On first glance, That Ain’t It (Lite) looks like your typical ABCD four-question multi-choice in a long list of poorly designed ABCD four-question multi-choice apps. However, I like the simple twist they’ve put on it. Rather than providing you with three wrongs and a right, they’ve given you three rights and a wrong. Your job: pick out the wrong one. Here’s a sample question from the Culture category:

Common expressions derived from Shakespeare’s plays:
Sink or swim
Fight the good fight
Too much of a good thing
Neither a borrow nor a lender be

If that was too high-brow for you, try fruits containing one seed:
Apricot
Lemon
Cherry
Nectarine

That Ain’t It Lite has two game modes: “Game show”, where you answer ten questions to win a million pretend pounds, or “Speed Trivia” (locked until you’ve earned the right to the Millionaires Club (which I have)) where you answer as many questions as you can in two minutes.

Overall, it’s quick and clever, just long enough for a trivia fix in the elevator, or if you’re that sort, the toilet. By the way, the answers are ‘Fight the good fight’ and ‘Lemon’, just so that doesn’t distract you from reading the rest of the article.

Next I pulled down SongPop Free, which turned out to be the lovechild of Name That Tune and Draw Something. While still relying on the standard ABCD model of trivia gaming… this time it’s audio.

As I said, the basic menu format follows eerily close on the heels of Draw Something, right down to the Facebook/email challenges, nudges, coins, layout, and even fonts (the ‘power-ups’ are rather like Draw bombs except they’ve got notes and CDs on them instead of bombs… but they’re really bombs). To start, you find a friend or a random competitor, then go asynchronous head-to-head.

The game part of the game plays the first line or chorus of a song and gives you four options to choose from. Just pick the right song. Simples! But also, pick it fast! That’s what you’ll really be graded against in the challenge-a-friend tournament.

Again, it’s a nice little diversion, and everybody loves music. Except modern rap. I’ve been raking in the five-out-of-fives on the other two categories, but apparently I don’t know my L’il Wayne from my Soulja Boy. I still sleep at night, though.

By the way, open note to all app developers while I’m thinking of it: if your app has a Help button, put the help content into the app, don’t just kick me off to a website with help on it. I don’t know if I’m old fashioned or what, but as soon as I see that multitasking flipperoo screen taking me off to Safari, I don’t bother coming back.

I know I’ve been going on a bit about the ABCD format, and don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of Millionaire as much as the next man, but I’ve honestly never been one for multiple-choice. That said, I know I’m in the minority. Back in school, I used to hear little hoots of celebration when the teacher announced that today’s quiz would be multiple-choice, but that was never my thing. Argument for: the answer is provided, and if you didn’t study you still had a one in four chance of still getting the mark. Argument against: they give you three other close possible answers that cloud your mind from divining the real answer out of your own knowledge.

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