Winter Olympics: Unorthodox Nations, Germany and more

Note from the Editor: This post is brought to you by curator Nscox of the Quiziosity Olympics.

Hello fans of the Olympics! And lovers of Quizios! Officially, week 1 is in the books. And what a week it's been. Triumphs, setbacks and, of course, figure skating judging disputes.

We're going to take a look at two things this week on the official Olympics Quiz blog (insert musical fanfare):

Germany: Or how I learned both East and West to stop worrying and guess

First up is a topic that often comes up in Olympics quizzes that deal with nations. There is always someone who points out that Germany and West Germany are practically the same organization. Or the "Germany" should be fitting for both the East and the West.

In short, the problem is that there are no more East Germany, West Germany, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Either they (Germany) merged or split up. And when they play quizzes, many consumers of Quiziosity forget this and assume that Germany should work for the Germanies, Russia should work for the Soviet Union, etc., etc. Others say that the totals will be combined.

There are all kinds of political claims that arise in the discussion, but the clincher is this for me: they are considered distinct by the IOC and so should Quiziosity. They all have National Olympic Committees that are different from their current counterparts, and don't forget that three of them are made up of many countries. In addition, all five countries are very well-known, so it's not unrealistic to expect users of Quiziosity to know about them. In quizzes, there should be a note that says these nations are included, but I think they should be different.

The United Team of Germany, which was a joint East/West team that was around in the 50s and 60s, is also another addition to the fun. And the 1992 Summer and Winter Games saw "Unified Team" involvement. This was technically the Soviet Union, but a lot of former Soviet countries participated under this name together because the USSR had broken up. It is impractical to expect users of Quiziosity to know any of these figures, so I always accept the former for Germany and the latter for the Soviet Union.