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Inaugural Address Quiz

Inaugural Address Quiz

by Jennifer LaFleur and Dan Nguyen, ProPublica - January 19, 2009 3:00 pm EST

Government. People. States. All the presidents have mentioned those words frequently in their inaugural addresses. But which words are most common for which presidents? Here is a collection of word clouds using the inaugural addresses of 10 11 presidents, including just sworn-in President Obama. It uses the online tool Wordle. The bigger the word, the more often that word was spoken. Guess which one belongs to which president.

(Fair warning, it’s tough test: We asked our general manager, Dick Tofel, who wrote a book about John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, to take the test and he got six out of 10 right. The New York Times also has a word cloud from every inauguration. But the Times omits common words, so it won’t be much help.) 

Scroll down to see the choices. Click on a head of state to select him as the answer for the speech displayed. Then hit "Next." When you’re done with all ten, hit "Submit Answers" to see how you did.

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