By Brad Cook

3 … 2 … 1 Quick: What is Earl’s brother’s name in “My Name is Earl”? Right or wrong: Spoon made the album “Power Windows”? For what 2006 movie did the Wachowski brothers write the screenplay? Hurry — you only have a few seconds to select the right answer.

Test your mastery of all things trivial with iQuiz, which comes loaded with four question packs: TV Show Trivia, Music Trivia, Movie Trivia, and Music Quiz 2. Answer a series of multiple-choice or true-false questions, but make sure you don’t get three wrong or your game will end. You can even download a utility that allows you to create quizzes to share with friends (see “Become the QuizMaster,” below).

While the TV Show, Music, and Movie trivia packs consist of preset questions, Music Quiz 2 uses the music on your iPod to create custom-tailored multiple-choice and true-false queries. For example, you might hear a snippet from a song and be asked what album it came from, or what year it was released. Or you might need to figure out if a certain tune came out in a specific year. The quiz may even incorporate your album art.

Go For the Big Money

Music Quiz 2 consists of five rounds, with either a lightning or a who/what/when bonus round between each one. Each of the main rounds consists of seven questions drawn from your music library, with a general music question for the eighth one. The type of bonus round you enter after each main round depends on the random spin of a wheel, with you pressing the Select button at the right moment, if you have a preference.

During the lightning round, a question is asked, such as “Which of these songs is by Led Zeppelin?”, and you must select the correct answers as they pass by. In a who/what/when round, you’re given a choice between two answers, and you must quickly choose the right one as each question appears. For example, the answers could be two bands, and the queries could be the names of songs recorded by one of them.

Before each bonus round, you decide how much money you want riding on each question; the higher the cash total, the shorter the round. Each question you get wrong during the bonus round results in that money being deducted from your total. The questions in each main round also earn you money, with the amount per question increasing as you move through the rounds. As in the other quizzes, though, three wrong answers in a round ends your chances for the big money.

Quick: Which band released the song “The Big Money” in 1985? Don’t dawdle, because $500 is riding on it.

Become the QuizMaster

Aspyr’s free utility iQuizMaker, available for Mac and Windows XP, allows you to create your own quizzes and share them with others. If you don’t want to make quizzes but want to sync downloaded ones to your iPod, you can download a tool for that too. Aspyr currently hosts several trivia packs you can add to iQuiz, along with a few themes that will jazz up your quizzes in iQuizMaker, which comes with four themes pre-installed.

iQuizMaker lets you ask anywhere from 1 to 1,000 questions per game, and you can decide how many wrong answers will cause the player to lose or if that won’t be a factor. You can also customize the messages displayed when the player wins or loses. If you want to make your quiz an international affair, add localization for the Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, or Swedish languages.

After you create your series of multiple-choice and/or true-false questions, simply press the “Play” button to run through the quiz in a separate window. It will behave as if it’s on your iPod. At the end, you can fine-tune your quiz before sending it to friends via the handy “Mail Quiz” feature, or simply export it if you want to upload it to a website.

Stump the Experts. iQuizMaker lets you build quizzes that are sure to befuddle your knowledgeable friends.

iPod Games FAQ

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Covering all the Bases. iQuiz also uses your album art to create questions.

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