"Group Answers with Same Hint" and "Hide 3rd Column until answered" not working together

[Ian Benton]

I'm creating my first quiz and need some help. The challenge of the quiz is to name the countries and world capitals that begin with chemical symbols. For example, a user would type "Sodium Namibia" and an answer in the countries column would show "Sodium - Namibia, Nauru". Then they would also need to type "Sodium Nassau" (or any other capital city) and the answer in the capitals column would show "Sodium - Nairobi, Nassau, Naypyidaw". I have no problem with that part, but as you can see it helps that the quiz is in two columns, countries/elements and capitals/elements. I'm able to put answers into two proper columns by using my hint column as a label. 

However, in my final ("extra") column I'd like to have the chemical symbol pop up after the user has answered. They would be in alphabetical order and it would make the quiz a lot more doable. I don't want to have the chemical symbol there before the player answers, though, because this would make it too easy.

Unfortunately when I click the "Hide 3rd Column until answered" button, because the quiz is broken into two columns of countries and capitals, I'm guessing it doesn't recognize the chemical symbols ("extra") column as the third but rather the second, and exposes all the chemical symbols at the beginning of the quiz, like they're hints. They even appear to the left of where the answers appear despite being column 3 values.

Any way to work around this? Thanks.

[citkeane]

No there isn't really any way around it. You could put the chemical symbol in brackets in the answers column maybe Sodium (Na) - Nauru, etc. but as you pointed out the third column functions as the first column if you use the group by hints function. 

If you have an equal number of answers that are capitals and country, then it would be possible to arrange the answers so countries are on the left and capitals on the right, without using the group by hints option, but I don't know what the likelihood of there being an equal number of each based on your description.

[Ian Benton]

Ok thank you citkeane. It actually turns out about equal and I was able to work around it. Not ideal but I think it works fine.

The quiz is here if anyone is interested.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/shiitaco/countriescapitals-that-begin-with-a-chemical-symbol