Shared quiz
Meetings, Deadlines and Other Office Myths
Ten questions about where the working day came from. No jargon, no industry knowledge -- a warm-up that a whole team can play cold.
- Questions
- 10
- Time to play
- about 6 min
- Category
- Business
- Language
- English
- work
- office
- history
- team
How to use this quiz
- Make a copy — it lands in your own quizzes, where you can edit every question. The original is untouched.
- Start a game from your copy. Ponko puts a join code and QR code on your screen.
- Players join from any phone browser, answer on their own device, and the scores update live.
Hosting and playing are free, and players don't need an account. More in the FAQ
The questions
Correct answers are shown below, so you can check the quiz before you use it.
A "deadline" was originally a line you could not cross. Where was it?
- Around a prison camp, crossed on pain of being shotcorrect
- On a printing press, past which ink would not reach
- On a ship's deck, marking the loading limit
- In a newspaper office, drawn on the floor
Why
During the American Civil War, the Confederate prison at Andersonville had a line inside its walls; a prisoner who crossed it could be shot. The printing and business meanings came later.
20 seconds to answer
Which everyday substance gives us the word "salary"?
- Saltcorrect
- Silver
- Grain
- Oil
Why
"Salary" comes from the Latin salarium, which is linked to sal, salt. The popular story that Roman soldiers were paid in salt is uncertain; the word may have meant an allowance for buying it.
20 seconds to answer
The English word "boss" was borrowed from Dutch.
- Truecorrect
- False
Why
"Boss" comes from the Dutch baas, "master". It reached English through Dutch settlers in New York in the 17th century.
15 seconds to answer
The slogan that won the eight-hour day split the day three ways: eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, and eight hours what?
Accepted answers
rest · sleep
Why
"Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest" is attributed to the Welsh reformer Robert Owen, around 1817. It became a rallying cry of the labour movement.
30 seconds to answer
A "freelance" was originally a what?
- A mercenary soldier who sold his lance to any sidecorrect
- A scribe paid per page
- A market trader without a stall
- A messenger on horseback
Why
Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe (1819) used "free lance" for a mercenary knight whose lance was for hire. The word only later came to mean a self-employed worker.
20 seconds to answer
"Agenda" is a Latin plural. What does it mean literally?
- Things to be donecorrect
- Words to be spoken
- People to be seen
- Time to be filled
Why
Agenda is the plural of the Latin agendum, "a thing to be done", from the verb agere, to do or act.
20 seconds to answer
Order these by when they appeared, earliest first.
Correct order
- The eight-hour working day as a demand
- The five-day working week at Ford
- Bürolandschaft (the German office-landscape movement)
- The office cubicle
Why
Owen's eight-hour slogan dates from about 1817; Ford adopted a five-day week in 1926. The open-plan office landscape, Bürolandschaft, came from Germany in the late 1950s, and the cubicle followed in the late 1960s.
45 seconds to answer
Alex Osborn developed brainstorming in which industry?
- Advertisingcorrect
- Aircraft manufacturing
- Banking
- Publishing
Why
BBDO advertising executive Alex Osborn began using brainstorming in 1939 and popularised it in his 1953 book Applied Imagination.
20 seconds to answer
The office cubicle was designed to give workers more freedom, not less.
- Truecorrect
- False
Why
Robert Propst designed the Action Office in the 1960s to give workers flexible, movable spaces with more autonomy. Cheaper copies turned it into the rigid cubicle farm he later criticised.
15 seconds to answer
Which of these does your team waste the most time on?
Poll — no right answer, players just vote.
- Meetings that could have been a message
- Finding the right document
- Waiting for someone to reply
- Deciding where to eat
20 seconds to answer