The Internet Is Struggling With This Alton Brown Quiz

It seems ages since Alton Brown announced his upcoming North American tour, but the tour is finally happening — and soon. Specifically, it kicks off in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 13 (via Alton Brown Live). And for the Alton Brown-obsessed among us who entertain fantasies of joining him onstage as a volunteer, the stakes are high (and getting higher) ever since Brown announced that, for this particular tour ("Alton Brown Live: Beyond The Eats"), it's not going to come down to him selecting "whoever waves the hardest and screams the loudest" (via Alton Brown Live). Rather, Brown has decided to turn the process into a meritocracy — as in, you'll have to take a quiz to qualify.

This time around, as Brown explained, "I need a few folks in each town who are really knowledgeable ... as in they've spent a considerable fraction of their life absorbing 'Good Eats' episodes." If you're game, do be warned, however: the internet is struggling hard with Alton Brown's 20-question quiz/entrance exam. 

On September 15, Alton Brown tweeted that of the 4,000 people who've taken his quiz thus far, only one has attained a perfect score. If you're wondering how that's possible given that it's an internet quiz — which means that, theoretically, you could use the internet's handy search function as needed — having taken the quiz, we can assure you that searching will only get you so far. 

First, a good number of the 20 questions you'll be asked, which are drawn randomly from a "vast pool" (via Alton Brown Live), don't actually make for effective Google searches, at least in our opinion. If you think you can refresh the screen and get a better question, sorry, no dice. In fact, refreshing the screen will only give you the same exact same question again. And if you were thinking you could take the quiz more than once, doing better each time, you'd be wrong. After you take the quiz, Brown gives you your score but doesn't tell you which questions you got incorrect. And just to confuse your brain a bit more, some of the questions have more than one right answer. 

The way we see it, and the way it appears Alton Brown has designed his (extremely maddening) quiz, the best and only effective way to prepare is to go back and watch the entire "Good Eats" oeuvre!