Some of these are not "cities." The instructions should be more clear if you include towns or other communites. For example, the closest city to Acadia National Park is Bangor; Bar Harbor is a town (officially and in reality). Similarly, Centralia is officially only a Borough (which is still liberal for a community of less than a dozen people). Few people would think of Cody or Aspen as "cities" and, legally speaking, they are just towns.
It does, however, matter if a place is a city or town in most Jet Punk quizzes. If we want these to be fair to everyone a certain unwritten rule has to be that we draft quizzes keeping in mind general expectations of people taking these.
I checked the quiz afterwords and said, "How the heck did I get Bar Harbor?" I didn't notice that Bangor had been a type-in for a much less obvious answer.
This again? Can't we put a caveat at the top of the front page: unless otherwise specified, JetPunk uses the word "city" the same way the United States Postal Office Does- i.e. the thing you fill in on your address that comes after the street and before the zip code.
The closest municipality to Bar Harbor legally a city is Ellsworth by a long shot, although in New England, a town can have a representative town council and a city a representative city council. There's nothing special about a municipality being called a city whatsoever. Zilch. By the way, Bangor is 50 miles away at bottleneck tourist speed, Ellsworth is 20 and you have to pass through it to get on to Mount Desert Island where Bar Harbor sits.
And thanks for quizzes like this that focus more on towns that have something to be known for other than a litany of populous, unknown cooker cutter 'burbs.
Finally, a question where living in Central PA lives off :) Centralia is kinda part of the lore of the region. Never been there personally, but I'd like to some day.
Could someone explain to me the logic of not requiring the word city for Salt Lake City, but requiring it for Oklahoma City? I've never understood that. It seems like it should be consistent, but I've never know Quizmaster to do something like that without a good reason. Interested in why.
That actual name of the city is "New York." People just add "City" to differentiate it from the state, but it's not part of the official name. Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City, on the other hand, but include "City" in the name itself.
I think it's because Salt Lake is a nickname for Salt Lake City, but Oklahoma is not a nickname for that city. In fact, the Winter Olympics logo for that year only had the words "Salt Lake 2002" written on it.
It's rumored that Centralia was the inspiration for the video game and film franchise Silent Hill, a survival horror series that takes place in a cursed mining town ravaged by fire and... other things.
I live about 12 miles away from Centralia. I drove through the town many times when it was still heavily populated and saw all the smoke coming up through the ground.
The nickname "windy city" originated in a newspaper article referring to city politicians talking a lot of hot air about the city in the city's bid to host a world expo.
Nice quiz for me. We have been to Centralia. It is sad there, but it was interesting for us to try to imagine how the town used to look. As for this quiz, I scored 28/29. I didn't know the Northern Marianas answer. Thanks for the quiz!
I can't speak for anyone else, but I can't guess a city unless I've heard of it, so that eliminates Saipan. Centralia, on the other hand, was guessable because of the "Central" PA clue.
As for "towns," the State of New York has a goofy definition of "town." What they call a town is what I'd think of as a "township." The State of New York has "towns" that are little more than rural areas drawn up on a map, featuring a few scattered farmhouses, a small town hall, and a town road maintenance garage situated on a country road--which road is often called a "street," even though it's in the middle of nowhere!
Almost everything is called a city.
And if some place like Bar Harbor isn't technically a city no one really cares.
Bangor is a city, albeit a small one.
Ellsworth calls itself a city and has a city council to "prove" it.
Bar Harbor may be a city for jetpunk purposes, but it calls itself a town.
Saipan and Charlotte Amalie are not in the united States.
And Saipan is an island not a city
As for "towns," the State of New York has a goofy definition of "town." What they call a town is what I'd think of as a "township." The State of New York has "towns" that are little more than rural areas drawn up on a map, featuring a few scattered farmhouses, a small town hall, and a town road maintenance garage situated on a country road--which road is often called a "street," even though it's in the middle of nowhere!