The Secrets Behind Trivia Games

I'll take "Things I Learned 28 Years Ago" for $400, Alex...

I am better than average at trivia games.  That means I could probably beat you, but there are one or two people you know who could take me to school.  It is not a measurement of smarts; it is 95% memory and the ability to access memory.  The other 5% is a mixture of skills.  Those skills seem to be even rarer than trivia experts.  There are ways to get an edge in these games by analyzing the questions and playing the odds.  It sounds like math, but it really isn’t.  I suck at math.

Trivia has many interpretations. Not all the questions asked are from the same thought process. I would like to split them into three categories. There are general knowledge questions, true trivia, and shit almost no one knows.  General knowledge exists in the realm of Jeopardy! and Trivial Pursuit.  These are mostly questions from a base of knowledge you may have learned in school, or from cultural or newsworthy sources: State capitals, wine, Oscar winners, the human lungs, Ed Wood.  There is some measureable likelihood of you coming across general knowledge at some point in your life.  Whether or not you remember it is the key.  True trivia usually comes in the form of multiple choice questions.  How many pounds of cheese does the average American consume?  What is the average lifespan of a carpenter ant?  These are purely guessing games based on very little prior knowledge.  Only the researchers who discovered the answer are the ones likely to know the answer.

Then there is shit nobody knows.  In episode 2 of season 6, Homer Simpson honks his horn how many times in front of Springfield Elementary?  What was NBA great Charles Barkley’s shoe size? These are questions for extremists and nutballs.  They were never taught in school, and they are not from a framework of comprehension of anything anyone would remember, including Simpsons fans or basketball fans. 

I really only care about general knowledge.  I want to see if I remember or know things.  If I wanted to play a guessing game, I would play Deal or No Deal.

First rule of general knowledge is ‘either you know it, or you don’t’.  That’s the rule I use.  If I am playing a game with someone who obviously does not know the answer but is flummoxed with the possibility of being wrong, I always say:  “You know it or you don’t.  If you don’t, make a guess”.  That is all there truly is to playing trivia games.  However, there is a way to breaking down a question in a way that can either give you more confidence in your guess, or eliminate options that you mistakenly think have potential.

Here are few sample questions:

What is the capital of Canada?

This is a ‘you know it, or you don’t’.  There is no way to reason through it.  There are no tricks.  You could have it on the tip of your tongue, but no deliberation will get you there if you don’t already know it.  If I had no clue, I would pick the biggest city I knew in Canada and move on.  I would be wrong, but it would be an educated guess.  Ottawa is the capital.

What 1994 Oscar-nominated film featured Harvey Keitel as a character called “The Wolf”?

Here is a question with details to consider.  It was a movie in 1994, it was good enough to get nominated for an Oscar, and Harvey Keitel is in it.  But what if you had no idea it was Pulp Fiction?  Maybe you aren’t good with either dates, or names, or a mixture of both? You know some movies, you have a pretty good idea of who Harvey Keitel is, and you can at least place some of this knowledge in 1990’s. What you have to do is dissect the question.  You will now make an educated guess, but you can increase your chances if you guess from the correct pool of contenders.

Some people will immediately try to think of all the Oscar-nominated films they can, especially ones in the 1990’s.  They will narrow it down and try to reason what movie in their brain would have a character called The Wolf .  Waste of time.  There are hundreds of films in that pool.  Forget the detail that the film is Oscar-nominated.  That is only there to let you know that you’ve heard of the movie and it is a valid subject for a trivia question. 

What you want to do is think of movies featuring Harvey Keitel. Smaller pool.  He’s a veteran actor, but not a marquee name, so significant movies are very few.  If you can rattle off any in your head, I think Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, an maybe Bad Lieutenant would pop up.  Now, you guess which one of those films would be Oscar nominated and you have a better shot.  In fact, if you start thinking Keitel, it might bring you to Tarantino and it might jar your memory that he played The Wolf.

What is the largest US city named after a person?

This was an actual Final Jeopardy! question.  It might be the best example of the thought process.  There are two roads to go down:  Largest US cities or cities named after people.  Which one is the smallest pool?  Hell yeah, it’s largest US cities!  Every other city in this country is named after a person!  If you start whittling down the list of large US cities it won’t take long to get to the answer, Houston.  If you are darting around the map in your brain looking for cities named after people, you will run out of time or your head will explode.  Think about this:  They want you to figure out the answer, and they would not write a general knowledge question that is impossible to answer.

How many witches were burned at the Salem Witch Trials?

This as a Trivial Pursuit question from way back, but it also sounds like a classic trick question.  The answer is zero.  Where people will get tripped up is trying to gauge the severity of the Salem Witch Trials and estimate a high number, thinking that is what the question is all about.  This brings up the most important skill.  You have to know why they ask the question.  If the question has no concrete answer, like a state capital or the name of the 39^th president, then there is a reason why the sentence itself was constructed.  The factoid is significant in some way.  It likely has an extreme.  The reason this question was asked was there were no witches as such, so only innocent women were burned.  If the body count was not general knowledge, and it is not, then there is no reason to ask the question.

Keep this in mind: this also helps in sports questions.  The most popular sports figures are still known to non-sports fans.  Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.  If you know nothing about basketball and the question is “Who is the all-time leader in whatever…”  Jordan is a good guess.  These famous guys are the extremes in their respective sports, so it’s a decent guess.  Gretzky – hockey.  Phelps – swimming.  Bolt – track.  Baseball teams – Yankees.  Hockey Teams – Red Wings.  Football teams – Cowboys and Steelers. The best teams are famous because of their extremes.

This certainly won’t help you if you can’t remember anything, but I have a theory that people remember more than they let on.  My guess is they are just not sure.  It is just a game, and although there is supposed to be one answer, I think taking two seconds to analyze the question itself will help guide the arrow closer to the bullseye.