Interview of a JetPunker #32 - DictatorTal

Tu veux une interview, tant qu'à faire ?

Tu veux dire que celle de Ravi ne compte toujours pas sortir ?

Pose-lui la question. Mais vraie question : voudrais-tu être mon prochain interviewé ?

Merci pour la proposition, j’accepte volontiers !

Great, so time to switch to English and to start this interview! First, could you present yourself on JetPunk quickly for our readers who don’t know you?

Hi! I’m henrigolo, I’m 20 and I’m from Strasbourg, France.

I discovered JetPunk over five years ago. I’m not really sure when it was but all I know is that I created my account on November 2019 so it must be around that time. I’ve only been into quizmaking for the last two years but things happened very quickly and now I’m ranked in the top 125. I should break into the top 100 some time next year thanks to the right circumstances. I never thought I would go this far!

Very impressive, indeed.

Your pseudonym could seem wrong to some of our non-French-speaking readers. Could you quickly explain its meaning?

To quote Michael Palin, Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch: "It was a pun…" Henri is my name, rigolo means funny. It's basically a simple and not very sophisticated play on words haha. 


It seems super obvious for every French speaker but I guess it helps to introduce yourself to our non-French speaking readers. Thanks for this explanation!

As a quizmaker, you are mostly active on the French section. Would you say that this section of the site has something special?

Definitely. We (the French section) managed to keep our own identity but without any lack of rigour. I think this is what makes our section so special, and so successful lately. We still have some good days ahead of us, that’s for sure. Of course, it wouldn't have been possible without the work of the people in charge of the section, and you're one of them!

I also devote some time to the English section, even though my quizzes are not as successful as those in French and that none of them have been featured yet. But I don’t mind, I've still got half a dozen spotlights that are encouraging, so I'm going to continue with my French quizzes in parallel.

You are also known to be the Moderator Assistant of the French JetPunk Discord server. Did this special position change something in your JetPunk adventure?

I remember saying something a few months ago about the duality of being both an active quizmaker and a mod on the French server. May I translate it? I love to quote myself, it gives me some Alain Delon vibes.

"Being involved as a Quasimodo (name given to the Moderator Assistant, another pun btw you’re starting to get used to it) means being regularly present on the server, and so supporting certain members of the community. Perhaps it's my conception of Quasimodo that's extended, but it's a point I would like to honour. What I wanted to emphasise is my knowledge of the site and its mechanisms, which imo is a non-negligible point that you need to understand if you want to take on this role. You don't have to be an active quizmaker to do this, even if I am; I wanted to use this sentence to show that my featured quizzes don't give me any prerogatives, but that it's my experience of the site that gives me eminent conveniences."

Mod elections will soon take place on the first server and you decided to run again. Are your confident? Do you have a message to pass to the voters? And to the other applicants?

I'd like to wish the other candidates the best of luck. As far as voters are concerned, the campaign will be conducted mainly on the server, and I don't want to use this interview as a tribune. I did my best to carry out my tasks as a mod, to listen to users and look after the server, and I've done pretty well. I'm happy with what I did over the last nine months, I'll have the opportunity to defend it during the campaign. I hope that users will put their trust in me once again.

What are the quizzes you are the proudest of?

You mean apart from "Most populous planets in the Solar System"?

All jokes aside, I’m not even sure if I can mention one. I’m proud of most of my recent quizzes but since I like to keep moving forward I soon forget about them.

If I have to look through my old quizzes to find something to answer, I would say that I’m kinda proud of my "La réponse est de plus en plus longue" series. I don't do it very often because sometimes it's a real headache, but I like to come back to it from time to time. I know it’s unexpected not to pick one of my featured quizzes, but I don’t mind the features. I'm just as happy when a non-featured quiz is successful as when I have a new featured quiz.

And that's a mentality that more people on the site should share, in my humble opinion.

You have published your two first blogs this summer. Do you plan to write more in the future?

That’s right, I took the plunge and joined the blogging sect! The first one was about the organisation of a competition on the French server to coincide with the Paris Olympics, which was a pretty successful event (I mean both the Olympics and my event lol). However, the second blog is probably the most important one, since it’s about our collaborative project of translating QM’s General Knowledge series, led by Elboy.

I don’t plan to write more for now, but now than I think about it I might post some short fictional stories that I wrote. Who knows…

Do you have big projects of quizzes or blogs in preparation?

I’m almost done with my first A-Z series, which is going to be featured very soon, but I’ll be back on the rail with a new featurable one by the end of the year! I can’t tell you much about it for now, but I had the idea of this series a few months ago so I’m looking forward to starting it soon.

Interesting teaser... We want to know now! But let's wait a few weeks...

If you had to resume your JetPunk adventure in one word, what would it be?

Curiosity. I’m not going to justify this answer, if you’re curious enough you’ll find it yourself xD

Would you change something to tour JetPunk adventure, if it was possible?

Time travel to create "Countries of Africa" before LBA. Until I find a way to do so: no, I wouldn’t change anything.

Haha! I'm surprised no one gave me such an answer to this question in the past.

If you had to choose just three JetPunker for their quizzes, who would they be?

Dug. I love his creativity it's really inspiring. He also seems to be a very kind and lovely person from what I've read of him.

Then I would say Dekkie, since I've only done a handful of map quizzes so I'm easily fascinated by good looking, accurate maps.

And to finish let’s take a French user to honour our section : Elboy. Not only because he's one of the biggest quizmaker, but also because he keeps the same energy for the big quizzes as he does for the more original ones. Plus, he is a really nice person.

And for their blogs?

I’m a regular reader of DictatorTal’s blog and I really like his style. I feel like he is an occasional writer himself, I really hope he writes more in the future.

And last but not least, baptistegorce for interviewing wonderful people like me xD (and occasionally for keeping the French blogs section alive).

Haha! Thank you, I'm honoured. I'm sure the French blog section would do great things even without me though.

You have published several quizzes using your own drawings. Is it one of your hobbies? Where does it come from?

Been to an art school when I was a kid and spent a few years there, but I didn’t really like it. I rediscovered drawing when I was bored in class, where I’ve been drawing realistic and semi-realistic portraits of women. It was as if I've relearned to draw.

I mentioned Dug earlier. His artistic quizzes made me realise I could do some too, and that's how I came up with the idea of combining drawing and quiz making. I actually plan to do a #2 of "Famous people by their caricature" whenever I find some time. I'm not a caricaturist, but I'm enjoying this new exercise. 

What are your other passions in life, excepting JetPunk?

I’m a musician, I play several instruments but I’m mainly a guitarist. I’ve learnt the piano when I was a kid, but the story is the same as for drawing: I didn’t like it and I rediscovered it later (that’s where you realise I have a specific thought pattern lol). Then I taught myself the guitar, and other instruments too.

I'm also very fond of cinema, mostly from the golden age of Hollywood. But that doesn't stop me from keeping up with the latest film news. I also like photography. In short, I'm a very pictorial guy.

“JetPunk actuality question”: Sudden Death, a new quiz type of quiz, has recently been added to the site. What do you think about this new feature and the true gold run that it generated?

Great concept I have to admit. I didn’t expect a new feature to be added to the site, and given its success it really hit its mark. The amount of quiz takers is really impressive, I’ve only created one in French and I can testify to that.

On the other hand I really had the impression of a gold rush at the beginning, and that was the dark side of it that bothered me a bit. I mean, are we only doing quizzes for the features? Maybe I’m naive, idk. But I wanted to wait for the excitement to die down before making full use of this new concept.

Very wise thought. The very first days after the introduction of this feature were indeed... particular.

We talked about the French server but you are also part of the English one. What do you think about it?

What I like about the English server is the range of subjects we talk about (mostly things that are not linked to the site lol). That’s why I often publish polls since the server is quite a large and interesting sample to survey. In fact, I've got a special note on my phone for poll ideas. I write them down every time they come to mind, so that I'm always ready to publish a new one. Now than I think about it, I might be more famous for my polls than for my English quizzes.

Haha! A pretty unique situation.

What do you hope for JetPunk development in the next months?

There have been a few surprises this year: I'm thinking of the Daily Trivia Challenge to a lesser extent, and the Sudden Death concept more recently. I don’t know if QM is planing to do more, but what I hope for is that the site will continue to flourish and that new talented quizmakers will appear. In fact if I had to make a wish, I would like to see more diversity in the features and in the quizmakers that are put forward. I mean, we all love to learn new things, don’t we? So why not adding more diversity. I don’t know I’m just suggesting. But what I know is that I will try my best to provide high-quality quizzes for the site. :-)

I think that this thought is shared by a large part of our community. Thank you for spotlighting it!

We are reaching the end of this interview... Do you have a message to pass to the whole JetPunk community (or at least to the few users reading these blogs…)?

Frst of all thank you Poirot for the interview. I’m not used to talk about myself when we live in a selfish world where nobody listens to each other. It's the rarity of discussions that are about shared interests that makes them so good.

I hope that people outside the French section have got to know me better by now! 
Keep jetpunking, it's good for your health! And thanks for keeping the blog section alive by reading these lines too ;-)

You're welcome, it was a pleasure to have you for this 33rd interview!