At the NPL convention today, there was an experts panel that spoke about trivia: what makes a good question, how do you research questions, what about pub trivia, trivia in crosswords, and some stories from researching for Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I figured I’d post my notes for those who couldn’t be present to see, and for those who were here to refer back to. You can discuss the notes and ask questions of the panelists and attendees at the Puzzle Hunters forum.
- Analytical
- Unambiguous
- Comes with experience
- Millionaire once asked about “biggest” Great Lake
- Creative
- Should have some “spark” (attributed to Willz as first used in puzzle context)
- “Wile E Coyote might have a good time in the state of New Mexico because this is the state bird.”
- Way to sneak sports questions in front of non-sports audience
- Longest and shortest name records in
- Unexpected connections between famous people
- Judge Wopner was the high school sweetheart of Lana Turner
- Should have some “spark” (attributed to Willz as first used in puzzle context)
Noam
- Adds “spark” to questions by being unexpected
- Benjamin Spock wrote a book; Ran for president; won an olympic medal
Sprout
- Not about individual ability–teams of 3 to 6 expected
- Alcohol involved
- Scoring variants
- Teams may be able to assign various points to various questions
- Companies that produce standard sorts of things
- Companies are boring
- Possible to find individuals
- Sports is more important in a bar
- TV, movies, pop culture
- Can throw in other stuff
- “People in bars don’t want to be made to feel dumb”
- Give them sets of things to process, ways to logic through
- “Longest presidential surname that’s also a verb in English”
- (Pierce / Hoover)
- “In history, 11 men have held this title, including the current one, John Montague. The most famous man to hold this title, the fourth one, gave his name to a food item?”
- Earl of Sandwich
- What state has the highest birthrate?
- Utah (most Mormons)
- “If you look at the major branches of the US military, which was first to be headed by an African American?”
- Air Force, former Tuskeegee airman
- “Longest presidential surname that’s also a verb in English”
- Bonus items, ties in questions, sets of things, possibly _require_ collaboration
- Name the 6 different men who have hosted Family Feud, including the new one, Celebrity Family Feud.
- Pub trivia often starts with sets of answers
- Insidious hidden stuff
- Star Trek characters
- Books of the Old Testament
- Italian Job
- Town in Massachusetts
Willz
- In 20s and 30s, there was a rule against proper names in most publications
- Proper names came along in the 1960s
- Games Magazine really broke the dam in 1977 (Manx, Hudu)
- Lots of pop culture in the Games crossword because the audience was younger
- Trivia that solvers know, feel they ought to know, or feel it’s worth knowing once they learn it
- Varies by audience (Games vs. New York Times vs. Onion (great puzzles))
- Even Monday can have trivia questions
- Later in the week it gets harder
- Enlivens
- Entertains
- “Movie line spoken by Renee Zellweiger after ‘Just shut up’”
- (difference btwn trivia and regular clues which twist your brain)
- Some trivia causes you to twist your brain, too
- (Example using SS Minnow as a “real” shipwreck)
G Natural
- Writers must support question with one piece of research
- Researchers add support of more valid sources
- (i.e. not www.hairyfatguy.com)
- Hardest questions are hard to come up with
- $100 questions are hard to write
- “What color is a fire truck?”
- Goes to “Which of the following is the typical color of a fire engine?” (red, chair, sofa, Will Shortz)
- Best fix to the researchers, “according to Greg’s 2-year-old neighbor what color…”
- Hardest researcher job: making sure wrong answers are wrong
- “Iron Horse is a term for which of the following?” (railroad engine, motorcycle, other stuff)
- Contestant disputed railroad engine should have been motorcycle
- Researchers have to prove wrong answers are wrong
- “Iron Horse is a term for which of the following?” (railroad engine, motorcycle, other stuff)
- Toughest question to approve–try to find 3 sources
- “Which of the following parts of the body can a normal person not touch with his right hand?” (right ear, right elbow, right knee, right hip) (what about adding right big toe? Tough on contestants)
- Other favorite story: $1 million question
- Has some spark / like Will said you feel like you should know it
- “What was the second thing Neil Armstrong said on the moon?”
- Intended answer: “It’s solid.”
- No sources to support.
- Site that the writers used to send it over to research was a creationist web site.
- Writers never want to give up on a question.
Willz opens it up to take questions
- Famulus answers: book called “Trivia” published by Dell in the 1960s, “Encyclopedia of Trivia” comes later.
- Willz: book called “Ask me another”; each quiz was taken by famous people so you could compare your score; radio in the 1930s made it popular
- Noam: Radio shows “Information Please”; television quiz show scandals; older books that collected factoids by John Timms
- radio show on CBC called “Trivia” a lot like college bowl, questions about popular culture
- “You have to be able to distinguish between the flower of trivia and the weed of minutia.”
- But seriously, do you know much about trivia in other countries?
- Noam: Millionaire started in UK and exploded into something like 70 countries. Pakistani show on at the newsstand when he picks up his morning newspaper.
- Willz: quiz’s became popular in the US with “Ask me another”
- Noam: it’s a fine line
- Clear facts are probably fine from wikipedia, but always buttress with a second source
- Take the finer details with a grain of salt
- Useful for the list of reference sources at the bottom
- G Natural: Internet has impacted trivia as a whole
- Some college trivia contest evolved into 8 hour contest
- Teams called in answers to college radio station during a song being played.
- You got a point for answering the question, and a point for identifying the song.
- Internet forced it to evolve over the course of 30 years.
- Google is now an accepted reference source, and the questions have evolved accordingly.
- Internet has changed the way we even talk about trivia.
- Famulus: points out that Wikipedia is a good source for a lot of stuff that you just can’t find elsewhere.
- A few of his trivia encyclopedia articles
- Famous people whose names appear as entries in the dictionary
- Unlikely singers in films
- Robin Williams
- Dustin Hoffman
- Meryl Streep
- Will Rogers
- Films with starts with the same initials
- Paul Newman, Patricial Neil(?)
- A few of his trivia encyclopedia articles
- Noam: I suspect some of the themes were discovered, not invented
- Famulus: having a trivia column gives him the ability to ask his readers
- Ken Jennings’s book on trivia
- It’s interesting because biases are countered by opposing factions.
- “extraordinarily current”
- Sprout was talking about pub trivia
- At the crossword competition ???
- Important element of pub trivia questions is humor.
- What’s the primary purpose of a colonoscopy? (to detect polyps, ulcers of the duodenum, kidney stones, or crapal [sic] tunnel syndrome)
- Sprout: given a word, is it a chair made by Ikea or a swear word in Swedish?
- Name of a My Little Pony or a Porn Star
- Every round needs a range of question difficulty
- Willz: never had a single complaint in his entire career at the NYTimes
- Noam: KenJen’s book: story about a suit against Trivial Pursuit
- Famulus: TP suit: Fred Worth’s book contained invented facts, and that was the data used to file the suit against Trivial Pursuit
- “If you copy one person, it’s plagiarism; if you copy many, it’s research.”
- Colombo’s first name is “Frank” as
- Questions: on Millioinaire, how do they decide to stack questions? I.e. what’s hard and what’s easy?
- G Natural: answers were stacked by head writer, and it was always contentious, slanted by the writers’ biases as TV people
- There were times when the researchers had to be in the room when they were taping the show to tweak the questions at the last minute as they were taping.
- G Natural: answers were stacked by head writer, and it was always contentious, slanted by the writers’ biases as TV people
- Fraz’s other question: What’s the diff btwn the million dollar question and a $25k question?
- G Natural: q’s difficulties can be scaled just by changing alternate answers
- e.g. there is no designer named Ann Taylor.
- Noam: his Final Jeopardy question was way too easy
- Went to “ye olde Jeopardy repair shop”, but ultimately threw it out.
- Would have stumped on “Are You Smarter on a Fifth Grader?”
- Stacking on Millionaire is something that you do by
- Sprout: in groups most questions are easier than you think.
- G Natural: final question in Denver Jeopardy