They got the second word wrong, I got it right, but still scored against me. Haha.
Impartial does not mean "treating all parties equally". It means "uninterested in the results". Fair would be "treating all equally". That's why there's a phrase "fair and impartial". "Partial" of course, doesn't mean "unfair", so negating it can't turn it into "fair". Partial means to favor one side or the other.
This is why when people tell me I'm wrong, so often I feel smarter than they are. HN quizzes are conditioning me for some antisocial attitudes, I think.
"Fair and impartial" being a phrase does not preclude "impartial" and "fair" from having overlapping meanings. English has plenty of phrases like that. "Vim and vigor" are synonyms. "Intents and purposes", "prim and proper", "born and bred", "leaps and bounds", "pins and needles", "movers and shakers", "hack and slash", etc.
Every dictionary I've checked so far has "fair" as a synonym for "impartial" and a definition that is more or less "treating all parties equally" while none have listed "uninterested in the results" or anything akin to it.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impartial https://www.wordnik.com/words/impartial
Ok. "Partial" means "unfair". You've cracked the code. My bad.
> Partial means to favor one side or the other.
If partial means to favor one side over the other, and impartial is the antonym of partial, then the implied definition of impartial is ‘not favoring one side over the other,’ which can be rewritten as ‘treating all sides equally.’ Favoring one side over another is unequal treatment, it’s unfair to the side being treated worse than the favored side.
In the end I correctly guessed what the quiz wanted me to pick, but came here to the replies to see if anyone else had the same hangup. The wording for me was "treating all rivals equally."
Never forget that we live among a bunch of B+ students that were told they were geniuses all through grade school. I'm actually surprised that I don't have five angry replies telling me that I'm wrong and stupid... this place can be worse than reddit when it comes to that stuff.