Hasta La Gadget!

Call me dorky, but for me the perfect game is one where you also learn something. It may have something to do with the Great British Pub Quiz, which long ago replaced the formal academic examination in UK schools and universities because a) attendance runs to almost 100% and b) you get to drink beer.

So if you, too, prefer to read a how-to article on the web than kill five minutes on yet another tower-defense game, try out Stuff to Rattle Your Brain, a trivia quiz game from the good folks at How Stuff Works. Or rather, don’t. How Stuff Works is an excellent resource for the curious, explaining, amongst other things, how the iPhone works, whether or not Santa is real, and offering videos of such educational items as the two-faced cat (literally two-faced, not metaphorically two-faced like all cats).

But this application looks like any random piece of flung-together junk you’d find amongst the 100,000 apps in the store. There are mis-spellings, and the questions seem to be weasel-worded to make you get them wrong even if you know the answer. For instance, a question from the “computer” category: “A firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away from your property. True or false?” If you give the correct answer, “false”, then you will be wrong.

Still, it’s not all bad. Any app which can include this wonderfully non-politically-correct question is fine with me: “Even as babies and children, girls cry more than boys on average?” The answer? True! (Actually, false). You can let the application store your scores online, and questions are refreshed periodically from the internet.

We guess it is still better than a round of Orba, but the brain-rattling in the title is more likely to refer to the frustration it causes than to a genuine mental challenge.

Stuff to Rattle Your Brain [iTunes. Thanks, Katy!]