Minecraft Java Edition – Do Blasts Pass Through Obsidian in Minecraft?

Ahh, I know what happened. The lava has a new sound effect (it has been in there for a bit but it is overall somewhat new if you have not been playing for a bit).

Most people mistake it -exactly- for what you did, the sound of a slime hopping around as opposed to the sound of the lava bubbling.

As far as sound transmission goes, obsidian is the same as any other block and does not hinder sound (Sound only falls off based on distance to its source). But to answer the question of how did you end up at lava while tracking a slime, you were actually tracking the lava bubbling SFX.

I think the answer from MBraedley is correct: the best way to handle this scenario (allowing access to a single player at a time) would be to use Command Blocks to teleport one player into and out of your quiz area. You can program a Command Block to teleport the nearest player to a set of coordinates like so:

/tp @p x y z

I don't know what would happen if two players somehow managed to be the exact same distance from the command block (i.e. does just one get teleported, or do they both get teleported since there is a tie for the "closest"). This additional argument may be necessary to limit it to only one player:

/tp @p[c=1] x y z

The next step is to create a circuit whereby clicking an "entry" button will teleport one player into the quiz area, deactivating this button so that it cannot teleport anyone else in until the player exits the quiz area by clicking a second "exit" button, teleporting them out. Here's one such example circuit I just threw together in my survival game:

The blue blocks are buttons that feed their signals into AND gates (green blocks). The outputs of the AND gates will activate Command Blocks (shown here as redstone lamps at the bottom of the image) and will also feed into the input of a T flip-flop circuit (red blocks). The output of the toggle circuit runs behind the red blocks and feeds into an input of each of the AND gates.

When the toggle circuit is in the "off" state (no output, as shown in the image) then the signal from the right button is disabled and the right redstone lamp (i.e. Command Block) cannot be activated. Activating the left button will cause the left redstone lamp to activate and immediately flip the toggle to the "on" state. This will subsequently disable the signal from the left button and reenable the signal from the right button.

This circuit should give you the ability to allow one player at a time to teleport into your quiz area via a button press. Once they reach the end they can then press another button to teleport out and reactivate the entry button for the next player. I'd also suggest enclosing the circuitry and your quiz area in bedrock, so your average player can't mess with any of it.