Yes that’s basically it
Oh well hell, I want to do that over then. Now I wasted my monkey fixing the thing so it did something.
That’s correct. You’re on the right path now 
Big thanks to Paul for jumping in and explaining that it is not as dumb as it looks 
Hi Thierry
I looked at the Quiz earlier today and like many others I was confused about what the goal was. After reading through the comments in this thread I now understand what the goal is (I think).
I may still be confused on the improvements though. The way I understood it is that the improvements should get the original rules working while adding whatever it may take to do that as well as trimming out unnecessary rules.
Hi Ray
I saw your answers.
I can see that you know what you’re doing, but you didn’t understand the question properly.
Please read Paul’s comments in this thread. He explains the goal of this quizz much better than I did I guess.
Actually, I’m starting to think that I should have asked a native english speaker to write the question for me as it seems the way I worded it has confused many people. Even though I thought it was pretty straightforward. 
Thanks for participating!
Ranguage Rarrier could explain a good deal of it. I have a lot of issues understanding when people use Engrish instead of English… so I may have completely missed the point.
I submitted my answer once I realized… well… I won’t give it away; though now I feel like I’ve swung too far the other direction.
I just checked your answers. You understood what to do and you are very close. Only one error
Only error I can think of is the ONE thing I … well… I won’t give it away, but pretty sure that still works on inline-level elements… though it’s something I would NEVER do in code in the first place.
You’re saying too much
lol - Don’t worry I have the same problem in the CSS quizzes here as it’s always hard to phrase something without giving too much away but still make it clear what needs to be done.
Actually, I’m starting to think that I should have asked a native english speaker to write the question for me as it seems the way I worded it has confused many people. Even though I thought it was pretty straightforward.
It totally wasn’t, maybe because we’re CSS people who assume
a) CSS is supposed to Do Stuff
b) someone (a user) was expecting it to Do Stuff
c) we’re supposed to fix it so that it does Do Stuff
So I’d been trying to think of how to make the thing work, and that wasn’t the point.
Next time I would say, “This element has these styles (below). These styles are in order (if you’re going to list the same property twice, then just answer this question for participants right away). Remove any rules which can be removed without changing how this element displays.”
(so, nothing about rewriting them, because that’s when we start thinking “oh, that means we should fix them”). I think that’s what threw many people off, and why they asked for context.
lol - I just realised that my submission had one too many rules
Yes, but in the spirit of this quizz I consider you the winner
Because you’re the only one who spotted the possible issue with the last declaration. Even though it is a edge case which is more related to “behavior” than “display” it is the kind of thing that gives you bonus point.
fyi, I think only 4 or 5 people out of a hundred said the whole rule could be removed and I believe one of them just guessed it as he listed himself as “beginner”. Either that or the guy is really modest
Also, there could be a false positive in there. For example, some people have removed the z-index value because they said the value was too high (only true for Safari 3 I believe), not saying it was because the element was not positioned.
It seems the quiz is now closed.
For posterity, any chance you could re-post it here with the correct answer and rationale?
I can’t believe I put one too many digit in there
I just noticed that I have 2,200,007,253 in the rule and not 200,007,253 as I thought. In this case the value is too large as the maximum is 2,147,483,647 (32bit signed integer)
This does not change the answer for the quiz though, but it gives bonus point to people who removed it because of the span not being positioned and for being a too large value anyway.
Yes, I’m planning to write something and put it up on my site. I’ll put the link here when that’s done.
Thanks
Which site? There are 3 in your sig.
Either tjkdesign or css-101, in any case I’ll make sure to post the link here.
Your “explanation” is flawed, as for the 50px padding you say:
This declaration cannot be removed as it would make the box shrink.
It’s overridden by the second one – which applies NO side padding, so the net result would be NO padding applied; there-in BOTH paddings could be removed as NO padding is actually applied for positioning.
So your answer is wrong. BOTH paddings should be removed as zero padding is applied when both are present. Removing it will make it render 100px wider than it does with it in there!
Though Pauls response does raise a point; of the two paddings only the second one is applied – and that would render in some browsers without changing the actual height of the element, so the second one DOES do something while the first one is overridden.
Though I could have sworn text-indent worked on display:inline elements… NOT that I would ever apply text-indent in that manner in my code as that’s an outdated/broken/half-assed method for what is likely trying to be an image replacement.
Thanks Thierry for an interesting quiz which sparked some interesting debate
As the screenshot below shows, anonymous online quizzes are troll magnets
lol - where do they come from:)