Blogthing Dialect Analysis

So, why is it that a bunch of Californians have been scoring 5% Dixie on that little blogthing? Heidi Harley has also been wondering what that elusive Dixie item is. I meant to investigate earlier but I've been up to my elbows in Akkadian lately. Using maps generated from the Online English Dialect Survey (where the questions came from in the first place), here's my analysis of all the items on the quiz. There are several items that don't seem like very good choices to me; the distribution of all variants is quite broad for many of them. Also, because of the way the composite maps are generated, they give a VERY misleading picture about what's going on nationally. It looks to me like whoever made the blogthing was just looking at the composite map and not at the ones that show each response broken out. I think that's where the "Upper Midwest" thing comes in -- on many of the maps, a nonstandard variant peeks through in that area, but upon inspection of the response-specific maps, it's clear that they're actually more widespread.

1. The level of a building that is underground is called the:
Cellar - Yankee
Basement - General

2. What do you call the night before Halloween?
Nothing - General
Devil's night - Upper Midwest
Mischeif [sic] night - Yankee

3. You bring back your groceries in a...
Sack - Midwest
Bag - General

4. The act of covering a house or area in front of a house with toilet paper is called...
Toilet papering - Yankee
Rolling - Dixie
TP'ing - General

5. You call sweetened, carbonated beverages:
Soda - General
Pop - Midwest
Coke - Dixie

6. You drink from:
A water fountain - General
A drinking fountain - Upper Midwest?

7. You tend to call the sweet spread on top of cake:
Icing - Dixie?
Frosting - Upper Midwest?
Both - General?

8. Do you use the word cruller?
No - ???
Yes - ???

9. What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point?
Rotary - Yankee
Something else like a circle, traffic circle, or roundabout - General

10. What do you call an easy class?
A crip course - Dixie
A gut - Yankee
A blow off - General?

11. If it's raining while the sun is shining, you call it:
The Devil is Beating His Wife - Dixie
A sunshower - Yankee
You have no term for it - General

12. What do you call something that is diagonal from you?
Kitty corner - General?
Diagonal - Yankee?
Catty corner - Dixie? -- If my hunch is correct, this is the elusive Dixifying item. (I use this-- anyone else?) If you look at the maps for this question, you can see that calling 'catty corner' Dixie is a bit of an oversimplification.

13. What is the four wheeled contraption you push around your groceries in?
Buggy - Dixie
Carriage - Yankee
Shopping / grocery cart - General

14. You work out in...
Tennis shoes - General
Sneakers - Yankee

15. "Y'all"...
Just rolls off your tongue - Dixie
Is not sometihng you say - General

16. The second syllable in pajamas sounds like:
The A in jam - Upper Midwest?
The A in father - General

17. Does "caramel" have two or three syllables?
Two - Upper Midwest ??
Three - General ??
You say it both ways - General??

18. Do you pronounce "aunt" like "ant"?
Yes - General
No - Yankee

19. "Route" rhymes with...
Boot - Yankee?
Out - General

20. Mary / marry / merry...
Are pronounced differently - Yankee
Are pronounced the same - General