by Design: The final question of the first game requires you to use all your skips, so if you used even one, the game becomes quite literally impossible to beat.
- Uranus Is Showing: In Question 66 of Quiz Book Chapter 2, the name of the planet Uranus is followed by the description "Is Bleeding".
- Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The last 10 questions of the first quiz and the last 20 of the second have different music and presentation than the questions that preceded them. They are more difficult and all timed.
- Violation of Common Sense: Several questions require you to disregard common sense to pass, such as a question that reads "Press this button to kill you before the bomb does." It was referring to the words "this button" in the question. If you click "this button", YOU DIE. The actual correct answer is to push the threatening-looking button.
- "What is the 7th letter of the alphabet?" Answer: H. By which the game means the 7th letter of the word "the alphabet", and not the literal alphabet.
- Visual Pun: Several questions show a picture, and the answer has something to do with the pronunciation of it (e.g., A sick bird is "illegal", a bar graph and a pie chart in a boxing match is a "graphite").
- Waiting Puzzle:
- In level 35 of the original game, the player must wait five seconds for the game-over button to change.
- In level 94 of the original game, the player must allow the timer on the bomb to expire. It turns out to be a dud.
- Wall of Text: The first two quizzes each have one question with this. Don't bother reading it, though... because a bomb will suddenly appear out of nowhere to kill you.
- Weather Dissonance: The first sign that something is going wrong in Book Chapter 3 is snow from the Ice Age starts falling over Ancient Egypt in Question 126.
- Wham Line: One on the very final question of the original TIQ:"USE YOUR SKIPS!"
- What Does This Button Do?: Leads to many correct answers in the early game, and then it gets Zig-Zagged.
- A Winner Is You: If you somehow managed to answer all of the questions in the first game, you are awarded with... an image of a trophy with the words "UR WINNAR" on it. That's it. Averted in the sequels though, where the Gameplay Grading system is introduced.
- You Are Number 6: The Phlovomites that captured and imprisoned Chris in Chapter 2 of the Quiz Book are only known as "109" and "42".
