Possibly depends on where you are. If I am informed correctly, the local offices organize the tests, maybe some of the offices are trying something new because they had a lot of no-shows.
As others already said, half the test is common sense, and the other half is easy to memorize. In particular since the multiple choice options are not super-hard. For example, it would't give you 1867 and 1888 as options for Confederation. Instead you'll have options like 1867 and 1982.