I don’t know exactly which night it was, but it might have been when HGS’s Meredith Greayer made this Instagram video, capturing the night’s dreamy, languid, wintery beauty so perfectly:

There is more to Trivia than meets the eye. It is certainly for overeager nerds who vied to be first to raise their hands in 10th grade trig, and then balled that hand into a “yesssss” fist pump when they got the right answer.

But not only them.

Trivia is about connections — between questions and answers, between facts and other facts…and between people. Teammates collaborate, sometimes poorly, sometimes awkwardly, and sometimes in a way that builds camaraderie. Rivalries form, sometimes with real ill will, but more often in the spirit of playful mischief.

Connections formed during a game can go further. One player catches another’s eye across the table, or across the room. One’s funny heckle can amuse another, leading to a post-game chat, and… maybe just a half a drink more.

You can see where this is going.

With all that in mind — and inspired partly by Meredith’s video — I wrote this, the first full-fledged article to appear on The Wide World of Trivia.

On August 27, before the start of last Thursday’s Trivia Night in Harvard, Jessica and George’s friend Chloe came up to Liana and me and asked if we could give a shout-out to J&G. Their connection had traveled all the way from Trivia Night in Harvard…to the altar! They had just come back from a honeymoon in Maine and were returning to the scene of the crime:

Congratulations Jessica and George!

Please come back for our next Trivia Night!

And thanks for making my point…

Here are the Questions AND Answers for the second half of Trivia Night Online.

This edition’s categories: Double Rhyme · New Orleans · I Am ___ · I Left My Heart · Things Said in Court

ROUND 4

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME Both a 1966 Donovan hit and a Coca-Cola citrus soft drink.

MELLOW YELLOW

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS The federally built system whose failure engineer Ray Seed called the worst disaster since Chernobyl.

THE LEVEES

Question 3

I AM ___ The 1963 JFK quote that loosely translates from German as “I am a Donut.”

ICH BIN EIN BERLINER

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART The Scottish king whose heart was carried toward the Holy Land and ended up at Melrose Abbey.

ROBERT THE BRUCE

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT The author of Oliver Twist, whose Mr. Bumble said “the law is a ass.”

CHARLES DICKENS

ROUND 5

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME Both a Deion Sanders nickname and the 8-to-11 p.m. TV window.

PRIME TIME

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS The French-origin fried pastry smothered in powdered sugar at Cafe du Monde.

BEIGNETS

Question 3

I AM ___ The Spartacus-style rallying cry the Bitcoin community used to defend Dorian Nakamoto.

“I AM SATOSHI” / “WE ARE ALL SATOSHI”

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART The Enlightenment philosopher whose heart rests in the Bibliothèque Nationale and body in the Panthéon.

VOLTAIRE

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT The 1925 trial where Darrow put Bryan on the stand.

THE SCOPES (MONKEY) TRIAL

ROUND 6

The New Yorker cartoons matched with their captions:

That’s it for this edition. Look for the next Trivia Night Online soon.

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia. -Tom

I host Trivia Night in Concord, MA and Harvard, MA regularly, and sometimes when I’m visiting other places, like New York, Vermont, Columbus and LA. Our home field is the Colonial Inn in Concord, MA, and our home in Harvard is the Harvard General Store.

How does the game work? Rounds 4 and 5 are Question Rounds, from the same five categories as the first half, worth 2 points each. Round 6 is a Picture Round, worth 5 points per picture.

You’ll find my Trivia Night calendar on my Instagram, and if you’re not a subscriber yet, you can fix that for free below.

Subscribe now

This edition’s categories: Double Rhyme · New Orleans · I Am ___ · I Left My Heart · Things Said in Court

GOOD LUCK!

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME This is a rhyming pair referring to both a 1966 hit song by British pop star Donovan and a citrus-flavored soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company.

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS Civil engineer Ray B. Seed called the results of Hurricane Katrina “the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl” because of the failure of what system constructed by the Federal government?

Question 3

I AM ___ This remark was made in a 1963 speech by an English-speaking head of state, and one translation of the comment from the original German is “I am a Donut.” What was the quote?

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART This Scottish king of the 13th and 14th century asked that after his death his heart be taken to the Holy Land to fight in a Crusade he never joined. When he died in 1329, his heart followed a circuitous route to Melrose Abbey in Scotland while his body remained at Dunfermline Cathedral. Who was the king?

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT In one of this 19th-century British author’s novels, the character Mr. Bumble disputes whether he is responsible for his wife’s actions under the law. In his defense he says, “If the law supposes that... the law is a ass, a idiot.” Who is the author?

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME This is both one of the nicknames of multi-sport athlete Deion Sanders and the term for the TV broadcast hours from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. ET.

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS This signature New Orleans deep-fried pastry is of French origin. It can be made from a variety of batters, but at NO’s legendary Cafe du Monde it is dusted, er, smothered, with confectioner’s sugar.

Question 3

I AM ___ In 2014, Newsweek attempted to “out” Japanese-American physicist Dorian Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. He denied it, and the Bitcoin community rallied behind him using words paraphrased from the movie Spartacus. What was the phrase?

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART The day after this Enlightenment philosopher, satirist, and historian died in 1778, there were disputes about giving him a Christian burial because he was so critical of the church. His corpse was embalmed, his brain kept by a local apothecary, and his heart given to a protégé. Today the heart is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the brain’s whereabouts are unclear, and the body is in the Panthéon. Who was he?

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT In an exchange at a 1925 trial that earned national attention, defense lawyer Clarence Darrow called prosecutor William Jennings Bryan to the witness stand. Darrow asked, “What do you think?” Bryan replied, “I do not think about things I don’t think about.” Darrow continued, “Do you think about things you do think about?” Bryan responded, “Well, sometimes.” What was the trial?

ROUND 6 (Picture Round)

Match each New Yorker cartoon to its caption. Eight pictures, 5 points each.

From the Room

The night came down to an 88-to-88 tie between 3 Men, a Baby & Lisa and Invasive Species. The tiebreaker was a Double Rhyme clued by celebrities. Neither team got it after “Chappell Roan.” After “Harry Styles,” crickets, again. Liana and Tom threw out some other celebs who fit the Double Rhyme, and is was finally Invasive Species who came up with the OT win after hearing “Danny Bonaduce.”

That’s it for now. Subscribers will get the answers in the next day or two.

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia. -Tom

Here are the Questions AND Answers for the first half of Trivia Night Online. The second half’s questions post next week.

This edition’s categories: Double Rhyme · New Orleans · I Am ___ · I Left My Heart · Things Said in Court

ROUND 1

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME Late-1950s and early-1960s derogatory slang for TV.

BOOB TUBE

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS The future president who beat the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, with help from pirate Jean Lafitte.

ANDREW JACKSON

Question 3

I AM ___ The captured Roman slaves who all claimed their leader’s identity in the 1960 Kubrick film.

SPARTACUS

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART The “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” singer who died in 2023.

TONY BENNETT

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL

ROUND 2

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME The 1980s rhyming name for edgy radio hosts like Howard Stern and Don Imus.

SHOCK JOCK

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS The legal principle the 1896 Court used to uphold Homer Plessy’s conviction, overturned sixty years later.

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL

Question 3

I AM ___ The athlete whose comedy album opened with “I Am the Greatest!” and “I Am the DOUBLE Greatest!”

MUHAMMAD ALI

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART The composer whose heart his sister smuggled to Warsaw in a jar of cognac.

CHOPIN

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 test for obscenity.

“I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT”

ROUND 3

Teams estimate the four numbers below. You start with 20 points and can lose up to 5 points per estimate, based on how close you get.

Jamie Ding just became the Jeopardy! champion with the fifth-most consecutive wins (31). Estimate how many consecutive wins are held by the four champions ahead of him, from first to fourth.

Ken Jennings (1st) 74

Amy Schneider (2nd) 40

Matt Amodio (3rd) 38

James Holzhauer (4th) 32

These are the four Jeopardy! champions with the longest win streaks, ahead of Jamie Ding at 31.

That’s it for the first half. The second half’s questions post next week.

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia. -Tom

I host Trivia Night in Concord, MA and Harvard, MA regularly, and sometimes when I’m visiting other places, like New York, Vermont, Columbus and LA. Our home field is the Colonial Inn in Concord, MA, and our home in Harvard is the Harvard General Store.

How does the game work? The full game has 6 rounds. The first three are below, and you’ll get the last three next week. Rounds 1 and 2 are Question Rounds from the same five categories, worth 2 points each. Round 3 is a Number Round: you start with 20 points and can lose up to 5 points per estimate, based on how close you get.

You’ll find my Trivia Night calendar on my Instagram, and if you’re not a subscriber yet, you can fix that for free below.

Subscribe now

This edition’s categories: Double Rhyme · New Orleans · I Am ___ · I Left My Heart · Things Said in Court

Here are the questions from Trivia Night in Harvard at the Harvard General Store on April 30.

GOOD LUCK!

ROUND 1 (Question Round)

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME This term emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a derogatory slang term for TV.

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS This future US president cobbled together a militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, U.S. Army regulars, a large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky frontiersmen, and local privateers including the pirate Jean Lafitte, to decisively defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. Who was the POTUS?

Question 3

I AM ___ “I am [this name],” shouted the captured Roman slaves in this 1960 Stanley Kubrick movie, collectively claiming the identity of their leader, the title character played by Kirk Douglas. Who?

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART This famous jazz/pop singer died in 2023, and although his signature song was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” he was buried completely intact in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY.

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT In this 1995 trial, the defendant’s lawyer made the statement, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” What was the case?

ROUND 2 (Question Round)

Question 1

DOUBLE RHYME This term arose as new broadcast radio formats emerged in the 1980s, with Howard Stern and Don Imus among the best-known purveyors of an edgy, provocative style, earning them and their peers this rhyming name.

Question 2

NEW ORLEANS In 1896, New Orleans’s French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres) recruited Homer Plessy to sit in the whites-only section of a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was arrested and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. What legal principle, overturned almost sixty years later, did the 1896 Court use as justification?

Question 3

I AM ___ The phrase “I am the greatest!” was a tagline of this athlete, and also the title of a comedy album he released. The first track was “I Am the Greatest!” and the second was “I Am the DOUBLE Greatest!” Who was the athlete?

Question 4

I LEFT MY HEART Fearing burial alive, this composer asked that his heart be removed after his death and returned to his native Poland while his body remained in Paris. When he died in 1849, his sister Ludwika smuggled the heart past Russian border guards in a jar of cognac hidden under her robes. It is now entombed in a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.

Question 5

THINGS SAID IN COURT In a 1964 obscenity opinion, SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced... but ____.” What was his conclusion?

ROUND 3 (Number Round)

Teams estimate the four numbers below. You start with 20 points and can lose up to 5 points per estimate, based on how close you get.

Jamie Ding just became the Jeopardy! champion with the fifth-most consecutive wins (31). Estimate how many consecutive wins are held by the four champions ahead of him, from first to fourth.

Ken Jennings (1st) ________

Amy Schneider (2nd) ________

Matt Amodio (3rd) ________

James Holzhauer (4th) ________

That’s it for now. Subscribers will get the answers in the next day or two, and the second half drops next week.

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia. -Tom

Well, it started life as E.P.C.O.T.: the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.

In 1966, a 25-minute film introduced the idea behind Walt Disney World and E.P.C.O.T. Walt himself explained the vision, saying E.P.C.O.T. would be “by far the most important part of our Florida project…in fact the heart of everything we’ll be doing at Disney World.”

How? E.P.C.O.T. would "take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry."

In other words, when Epcot was E.P.C.O.T., it was all about Industrial R&D. Urban planning. Cutting-edge engineering. Nothing having to do with Mickey Mouse or The Mad Tea Party or Space Mountain.

Basically, E.P.C.O.T. would be about things that were not that much fun. Which is why The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) scrapped Walt’s vision of E.P.C.O.T. not long after the boss died in 1966.

And why the Disney Parks’ slogan is not The Most Utilitarian Place on Earth.

Between 1966 and the opening of Walt Disney World in 1982, E.P.C.O.T. evolved into a hybrid of informational displays and increasing amounts of all the fun stuff. E.P.C.O.T. — Disneyfied — became Epcot.

The Spaceship Earth ride — the afore-mentioned big globe in the middle — would serve as the iconic symbol of Epcot (and creep out generations of children, including mine1). But the “please, let’s make this fun” strategy eventually made the World Showcase the centerpiece of Epcot. Epcot would not be a model city. It would be a continuous World's Fair.

That is to say, it would be a Disneyfied version of the world. Pavilions representing a dozen countries would line the World Showcase Lagoon, all in a row. No passports, no customs, no foreign language signs difficult to interpret without Google translate or that one relative who inexplicably knows Danish. Paper currency would be the monochromatic green familiar to Americans.

However, restaurants would offer lame-to-passable examples of indigenous cuisines.2 And activities would be housed in simplified simulacra of the world’s architectural icons:

There would also be national Pavilion tie-ins to DIS media properties:

IN DEFENSE OF SCHLOCK

It’s easy to dismiss the Epcot World Showcase as craven commercialization of world culture. If it’s sold or interpreted as accurate depictions of the real thing, that’s bad.

Even evil.

On the other hand, if the Showcase is taken as fun and not a slavishly beholden to accuracy, it can be the gateway drug to legitimate knowledge.

Even understanding.

Could the Italy Pavilion lead to some child’s future devoted study of the Italian Renaissance? Not impossible. And that would be a good thing.

Dumbed-down and zhuzhed-up facts — which I deem to be a suitable definition of Trivia — are very important. They have properties that knowledge in less accessible forms does not.

To wit:

They’re fun.

Simple, attractively-presented facts feel snackable, light-hearted, and with a little humor or surprising context, entertaining. They make you want to learn more.

As you enter the United Kingdom Pavilion, you might hear Mary Poppins put it this way:

Can’t you just hear Julie Andrews’ voice? Magical.

To again quote She Who Is Practically Perfect In Every Way, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Some sweet fun with your facts makes those facts more memorable. You will want to spend more time with them, and with their companions: related facts.

And over time, you’ll get to know the facts related to the related facts. Somewhere inside your brain, your knowledge about both the facts and their relationships snowballs. And before you know it, voilà!

Expertise.

They’re useful.

E.P.C.O.T. V1.0 was beat-you-over-the-head utilitarian. There is certainly a time and a place for the big, powerful idea, rendered in painstaking detail. And we all want things to work and to get better.

Another way to find solutions, however, is through play.

I think of catchy facts as easy-to-use representations of deeper knowledge. Instead of creating a finely rendered architectural drawing, you can put the LEGOs on the table, and start moving them around and trying out different ways of putting them together.

Trivia is LEGOs.

Apparently The LEGO Group is hip to this approach. In writing this, I looked for LEGO accounts on Substack and came across . “LEGO” is an innovation coach and whose profile says he is a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® trainer & facilitator.

I don’t think Mary Poppins was thinking of LEGOs when she sang, “You find the fun, and SNAP! The job’s a game!” But that “SNAP” is kinda on-the-nose for LEGOs.

They have valence.

The word “valence” usually lives in the study of chemistry. Valence is described and measured to characterize how likely atoms are to join up and form molecules.

But information that is dumbed-down and zhuzhed-up has a similar, LEGO-like ability to connect. Sometimes is spontaneous, and other times it’s aided by the work of connectors who know how to overcome arbitrary roadblocks and perceived divisions (e.g. between polite and impolite, or between cool and uncool).

If you’ve ever attended a social occasion in good faith and ended up the victim of brutally banal small talk (weather, real estate, college admissions, vacations, etc.) you’ve probably questioned the existence of both breakthroughs to more fulfilling interactions and your own will to live. But an interesting fact or line of thinking from a interlocutor can cross those lines and allow you to find or share meatier and more appealing topics.

That tends to happen most when your fellow guests share a jumping-off point with you — such as the wine tasting or Bar Trivia game that’s unfolding concurrently.

The catalyst is a well-chosen, highly valent nugget of information. Turns out that sugar that helps the medicine go down is also a very effective bonding agent. It brings together facts, ideas, both connections and connectors…and even life partners.

The Wide World of Trivia

FOR VALENTINES DAY: Why Your Future Spouse is at Bar Trivia Night

Photo Credit: Meredith Greayer…

Read more

7 months ago · 4 likes · Tom Rutledge

They’re get-able.

For the trivia players out there…

Or just for the small talk-makers who want to get others references as well as have others get their own references…

Simple and fun is easier to get than complicated and dull. Getting the answer is a dopamine bump — but it can also lead to a connection.

How you gonna meet your future spouse if neither of you knows what the other is referring to?

Their natural habitat is children’s encyclopedias

This makes some sense. After all, Mary Poppins was a nanny, a professional mentor and teacher of children. Teaching children is naturally a task requiring simplification and entertainment.

But let’s be empirical. The titans of are all about the kids’ encyclopedias.

You may be able to read an adult book about a boring subject without falling asleep, but I can’t, For me, it was either read some children’s books—designed to engage the reader—or go into Jeopardy! with giant gaps in my knowledge base. [Children’s books are filled with infographics, pictures and all kinds of stuff to keep the reader engaged.

-James Holzhauer

The whole point of the books is that any kid can be a Junior Genius. It’s just a matter of liking to know weird stuff — being curious about the world around you. I definitely believe that. It’s a way of thinking. It’s not necessarily an IQ level.

-Ken Jennings, author of Ken Jennings’ Junior Genius Guides

When I was invited onto the show, I checked out children’s books from the public library down the street: kids’ atlases, kids’ encyclopedias, a kids’ paperback titled What Is the Super Bowl?…Given that these volumes prioritize breadth over depth, they are perfect for the ethos of Jeopardy!. Most of them are illustrated, too, which helps with recall. I found it easier to remember the Battle of Crécy after seeing a cartoon 14th-century Frenchman take a longbow arrow to the chest.

-Drew Goins

INTRODUCING DREW GOINS, AND “THE CANON”

I’ve known about since seeing him early in his initial Jeopardy! run. Very good player, great on TV, a veritable charm-bomb, now part of the Washington Post diaspora that has landed on other platforms such as and The Atlantic.

There are now two things I want to say about this. The first is a brief digression from the topic at hand.

Look at his Atlantic Monthly bio above: “[S]enior editor focused on trivia and other creative projects.”

I have to shout about this: THE ATLANTIC HAS A TRIVIA BEAT! HELL YES!

The second thing is that in his article, The Secret to Winning on Jeopardy!, Goins observed:

Jeopardy! doesn’t actually ask about everything, but rather about what students of the show refer to as “the canon”—a set of knowledge that masquerades as “everything.” Shakespeare and U.S. presidents will recur, but the show doesn’t ask much about anime, or hedge funds, or risograph printing, which are all too specialized.

For aspiring masters of Trivia, this is good news. If we can constrain the range of information that’s likely to come up in Trivia, Trivia becomes study-able.

For civilization, this is bad news, because the arbiter of what’s in and what’s out is…well, arbitrary. If the arbiter is lazy, the canon gets stale. Calcified. If the arbiter has biases, than the canon will be biased, which means valuable information is ignored, and certain areas of human activity and achievement will not get their due. In the process, the canon can reinforce systematic biases.

, a Trivia player who writes , has observed how — with the cooperation of both trivia writers and encyclopedia publishers — “the canon” has overlooked women in the visual arts world in favor of their male partners:

Creatives are naturally drawn to each other, but it is always the woman who is “an artist in her own right.” Frida Kahlo’s Encyclopedia Britannica entry begins with her marriage, declaring in the first paragraph that “her work was often overshadowed by the murals of Rivera.” Meanwhile, the entry for Diego Rivera doesn’t mention Kahlo until the eighth paragraph. By the time his relationship with Kahlo comes up in passing, we have already learned about his socialist ideology, early life, education, creative influences, style, and political activities.

There is good news for civilization, however: “the canon” is not literally a defined, finite amount of information. It doesn’t need to stick to those dog-eared Trivial Pursuit cards in your grandparents’ cellar.

In fact, Jeopardy! has actually showed courage in making contestants look bad for not knowing off-canon and even biased Trivia. These moments are a reminder of the cultural divisions in our society.

This video is as awkward as can be, but if Jeopardy!’s producers are willing to keep it up, one can hope that the canon will follow.

Weirdly, Jeopardy! players also seems to have other gaps that definitely don’t reflect society. I am not at all worried about Americans’ lack of interest in sports, so this clip from the Trebek era is just funny:

Perhaps Epcot needs to make Sports more interesting. How about a pavilion representing the Realm of Sports?

2

As I recall, the Yasai Udon was okay.

the 2nd half of Trivia Night Online

THE ANSWERS!

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

DubRhyme This is a rhyming pair referring to both a 1966 hit song by British pop star Donovan, and a citrus-flavored soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company. MELLOW YELLOW or MELLO YELLO

Question 2

NOLA Civil engineer Raymond B. Seed called the results of hurricane Katrina “the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl” because of the failure of what system constructed by the Federal government?? THE LEVEES

Question 3

I AM This remark was made in a 1963 speech by an English-speaking head of state, and one translation of the comment from the original German is “I am a Donut.” What was the quote? ICH BIN EIN BERLINER (by JFK)

Question 4

HEART A Scottish King of the 13th and 14th century requested that after he died, his heart be taken to the Holy Land to fight in a Crusade since he never would. When he died in 1329 is was…and his heart followed a circuitous route to in Melrose Abbey in Scotland, while his body remained at Dunfermline Cathedral. Who was the king? ROBERT THE BRUCE

Question 5

COURT In one of this 19th century british author’s novels, the character Mr. Bumble disputes whether the he is responsible for his wife’s actions under the law. In his defense, he says, “If the law supposes that... the law is a ass—a idiot.” CHARLES DICKENS (From Oliver Twist)

ROUND 5 (Question Round)

Question 1

DUB RHYME This is both one of the nicknames of multi-sport athlete Deon Sanders and to the TV broadcast hours from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. ET PRIME TIME

Question 2

NOLA In 1896, NO’s French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres) recruited Homer Plessy, to sit in the whites-only section of a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was arrested and the case went to U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. What legal principal – overturned almost sixty years later – did the 1896 Court use to uphold Plessy’s guilty verdict? SEPARATE BUT EQUAL

Question 3

NOLA This signature NO deep-fried pastry is of French origin. It can be made from a variety of batters, but at NO’s legendary Cafe du Monde, it is dusted…er, make that smothered with confectioner’s sugar BEIGNETS

Question 4

HEART The day after the death of this Enlightenment philosopher, satirist and historian in 1778, there were disputes about giving him a Christian burial because he was very critical of the church. The corpse was embalmed, his brain was retained by the local apothecary, and the heart given to one of the philosopher’s protégés. The parts kept moving around after that, and today, the heart is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the brain’s whereabouts are not clear, and the body is in the Pantheon. Who was the philosopher? VOLTAIRE

Question 5

COURT In an exchange at a 1925 trial that earned national attention, Defense lawyer Clarence Darrow called Prosecution lawyer William Jennings Bryan to the witness stand. Darrow asked: “What do you think?” Bryan replied: “I do not think about things I don’t think about.” Darrow continued: “Do you think about things you do think about?” Bryan responded: “Well, sometimes.” What was the trial? SCOPES TRIAL or MONKEY TRIAL

ROUND 6 (Picture Round)

Match the caption with the New Yorker cartoon:

That’s it for now!

Look for our next Trivia Night Online soon, featuring questions from the May 7 Edition of Trivia Night in Concord

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia!….-Tom

Subscribe now

The Wide World of Trivia

Trivia Night Online, 1st Half, Just the Q's

I host Trivia Night in Concord, MA and Harvard, MA regularly, and sometimes when I’m visiting other places…like New York, Vermont, Columbus and LA. Our home field is the Colonial Inn in Concord, MA, and our home in Harvard is the Harvard General Store…

Read more

4 months ago · Tom Rutledge

After the live games are in the books, I post them in two parts here in .

Subscribers to The Wide World of Trivia will receive rounds 1-through-3 questions in their in-boxes -– but just the Q’s. A couple days later, I will post both the Q’s and A’s.

On the following Tuesday, I’ll do the same for rounds 4-through-6. That’s what this post is.

I think these posts are a great way to warm up for an upcoming Trivia Night, or if you’re on the fence about coming out to play, a good way to give you a sense about what it’s all about. And even better if you do them with your team.

You’ll find my Trivia Night calendar on my Instagram.

If you’re not a subscriber and you’d like to be notified by email when the questions are posted, you can subscribe right now, for free…and unsubscribing is a breeze.

Subscribe now

How Does The Game Work?

The full game has 6 rounds. The last three are below under GOOD LUCK!

FIRST HALF:

• Rounds 1 and 2 are Question Rounds, from the same five categories. Each question is worth 2 points.

• Round 3 is a Number Round. Teams estimate four numbers Teams receive 20 points for free, but can lose up to that full 20 point gift based on the accuracy of their estimates (losses are limited to 5 points per estimate).

SECOND HALF:

• Rounds 4 and 5 are Question Rounds, again from the same five categories. Each question is worth 2 points.

• Round 6 is a Picture Round. Identify the pictures. Each picture is worth 6 points.

This Edition’s Question Round CATEGORIES:

• DOUBLE RHYME

• NEW ORLEANS

• I AM ___

• I LEFT MY HEART…

• THINGS SAID IN COURT

Here are the 2nd half questions from Trivia Night in Harvard on April 30…

GOOD LUCK!

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

DubRhyme This is a rhyming pair referring to both a 1966 hit song by British pop star Donovan, and a citrus-flavored soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company

Question 2

NOLA Civil engineer Raymond B. Seed called the results of hurricane Katrina "the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl" because of the failure of what system constructed by the Federal government??

Question 3

I AM This remark was made in a 1963 speech by an English-speaking head of state, and one translation of the comment from the original German is “I am a Donut.” What was the quote?

Question 4

HEART A Scottish King of the 13th and 14th century requested that after he died, his heart be taken to the Holy Land to fight in a Crusade since he never would. When he died in 1329 is was…and his heart followed a circuitous route to in Melrose Abbey in Scotland, while his body remained at Dunfermline Cathedral. Who was the king?

Question 5

COURT In one of this 19th century british author’s novels, the character Mr. Bumble disputes whether the he is responsible for his wife’s actions under the law. In his defense, he says, "If the law supposes that... the law is a ass—a idiot.”

ROUND 5 (Question Round)

Question 1

DUB RHYME This is both one of the nicknames of multi-sport athlete Deon Sanders and to the TV broadcast hours from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. ET

Question 2

NOLA In 1896, NO’s French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres) recruited Homer Plessy, to sit in the whites-only section of a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was arrested and the case went to U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. What legal principal – overturned almost sixty years later – did the 1896 Court use to uphold Plessy’s guilty verdict?

Question 3

NOLA This signature NO deep-fried pastry is of French origin. It can be made from a variety of batters, but at NO’s legendary Cafe du Monde, it is dusted…er, make that smothered with confectioner’s sugar

Question 4

HEART The day after the death of this Enlightenment philosopher, satirist and historian in 1778, there were disputes about giving him a Christian burial because he was very critical of the church. The corpse was embalmed, his brain was retained by the local apothecary, and the heart given to one of the philosopher’s protégés. The parts kept moving around after that, and today, the heart is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the brain’s whereabouts are not clear, and the body is in the Pantheon. Who was the philosopher?

Question 5

COURT In an exchange at a 1925 trial that earned national attention, Defense lawyer Clarence Darrow called Prosecution lawyer William Jennings Bryan to the witness stand. Darrow asked: "What do you think?" Bryan replied: "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow continued: "Do you think about things you do think about?" Bryan responded: "Well, sometimes." What was the trial?

ROUND 6 (Picture Round)

Match the caption with the New Yorker cartoon:

Captions

Cartoons

THAT’S IT FOR NOW — SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE THE ANSWERS TOMORROW

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia!….Subscribe for free to receive these posts in your inbox and support my work!…-Tom;

All evening long, I’d wondered if their fourth player was a smartphone. This sealed it.

I walked to their table and stood there for a minute, my arms folded, saying nothing.

They smiled. Acted like nothing was wrong. One batted her eyelashes.

Then another one cracked.

“I didn’t want to cheat!” she blurted.

Maybe I should have given them a penalty or a lecture. Instead, I just didn’t count the answer. They were a fun team, this didn’t affect the leader board, and I’m a softie.

I never thought that being soft could launch new, global, big-money, pro-cheating forms of competition.

Who did? Billionaires.

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The Enhanced Games make their debut on the international sports scene in two weeks. TEG will be a competition pitting athletes against one another in swimming, weightlifting and “athletics,” which Americans call “track and field.”

We are in a moment when new sports and new sports leagues are emerging at a pace matched only by new words with the suffix “-maxxing.” So what makes The Enhanced Games special? This:

More specifically, only FDA-approved substances will be allowed, meaning yes to steroids, testosterone, human growth hormone, stimulants like Adderall, and a variety of less-familiar recovery-enhancing drugs. Yes also to prosthetics and some categories of gear disallowed in the Olympics, like certain shoe designs, full-body nanotech-enhanced swimsuits, and biometric wearables. No to cocaine and heroin.

This could well result in some records. Usain Bolt has hung on to the top spot in the 100-meter dash standings for almost 17 years with his 9.58 second time in 2009. TEG plans to award a seven-figure bounty to the athlete breaking that time, although World Athletics (née IAAF) would not sanction a PED-aided record.

PEDs considered illegal by sports’ governing bodies have obviously been in use for many, many years. If there were a PED Hall of Fame, inductees might include Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, A-Rod, sluggers McGwire, Sosa and Canseco, and sprinters Ben Johnson and Marion Jones. Players and records have been disqualified along the way — yet Barry Bonds’ 762 career home runs is still considered the official record.

And I have not mentioned a single NFL player in this litany. So there are plenty more.

Mainstreaming PEDs in some form is probably inevitable. But how? TEG side-by-side with Olympics and other sanctioned events? A “natural human” version and a records-maxxing version? Is there a clear principle that should guide us on the rules of performance enhancement, some Platonic ideal to uphold? We may have a Potter Stewart-like sense that there is a line and we’ll know it when we see it, maybe something requiring the effort to be made by a “natural human.”

But it’s really hard to define.

Few would begrudge champions who won with the benefits of performance-enhancing nutrition, superior training regimens, and breakthroughs in sports medicine. Take Sabastian Sawe’s recent 1:59:30 men’s marathon milestone, breaking the previously-impossible 2-hour barrier at a sanctioned event, the 2026 London Marathon. This was a glorious moment.

Honestly, some weird things have gone down under the brightest lights and we’ve just accepted them, even applauded them.

Alas, it took a Yankees fan to make me notice that rather freakish medical approach that helped pitcher Curt Schilling win Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS for the Boston Red Sox. Today, we know the moment for Schilling’s bloody sock, but this is what the doctors actually did:

Pretty weird, maybe not massively weird, but think of the potential for more extensive performance-enhancing surgery.

I’m okay with some experimentation here. Still, for the record, the culture and the vibe of TEG do not appeal to me. At all. As wrote in an April Vanity Fair article:

TEG is actually a subsidiary of Enhanced Corporation (NYSE: ENHA), the consumer products company selling a variety of performance-enhancing substances. ENHA went public via SPAC earlier this month.

What kind of cheating appeals to me? Come with me, back to the world of facts-maxxing, and let me introduce a really fun fact-based competition that is essentially a big, challenging, global open-book exam. Still, like TEG, it is an exercise in competing better by using all available resources.

As explained on its website:

CS50 is Harvard’s introduction to computer science, probably CS 101 at other schools. The topics of the course are organizing, manipulating and using information to solve problems, and computers themselves are not — not yet — the object of intensive focus. Instead, both the class itself and puzzle day are really about understanding and solving information-related problems.

As a result, CS50 Puzzle Day lets you read or Google as much as you want to. Again, from the website, the actual “open book” rules:

And even though it is Hah-vahd and one might suspect some attitude, the tone is friendly, educational, and pro-collaboration. Like the workplace of your dreams.

They even published a public discussion of honesty!

You don’t have to wait for Puzzle Day to play. You can also play previous years’ puzzles with your friends anytime you want. They’re on the website, and I’ve done them with my family. Here’s a video walking through a question in the 2024 Puzzle Day:

So, how you can cheat without really cheating?

1. Enter a low-to-no rules event like The Enhanced Games or Harvard CS50 Puzzle Day; or

2. Attend a competition where the leader is a softie and may give you some slack. You can find dates for my upcoming Trivia Nights on my Instagram, @tom_rutledge_presents.

the 1st half of Trivia Night Online.

The 2nd half’s Questions post next Week.

THE ANSWERS!

ROUND 1 (Question Round)

Question 1

DubRhyme This term emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a derogatory slang term for TV BOOB TUBE

Question 2

NOLA This future US president cobbled together a militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, U.S. Army regulars, a large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky frontiersmen and local privateers including the pirate Jean Lafitte, to decisively defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. Who was the POTUS? ANDREW JACKSON

Question 3

IAM “I am [this name]” shouted the captured Roman slaves in this 1960 Stanley Kubrick movie, collectively claiming the identity of their leader, who was the title character of the film, played by Kirk Douglas. Who? SPARTACUS

Question 4

HEART This famous jazz/pop singer died in 2023, and although his signature song was “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” he was buried completely intact in Calvary Cemetery in Queens NY. TONY BENNETT

Question 5

COURT In this 1995 trial, the defendant’s lawyer made the statement, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” What was the case? THE OJ SIMPSON MURDER CASE

ROUND 2 (Question Round)

Question 1

DubRhyme This term arose as new broadcast radio formats emerged in the 1980s, with Howard Stern and Don Imus being well-known practitioners of an edgy, provocative style, earning them and their peers this rhyming name. SHOCK JOCK

Question 2

NOLA In 1896, NO’s French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres) recruited Homer Plessy, to sit in the whites-only section of a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was arrested and the case went to U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. What legal principal – overturned almost sixty years later – did the 1896 Court use to uphold Plessy’s guilty verdict? SEPARATE BUT EQUAL

Question 3

IAM The phrase “I am the greatest!” was a tagline of this athlete, and it was also the title of a comedy album he released. The first track of the album was entitled “I Am The greatest!” and the second track was “I Am The DOUBLE Greatest!” Who was the athlete? MUHAMMAD ALI

Question 4

HEART Fearing burial alive, this composer asked that his heart be removed after his death and returned to his native Poland while his body remained in Paris. When he died in 1849, sister Ludwika smuggled heart past Russian border guards in a jar of cognac hidden under her robes. His heart is now permanently entombed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw. CHOPIN

Question 5

COURT In 1964, an opinion from SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart in an obscenity trial included the comment, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced. I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But ____ [what was his conclusion]? “I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT”

ROUND 3 (Number Round)

In the Number Round, teams estimate four numbers. They receive 20 points for free, but can lose up to the full 20 point gift, depending on the accuracy of their estimates (losses are limited to 5 points per estimate).

In this round, points were deducted based on the estimated team size in the four sports mentioned. Each player was worth one point.

Jamie Ding just became the Jeopardy! champion with the fifth-most consecutive Jeopardy wins (31). How many consecutive wins are held by the champions in first-through-fourth place? From the first to fourth, descending:

Ken Jennings 74

Amy Schneider 40

Matt Amodio 38

James Holzhauer 32

THAT’S IT FOR NOW — SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE THE SECOND HALF’S QUESTIONS NEXT WEEK

Thanks for dropping by !….-Tom

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I host Trivia Night in Concord, MA and Harvard, MA regularly, and sometimes when I’m visiting other places…like New York, Vermont, Columbus and LA. Our home field is the Colonial Inn in Concord, MA, and our home in Harvard is the Harvard General Store.

After the live game is in the books, I post the game in two parts here in .

Subscribers to The Wide World of Trivia will receive the first three rounds of questions via email – but just the Q’s. (That’s what this post is.) A couple days later, I will post both the Q’s and A’s.

Next week, I’ll do the same for rounds 4-through-6, and again, post both the Q’s and A’s a couple days later.

It’s fun to answer on your own, but I really recommend answering as you would on a bar trivia team, with your friends, in your living room, kitchen, or online. It’s a great way to warm up for an upcoming Trivia Night, or if you’re on the fence about coming out to play, a good way to give you a sense about what it’s all about.

You’ll find my Trivia Night calendar on my Instagram.

If you’re not a subscriber and you’d like to be notified by email when the questions are posted, you can subscribe right now, for free…and unsubscribing is a breeze

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How Does The Game Work?

The full game has 6 rounds. The first three are below, and you’ll get the last three next week.

FIRST HALF:

• Rounds 1 and 2 are Question Rounds, from the same five categories. Each question is worth 2 points.

• Round 3 is a Number Round. Teams estimate four numbers Teams receive 20 points for free, but can lose up to that full 20 point gift based on the accuracy of their estimates (losses are limited to 5 points per estimate).

SECOND HALF:

• Rounds 4 and 5 are Question Rounds, again from the same five categories. Each question is worth 2 points.

• Round 6 is a Picture Round. Identify the pictures. Each picture is worth 6 points.

This Edition’s Question Round CATEGORIES:

• DOUBLE RHYME

• NEW ORLEANS

• I AM ___

• I LEFT MY HEART…

• THINGS SAID IN COURT
  

Here are the Questions from Trivia Night in Concord on April 30…

GOOD LUCK!

ROUND 1 (Question Round)

Question 1

DubRhyme This term emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a derogatory slang term for TV

Question 2

NOLA This future US president cobbled together a militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, U.S. Army regulars, a large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky frontiersmen and local privateers including the pirate Jean Lafitte, to decisively defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. Who was the POTUS?

Question 3

IAM “I am [this name]” shouted the captured Roman slaves in this 1960 Stanley Kubrick movie, collectively claiming the identity of their leader, who was the title character of the film, played by Kirk Douglas. Who?

Question 4

HEART This famous jazz/pop singer died in 2023, and although his signature song was "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," he was buried completely intact in Calvary Cemetery in Queens NY.

Question 5

COURT In this 1995 trial, the defendant’s lawyer made the statement, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." What was the case?

ROUND 2 (Question Round)

Question 1

DubRhyme This term arose as new broadcast radio formats emerged in the 1980s, with Howard Stern and Don Imus being well-known practitoners of an edgy, provocative style, earning them and their peers this rhyming name.

Question 2

NOLA In 1896, NO’s French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres) recruited Homer Plessy, to sit in the whites-only section of a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was arrested and the case went to U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. What legal principal – overturned almost sixty years later – did the 1896 Court use to uphold Plessy’s guilty verdict?

Question 3

IAM The phrase “I am the greatest!” was a tagline of this athlete, and it was also the title of a comedy album he released. The first track of the album was entitled “I Am The greatest!” and the second track was “I Am The DOUBLE Greatest!” Who was the athlete?

Question 4

HEART Fearing burial alive, this composer asked that his heart be removed after his death and returned to his native Poland while his body remained in Paris. When he died in 1849, sister Ludwika smuggled heart past Russian border guards in a jar of cognac hidden under her robes. His heart is now permanently entombed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.

Question 5

COURT In 1964, an opinion from SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart in an obscenity trial included the comment, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced. I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But ____ [what was his conclusion]?

ROUND 3 (Number Round)

In the Number Round, teams estimate four numbers. They receive 20 points for free, but can lose up to the full 20 point gift, depending on the accuracy of their estimates (losses are limited to 5 points per estimate).

In this round, points were deducted based on the estimated team size in the four sports mentioned. Each player was worth one point.

Jamie Ding just became the Jeopardy! champion with the fifth-most consecutive Jeopardy wins (31). How many consecutive wins are held by the champions in first-through-fourth place? From the first to fourth, descending:

Ken Jennings

Amy Schneider

Matt Amodio

James Holzhauer

THAT’S IT FOR NOW —

SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE THE ANSWERS IN THE NEXT DAY OR TWO. THE SECOND HALF DROPS NEXT WEEK.

Thanks for dropping by ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts in your inbox and support my work….-Tom

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Put the critters together with the quizzers and the mischief-makers (looking at you, Little Women Thoreau’in ‘Em Back), and the vibe was something like this:

Let’s finish setting the stage by putting the spotlight on two teams, both loyal regulars:

Five J’s and an M are perennial favorites, a table full of smarties who have won a lot of Thursdays and are almost always at the top of the scoreboard. A few weeks ago, they pulled off a coup when they decoded an Easter egg hidden in the mid-game Number Round. They earned the first perfect Number Round score in the storied history of Trivia Night in Concord. It was worth enough points to give them a lead that would last until the end. More on that shortly.

Smiley’s People are usually a team of two. Ellen and Martin are terrific players, but in a game where most teams show up with a six-person roster, it’s hard for a duo to win. They may have placed second or third at some point, but I’m pretty sure that only one twosome has won before.

That was a mother-daughter duo from North Adams (MA), Franny and Rose. The have a 2-0 record, having logged victories on both of their rare forays east. After each win, their job complete, they blew out of town like the High Plains Drifter:

Anyway, back to the Number Round. Let’s actually call it the much-reviled Number Round. That’s what it is.

People don’t like it, and they boo it with gusto when I even say the phrase. It’s a round where teams guess certain numbers and lose points commensurate with their error. The bigger the miss, the more they lose.

This format is inherently a bummer. Making matters worse, I’m also guilty of cooking up some arcane Number Round scoring algorithms and making controversial judgement calls. (Mea culpa. Look for a future post called “Sins of the Host.”)

Now, let’s talk about that black swan, the time Five J’s and an M pulled off a perfect Number Round.

That week, I did something a bit wily. The questions were about geographical subdivisions, like US states, Canadian Provinces, or the Villages of the City of Newton, MA. I managed to find four groups of subdivisions that summed up to 13. That is, the answer for all four of the Number Round questions was 13. I didn’t say anything about it other than there was a quirk about that evening’s Number Round.

Five J’s and an M got it. They ran the table on the much-reviled Number Round. I think they accurately guesstimated two of the four, and got the last two by figuring out the pattern. Perfect score, and a lead they would keep all night. Five J’s and Four 13’s FTW.

It was a really fun twist, and I was excited and impressed with the J’s and M’s. It got the room engaged, and maybe encouraged people to consider different ways of tackling questions.

Of course, we couldn’t do it again.

Except that, last night, we did.

The answer to all four Number Round questions last night was 13.

I kept my eye on Five J’s and an M, looking for a flash of recognition. If they’d noticed my peculiar staring, they might have realized there were shenanigans afoot. But when they handed in their answer slip, their score was 10 out of 20.

As for Smiley’s People, let it first be said that they brought a roster of four last night, double their usual. I’m sure that helped on some other questions. But in the Number Round, the fact that they’d been in the room for the previous four-of-a-kind certainly tipped them off to the possibility of a repeat.

Here’s what the room’s Number Round scores looked like. Maximum total was 20. Smiley’s People and Five J’s and an M are in PURPLE

Both these teams are loyal regulars, and I would have been happy for either to win. Honestly, though, it was a little sweeter for the Smileys to get their first First.

But not the same kind of thinking. The first time, it was pattern recognition. To get it the second time, for a team that had seen the first time, it was necessary to overcome a voice saying something like, “Tom couldn’t possibly do that again, could he?”

The title of this post is The Rule of 13 and it turns out that there actually is a “Rule of 13” in my life. It stems from my days in a college a cappella group with a fabulously talented oddball named Stefan Jackson.

As members of the Amherst Zumbyes, Steve and I and the others would take breaks from murdering vocal harmony arrangements to discuss comedy theory. That’s because, in our shows, we would introduce the songs with putatively funny little intros. And we wanted to slay.

Comedy theory discussions often led to debates on such thorny philosophical topics as “Are farts funny?” Then, at one point, we started dissecting an orthodox rule of comedy known as the Rule of Three. That rule says that a pattern of three words or phrases paying off with a punchline on the third iteration can be effective in getting a laugh.

The group reached a momentary consensus: we would slay more if we used the Rule of Three.

Then Steve took the floor and asserted that there is a much more powerful rule: The Rule of 13. And it goes something like this:

1. The first time you say something, the audience hears it.

2. The second time, the audience hears it.

3. The third time, the audience laughs (a Rule of Three congruence).

4. The fourth time, the audience laughs, but less.

5. The fifth time, the audience laughs, even less.

6. The sixth time, maybe one person in the audience laughs, a little.

7. The seventh time, the audience is no longer with you, but still civil.

8. The eighth time, the audience is audibly grumbling.

9. The ninth time, a couple of people are booing.

10. The tenth time, several people are booing and a couple people have walked out.

11. The eleventh time, most of people are, variously, booing, shouting obscenities or walking out.

12. The twelfth time, you have clearly lost control of the room and you fear for your well-being.

13. The THIRTEENTH TIME…it’s funny again. Yea, even funnier than before.

This rule is itself a joke, and it is the actual joke it is describing. So beautiful.

Stefan Jackson? Genius.

But more importantly, the Rule of 13 is deeply true. The payoff for a joke coming in the usual place can be funny. But let the set-up for that joke masquerade as complete ineptitude, and you’ve got a real gem.

There are other versions of people playing with comedy orthodoxy-

But this really isn’t about rules. I don’t think we’ve learned any snappy trivia tips from this experience, per se. “Look for some sneaky clue-like quirks amid the more conventional stuff.” Nah.

For snappy Trivia tips, see How to Win, Part 1 (or 2,3 or 4):

The Wide World of Trivia

How to Win, Part 1: Solved Games

When my friend Tom Hadfield threw the phrase “solved games” into a recent conversation, it bugged me…

Read more

5 months ago · 3 likes · Tom Rutledge

Still there’s something here for both host and player. Don’t assume that “unusual” or “non-standard” equals “impossible.” Size up the situation to see if either player or host has the nerve to do the unusual…but as you’re sizing, perhaps err on the side of people being nervier than expected. People will repeat a rare trivia format, or repeat a joke way too many times — either one even though it seems stupid to.

It sure worked in the Number Round, which remains much-reviled (third iteration, if you're counting).

Then sit back and let them tell you what it was like to commit to memory The Knowledge of London (or, just “The Knowledge”).

In the words of the City of London’s Public Carriage Office (PCO),

Our city’s taxi drivers have an incredible sense of direction and geographic recall which is why London’s taxi trade is seen as the gold standard across the world. The Knowledge of London is widely acknowledged as the toughest local knowledge test in the world and requires each applicant to memorise around 25,000 streets in central London as well as 100,000 locations around the Capital.

The 320 routes forming the basis for learning the Knowledge are regularly checked to ensure that they are the most relevant and crucial to gaining the required understanding of London’s streets.

Memorizing The Knowledge is a remarkable act of mental athleticism, and the thousands of streets and locations are only the beginning. Over years of first learning the streets and then driving the streets, London cabbies build all kinds of mental connections, linking streets to other streets, events to locations, a location to a favorite meal, or to a shop where the cabbie bought those comfortable shoes that the spouse thinks are hideous.

And it’s a business. There will be wisdom about where to pick up the best-tipping passengers, or the ones seeking rides to destinations where driver wants to go.

And, jeez, it’s London. There will be connections to all kinds of historical, literary and cultural references.

It all starts with the PCO’s Blue Book.

Scaffoldings, Brain Attics, Mind Palaces, and Memory Lane

Back in How to Win, Part 1, I mentioned that part of my Trivia training was to memorize every fifth US president. I thought of it as a mental scaffolding that allowed me to clamber my way to answers about US history.

This method functions in reverse as well: once you know it, it becomes a filing system for your brain. You hear a fact about the 1850s, you note a connection to James Buchanan (POTUS #15), and you now have a new fact in inventory. It’s a power boost for the “lint roller” characteristics of a good Trivia mind.

While writing this post, I learned that there is a more formal name for techniques that use physical places as a framework for recalling facts. It’s the “Method of Loci.”

There are many examples of it, under many names. Hannibal Lecter used a mind palace. In Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, so did Henry VIII’s crafty aide, Thomas Cromwell.

In A Study in Scarlet (1887), Arthur Conan Doyle made Sherlock Holmes a practitioner of the technique, referring to it as Holmes’ “Brain Attic.” The writers of the BBC’s 2010’s series that starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes thought “Mind Palace” sounded…less cluttered maybe?

Then there’s my super-smart pal Jim Prusko. Jim once blew away the person interviewing him for a financial services job by accurately repeating a long, spoken series of numbers. When asked how he did it, he blithely replied, “I just put them on the board.”

I’m sure The Knowledge functions the same way for London cabbies. It’s a symbolic version of the physical world — and a very rich one at that, providing scaffolding for all kinds of information. Such an intricate, interrelated network of facts must attract even more facts, fortified with memories, visual associations and other real-world sensations.

On a test of general London knowledge, I’d put an even-money bet on a Green Badger scoring better than a fancy OxBridge history PhD.

There’s a lot of literature and about how to improve one’s memory, well beyond Methods of Loci. And there are even world memory championships, where most of the events seem to involve contestants repeating long, Pruskovian strings of numbers.

I don’t care how boring you may think Trivia is. For pure bleakness, this activity stands alone, at the very top of Mount Bleak Everest.

To paraphrase Steven Wright, “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to memorize it.”

Now what am I supposed to remember?

Okay, forget all that stuff about memory.

If you’re a regular Bar Trivia player, or if you get the coveted call to go on Jeopardy!, what facts do you need to know?

First, abandon your idealism about mastering everything. The questions that pop up in Trivia have a tendency to come from the same bodies of knowledge, and have a certain similar character. Just as there is a lexicon of words considered “crossword-ese” (OREO, SSN, PSST, ALI, ERE, ONO, ISSA and RAE), there are Trivia Facts. You can explain the crossword regulars because they fill small spaces on the grid, typically with lots of vowels and letter S’s, useful for wedging in crossing words.

I can’t as easily put my finger on what makes up the Trivia facts orthodoxy — why some subjects make the cut and others don’t. I’m working on it. I actually think the question is culturally important and will post on it later.

For now, I shall adopt the stance of SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart when commenting on the topic of obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio:

However, since there is very good historical information on topics and categories for certain games, a fine place to start is where the Trivia clue-writers are known to have farmed their facts.

Given the nature of Trivia people, it’s probably not surprising that the crowd has been very hard at work mining the records and has made a lot of its work available to everyone.

The gold standard is the J! Archive.

See those numbers in brackets at the top? “[All} [1][2][3][4]….” Those are links to pages that correspond to seasons of the show. All of them, dating back to the very beginning of the Trebek era (and including my two appearances in Season 3). On those pages are links to substantially all of the games. There may be gaps but I don’t see them.

You can read questions from any game and see who buzzed, who answered, in what order, and which answers were right and wrong. Players preparing for Jeopardy! have done that, sometimes a little of it, sometimes a lot

This will not only help you learn facts themselves but help build your intuition about the likeliest topics and question formats. It’s an alternative to watching the show itself.

Or you can enjoy the gifts of a different army of volunteers: the analysts.

To name just one, there’s an impressive analysis in a Medium article by Julie Kim. Published in 2023, it leads with enlightening stories about Jeopardy! champs who used data analysis techniques to prep for the show. It also gets into lots of heavy-duty analysis, relying not on just category titles but the content of questions. Her explicit goal: to anticipate what questions might come up.

If you’re analytically inclined, I recommend checking out the article. For the TLDR, here’s the histogram of the categories with the most questions. The top four are Science, American History, Literature, and History.

Study those!

—

They didn’t used to, at least not as much. Suckers like me would just walk into the studio cold. But the world has changed, and everyone seems to be competitive these days, whether by nature or by training.

Plus, there are more high-stakes competitions now, conferring status, opportunity and money on the winners. People seem to like those things.

Now, you are reading an article called “How To Win.” I must assume you’re competitive too. Welcome! So am I. Although I have to admit that I think of competitiveness being in service of a bigger goal: having fun. So I’m may be less competitive than you. (Let’s arm-wrestle. Winner is less competitive.)

In Trivia, knowing everything cures many ills and wins competitions. It helps to be “born with a brain like a lint roller,” as Atlantic columnist and 5-time J! Champ Tom Nichols describes himself. I have one too, less linty than Tom’s, but it drew me to Trivia. Having deep formal training in a Trivia-relevant field also helps. History is Trivia-relevant, particle physics less so, although you should hear some of those University Challenge bangers.

I suspect there’s more Trivia mileage to be gained by directing your training toward common Trivia categories and in ways that mimic Trivia Q&A. Flash cards, for example. During his big run, James Holzhauer told the Washington Post-

You may be able to read an adult book about a boring subject without falling asleep, but I can’t. For me, it was either read some children’s books — designed to engage the reader — or go into “Jeopardy!” with giant gaps in my knowledge base.

We’ll explore these tactics in a future post, probably entitled “How to Win Part 15: “Just Know Everything.”

So now…what else do we need to know? Looks like I broke this down to seven pointers, beginning with

1. The rules of the game.

Does every player or team answer every question?

In Jeopardy!, NO. In Jeopardy Bar Trivia, YES.

Can a competitor block you out by hitting the buzzer first, or can someone control which questions are revealed because they got the last right answer? Do I/we lose points if we miss?

In Jeopardy!, YES to all of those.

In my bar Trivia Nights, there are no buzzers and everyone answers every question. No negative points occur except in my Number Round, where you lose points in proportion to how badly you did guessing a number. You just lose a penalty amount if you don’t guess at all

The rules are not always the same. Not knowing them can lead to bad decisions, like guessing when you shouldn’t guess, or not guessing at all when you should.

So, know them.

2. Pay attention to every word.

The wording matters. More and more, it seems, Jeopardy! clues are like riddles, going beyond merely prompting for a fact and actually providing hints. The category is also an important clue. I can still hear Alex’s condescending Canadianism: “Did you forget the category?”

A challenging example from Jeopardy! a while back:

Category: “That’s in Admissible!” a category whose answers are words made of letters in the word “admissible”

Clue: This figure of speech can be as brief as a breeze.

Response: What is “simile”?

A common word game category in Jeopardy is Before and After. In it, the first and second parts of the questions call the player to concur up a phrase that answers both.

Clue: Hemorrhoid remedy for an old Baltimore Sun essayist.

Response: What is Preparation H. L. Mencken?

Not bad, Gemini.

I do the same thing with categories and clues at Trivia Night in Concord/Harvard. A subtle Easter egg is a good way of giving players a back door to an otherwise hard-to-get answer.

3. Bet wisely.

Easy for me to say. Betting gets more complicated the more factors you consider. So let’s start with basics.

Some games’ wrong answers cost nothing. If you’re right, you get the points, and if you’re wrong, you lose nothing. Just answer those, as early and as often as you can. (This is how my Trivia Night Question Rounds work.)

But what if you are taking a risk? What exactly will you win or lose? If the rules are that you win or lose a fixed number of points with an answer that’s right or wrong, respectively — like +/-200 for a Jeopardy answer — it’s still a bet. The analysis is fairly simple because it’s a fixed amount. Think about where being up or down that $200 leaves you.

But if you are wagering a number of your choosing, you have to work backwards. What losses are acceptable vs. unacceptable? And what gains are meaningful vs. irrelevant? If there’s a bet that gives you an acceptable loss and a meaningful gain, that’s a good bet. The other combinations are less optimal.

And here comes the hard part: the other players aren't standing pat. They’re betting in ways they think will play out optimally, either to move up in the standings, or not move down too far…depending on how you and their other opponents do.

Can you anticipate what they will do in a way that will benefit you?

On to the next level.

4. Pay attention to others and act accordingly.

Anticipate others’ motives, appreciate them, and exploit them. This is the essence of Game Theory, which is an area of great complexity and mostly beyond the scope of this post.

But Game Theory is about the real world, not rune-filled chalkboards of MIT or antiseptic children’s games. Its combination of science and human experience has been very good to people who like awards and prizes, in many areas of human endeavor. I mean…

Ron Howard won the Academy Award for directing A Beautiful Mind…

….which is a bio-pic about John Nash, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his foundational work in Game Theory….

…and before either of them, Jean-Paul Sartre won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He’s the one who offered a stern warning to those who would blithely ignore the other guy:

It’s impossible to boil the lessons of Game Theory to a few intuitive koans, so let me leave you with a few chestnuts, the last of which takes up back to Jeopardy:

(i) The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the basic building block of Game Theory. If you venture a little bit down the rabbit hole, you’ll get a feel for the dynamic of “if they do this, I’ll do that…but then they’ll do that, so I’ll do this….but….”

(ii) For a dose of “hell is other people,” check out this clip about the UK game show Golden Balls, which is NOT a quiz show, but rather one of the more psychopathic, Sartre-esque things on the telly.

(iii) A more uplifting and deceit-free example is from the most recent Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament. It’s actually one of the first things I posted on Substack.

To clarify what happened, Josh and Isaac had big scores going into Final Jeopardy and each bet it all in order to not lose by betting too small (vis-a-vis the other man). But both gave wrong answers, ended up with nothing. And Alison, who was far behind and could only win if both men were wrong, bet nothing. And won.

If either Josh or Isaac had answered correctly, Alison would have lost. But she positioned herself to exploit the only winning scenario she had. And by betting nothing, she guaranteed she would be left standing in that scenario.

That’s Game Theory.

5. If there’s a situation where you can benefit from picking weaker competition, seek it out.

This is a rare one that combines both Bar Trivia and big-time quiz shows. I just wrote about this earlier in the week. It’s hard to generalize on this so I’ll just leave the post as an anecdote:

6. For team Trivia, build the team, and then run the team

For Bar Trivia, University Challenge, QuizBowl and some other quiz shows like The Chase, it’s the team that competes, not the individual. I have three main rules specific to teams:

(i) Two heads are better than one, and even more heads are better than that. So fill your roster to the maximum amount permitted by law (to paraphrase Jeopardy! wag Sam Buttrey). For my Trivia Night, that number is six.

(ii) When you’re filling your roster, fill it with people who would know a range of answers. Diversity counts, especially with respect to age, cultural upbringing, and academic education.

A Zoomer who knows recent video games and music, grew up in Eastern Europe or West Africa, and double-majored in anthropology and medieval painting? My perfect teammate. I’ll handle the Steely Dan questions.

(iii) Run the team. You need to have a governance process to decide which of the answers put forth by the incredible panorama of humanity you have assembled will be the team’s final answer. I recommend autocratic rule by a team captain who is a Platonic philosopher-king, listening to everyone but selecting the answer with ruthless decisiveness.

7. Mnemonics are good.

Want to maximize your access to the knowledge you’ve accumulated? There are tricks for that.

In How to Win: Part 1, I mentioned my experience with this question when I was on Jeopardy!

As it turned out, I was ready for it:

And lastly….

8. Watch or play the game you want to compete in. Again and again. Practice, practice, practice.

With more reps, a lot of the tips points will become evident. Like everything else, practice and familiarity helps.

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Trivia Night Online

THE ANSWERS!

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

MC This American media franchise is know by three initials, and it is centered on a series of superhero films produced a Studio that shares its name with the comic book publisher that originally created the characters MCU

Question 2

4-Plex From 1982, This starred Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy and pioneered the “buddy cop” genre. FORTY-EIGHT HOURS

Question 3

CITY QUOTES Drew Carey: “[THIS CITY]” is a great place to live. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone who lives in Akron.” CLEVELAND.

Question 4

3-WORD IDEALS This is the motto of the Olympics, and I’ll take either the Latin or the English version CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS (FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER)

Question 5

CHEM/COUNTRIES Gold, in Europe AUSTRIA

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

MC This 20th C Dutch artist once said, “I feel like telling my objects, you are too fictitious, lying there next to each other static and frozen: do something, come off the paper and show me what you are capable of!” MC ESCHER

Question 2

4-Plex From 1959: This was François Truffaut’s masterpiece of the French New Wave, following a misunderstood adolescent in Paris. THE 400 BLOWS

Question 3

CITY QUOTES JFK called it “A city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” WASHINGTON, DC

Question 4

3-WORD IDEALS 3Start with a 2001 Daft Punk single that has four words…and then take off the title of the Kanye West song that heavily samples the Daft Punk single. HARDER, BETTER, FASTER [STRONGER]

Question 5

CHEM/COUNTRIES Potassium, in Africa KENYA

ROUND 6 (Picture Round)

There are eight protest signs depicted below. Identify the cause related to each of them. (We scored generously on a few of these since they were ambiguous.)

That’s it for now!

Look for our next Trivia Night Online after the April 30 Live Edition of Trivia Night in Harvard, at Harvard’s General Store.

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia!….-Tom

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For newcomers, I host Trivia Night in Concord, MA and Harvard, MA regularly, and sometimes — when I’m traveling — in places like New York City, Northern Vermont, Columbus and LA. Our home field is the Colonial Inn in Concord, MA.

After the live game is in the books, I post the game in two parts here in The Wide World of Trivia.

On a Tuesday after the live Trivia Nights, subscribers to The Wide World of Trivia will receive rounds 1-through-3 questions – but just the Q’s. A couple days later, I will post both the Q’s and A’s.

On the following Tuesday, I’ll do the same for rounds 4-through-6. That’s what this post is.

I think these posts are a great way to warm up for an upcoming Trivia Night, or if you’re on the fence about coming out to play, a good way to give you a sense about what it’s all about. And even better if you do them with your team.

You’ll find my Trivia Night calendar on my Instagram.

If you’re not a subscriber and you’d like to be notified by email when the questions are posted, you can subscribe right now, for free…and unsubscribing is a breeze.

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How Does The Game Work?

The full game has 6 rounds. The last three are below under GOOD LUCK!

FIRST HALF:

• Rounds 1 and 2 are Question Rounds, from the same five categories. Each question is worth 2 points.

• Round 3 is a Number Round. Teams estimate four numbers Teams receive 20 points for free, but can lose up to that full 20 point gift based on the accuracy of their estimates (losses are limited to 5 points per estimate).

SECOND HALF:

• Rounds 4 and 5 are Question Rounds, again from the same five categories. Each question is worth 2 points.

• Round 6 is a Picture Round. Identify the pictures. Each picture is worth 6 points.

This Edition’s Question Round CATEGORIES:

• MC (words or phrases that start with the letters MC)

• FOUR-PLEX (Movies whose titles have Four in them)

• QUOTES INSULTING TO CITIES

• IDEALISTIC, THREE-WORD/PHRASE MOTTOS (Hendiatris)

• COUNTRY NAMES THAT START WITH SYMBOLS OF ELEMENTS

Here are the 2nd half questions from Trivia Night in Concord on April 2…

GOOD LUCK!

ROUND 4 (Question Round)

Question 1

MC This American media franchise is know by three initials, and it is centered on a series of superhero films produced a Studio that shares its name with the comic book publisher that originally created the characters.

Question 2

4-PLEX From 1982, This starred Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy and pioneered the “buddy cop” genre.

Question 3

CITY QUOTES Drew Carey: “[THIS CITY]” is a great place to live. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone who lives in Akron.”

Question 4

3-WORD IDEALS This is the motto of the Olympics, and I’ll take either the Latin or the English version

Question 5

CHEM/COUNTRIES Gold, in Europe

ROUND 5 (Question Round)

Question 1

MC This 20th C Dutch artist once said, “I feel like telling my objects, you are too fictitious, lying there next to each other static and frozen: do something, come off the paper and show me what you are capable of!”

Question 2

4-PLEX From 1959: This was François Truffaut’s masterpiece of the French New Wave, following a misunderstood adolescent in Paris.

Question 3

CITY QUOTES JFK said of this city that it’s “A city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”

Question 4

3-WORD IDEALS Start with a 2001 Daft Punk single that has four words…and then take off the title of the Kanye West song that heavily samples the Daft Punk single.

Question 5

CHEM/COUNTRIES Potassium, in Africa

ROUND 6 (Picture Round)

There are eight protest signs depicted below. Identify the cause related to each of them. (We scored generously on a few of these since they were ambiguous.)

THAT’S IT FOR NOW — SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE THE ANSWERS TOMORROW

Thanks for dropping by The Wide World of Trivia!….Subscribe for free to receive these posts in your inbox and support my work!…-Tom

Ugh.

We may play once or twice more before the competition ends in mid-May, just for fun. But in the meantime, we are receiving updates on the state of the tournament….

…which revealed something pretty interesting today.

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First, to explain the scoring, let me sheepishly show you the full story of where my team stands.

The championship gives League Points to the top three Game Point scorers in a given venue in a given week. It’s 5, 4, 3 if they’re first, second or third, respectively. Everyone else gets one point.

Since ROOM24 showed up for two JBL Championship-eligible games (both at Aeronaut, hi !) but didn’t place either time, we have two (2) League Points. We are currently ranked 1034 in the Championship. Please hold your applause.

Now, by comparison, here’s the top of the leaderboard, with the first place team’s Event Location expanded to show all of the bars where it has played.

25 Cent Peepshow sits in first place with 25 points. The JBL Championship has been running for five weeks, so that means that The ‘Show — if I may call you fine Coloradans that — finished first in all five of its competitions.

But now, look at the venues under Event Location. 25 Cent Peepshow has played at three different locations over the competition’s five weeks.

Do you think JBL teams pick their venues based on competitive strength — or more accurately, make a point of hitting venues with weak competition?

There’s nothing against the rules or (in my opinion) the ethics of bar-shopping in an effort to find the easiest place to win. League points are based on winning in your chosen venue. You still need to score more than your opponents. But if that’s the case, choose the weakest opponents…right?

I don’t know how one would research the strength or weakness of a given bar’s trivia competitors. Still, I’m sure there are ways.

Interesting.

So let’s be clear about this: one of the things that will determine the Jeopardy! Bar League National Champion is a team’s ability to play in bars that don’t attract too many good teams.

In a previous post-

-I offered these words of appreciation for JBL! in general and the National Championship in particular:

Does the potential for bar-shopping spoil this?

What do you think?

I mean, we solve problems. We play games. My gut was that you can’t solve any of the Trivia games I can think of. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your odds with smart strategy and preparation. You can. You absolutely can.

But “solved” sounds definitive. In Bar Trivia or on the big quiz shows, or any of the games that require quick recall of facts, the factors in play are too numerous for a person to outwit. Can you play any games with complete confidence that you have a bulletproof way to win?

Yes. Tic Tac Toe is a sure win if you go first and play the right way. Here’s the recipe in sixty seconds:

Connect Four is another one, though the solution is far less obvious. This video runs eighteen minutes, compared to one minute for the Tic Tac Toe video. The video is interesting, but if your eyes glaze over quickly, you are forgiven.

Realistically, I defy you to watch this once and retain enough that you would swear you’ll never lose at Connect Four again.

In my chat with Tom Hadfield about solved games, the subject was a different pastime: poker. Specifically, Tom plays Texas Hold’em. His original remark was that Hold’em was a solved game, but he later clarified that it was only a specific variant that was solved.

The variant? Fixed Limit Heads-Up Texas Hold’em.1 FLHULHE is played between exactly two players. The betting amounts are restricted to preset increments. To be even more specific about that Hawaiian/Swedish-sounding acronym,

• FL (Fixed Limit): Defines the betting structure (restricted increments).

• HU (Heads-Up): Defines the field size (exactly 2 players).

• LHE (Limit Hold’em): Defines the game variant (Texas Hold’em is played with a fixed limit).

What happened here? A relatively complex game was simplified by imposing constraints. With enough constraints, a complex game can be solved.

Even in our earliest middle-school math classes, we’re taught this very same technique: solve the problem by simplifying it.

Ooh, let’s etch that in stone:

This sounds elegant. But think about what it really means. It means change the rules.

That’s something that eight-year-old nieces and nephews do to ruin the video game for you.

“Let’s hit restart,” they say once your lead is insurmountable, right before they hit restart.

If you change the rules, you really have a different game. The game has gone from regular old Texas Hold’em to FLHULHE.

This is getting impractical. Interesting…but essentially academic. We can’t go around just hitting restart. Certainly not in life, and not even in most games.

For that matter, mere mortals can’t be expected to follow the recipe that constitutes even a moderately complex solved game’s solution. The solution will be a bunch of rules that address all the possible scenarios that might arise in the game.

For example, “IF Hadfield re-raises and the flop could be part of a straight THEN fold.” It’s IF-THEN statements like that.

I called it a “recipe” before but a string of IF-THEN statements is better described as an algorithm. If it gets long enough and it’s executed by a computer, it’s a computer program. Human game players can handle a few short algorithms. These are called “heuristics,” or, by normies, “rules of thumb,” or just “tips.”

Short, memorable tips can be incredibly valuable. And what they do is simplify, but they don’t simplify the whole game or activity. Just a subset. Maybe a scenario or two.

This doesn’t solve the problem of surviving a walk in downtown Boston, but it does help you not get killed at an intersection.

This is the first step of the algorithm described in the first video above. But even if that’s all you’ve got, it will improve your odds of winning at Tic Tac Toe. Even if you make completely random moves after this one, a good first move reduces the remaining number of losing scenarios. And if you get the first move right and see your opponent’s next move, the complete winning strategy may dawn on you. It’s a simpler problem than a blank grid.

This is not a complete solution for beating the New York Yankees. But may keep Judge from sending the ball over the center field fence. That’s gotta help.

It may also help if I wear this shirt.

But I digress.

Most of us do make an effort to “solve” situations where there is potential risk and/or gain. And in that effort, even if the solution doesn’t present itself, we may come up with some insights that lead to better outcomes.

Or we may just bumble around.

Last month, The Atlantic published ’s Sucker: My year as a degenerate gambler (paywall). Coppins’s editors let him spend a year gambling on sports so he could document the experience. At one point, realizing other people are better at gambling than he is, he called one of the premier other people — . Silver reviewed Coppins’s football bets and, as Coppins recounted, delivered the hard truth.

Most of us are like Coppins. We do not have a rigorous, intricate, logically-consistent framework for making decisions, either in-game or IRL. We’re faking it. Or, more charitably, we’re experimenting.

I have both faked and experimented. Allow me to present a little of my faking and experimenting history the realm of Trivia. Specifically, in Jeopardy!

As I recall, I made three decisions that had a demonstrable effect on actual televised games of Two of them affected me in my two-game run. The other affected my college pal , the actor, on his Celebrity appearance. Two decisions were good. One was dumb.

On my first day, one of my opponents was a Political Science professor — an occupation I learned from Alex’s introduction and I still remember because I thought his training might be relevant in the game.

I couldn’t remember his name, however. But the J!Archive could:

When World Politics popped up as a category at the beginning of Double Jeopardy! I started to worry. Naturally, Paul Raymond selected “World Politics for 200” as the first question:

I buzzed in quickly. I didn’t immediately know the answer, but I figured a $2002 question would guessable, not cost me too much if I missed, and give me a chance to stop Paul from running the best category he could have picked.

I guessed “black.” Wrong. Paul then buzzed in and gave the right answer: “What is green?”

I won that day. Paul finished a close second. Did strategy factor into my win? Very little, if at all. And that’s a good thing.

What a dumb decision.

Until I started writing this post, decades after the fact, I actually thought my gambit wasn’t terrible. It’s now obvious to me that a far better choice would have been to just pick a category I thought would be good for me. My performance that day indicates “Roaring 20s” (Aimee Semple McPherson, etc.) and “Noble Names” (B.B. King etc.) would have fit the bill. My choice of World Politics for $200 didn’t harm Paul in the least.

The next day, however, I did something smart. Or rather, I took advantage of some smart preparation I had done years before when I was playing quiz-bowls in high school, college and grad school.

Somewhere in my prep for the Trivia battles of my youth, I decided it would be a good idea to memorize every fifth US president and each POTUS’s corresponding ordinal (Monroe-5, Tyler-10, Buchanan-15, etc). I figured it would help my brain triangulate to other historical facts.

Well, on day two, in Double Jeopardy!, this question popped up:

Boom! JFK-35, DDE-34 => Mamie Eisenhower. QED and $1000 for Tom.

I lost on day two — a very entertaining story I will tell another time — but I still feel good about that every-fifth-president hack. If I were in training to play again, I would freshen that one up and add some similar mnemonic scaffolding to help me out.

What else would I do if I were trying to solve a real TV quiz show, or Jeopardy! specifically?

Current consensus would also argue for adopting the technique of “Daily Double-Hunting,” which is what basically everyone has done since Arthur Chu came on the scene in 2014. Here’s an article from Swarthmore’s alumni magazine, which you can link-click into a nice deep rabbit hole on Daily Double-hunting: @arthur chu Arthur Chu ‘08 Uses Game Theory in Notable Jeopardy [sic] Performance.

(Some articles refer to Chu’s strategy as a version of the Forrest Bounce, which was originated by a player named Chuck Forrest and is described as random answer-picking to confuse opponents. I don’t think Chu was using the Forrest Bounce because he was not picking randomly. He was picking squares that had proven to be more likely to reveal Daily Doubles.)

Post-Chu, in 2022, Michael Higgins got the call to appear on Celebrity Jeopardy!. I had played Bar Trivia with Michael at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Pasadena years before, which had confirmed my suspicion that he was very good at Trivia. We recall winning a pitched battle with some NASA Jet Propulsion Lab folks sitting at the bar (and will stand by that because saying we beat JPL people makes us sound so smart).

After hearing from Celebrity Jeopardy!, Michael called me and humbly uttered the question,

I sent him a fairly long email with some tips, including a strategy that we can call "the Modified Chu.” In the email, I basically told him to engage in Daily Double Hunting, and to bet big.

As he told then-host in the post-game chat, that advice helped him become a Celebrity Jeopardy champion:

“How To Win” is a big topic, so watch this space for more. There will definitely be more to discuss on preparation, team play, game theory, computers, and financialization.

And as a member of the human species and endless crusader for the value of Trivia, I’m happy to leave you with this thought:

Trivia Night Online

The 2nd half’s Questions post next Tuesday.

THE ANSWERS!

ROUND 1 (Question Round)

Question 1

MC In what way would MC be connected with the hundredth anniversary of the first Millennium in the CE? MC In ROMAN NUMERALS is 1100

Question 2

4-PLEX From 2005, this was the breakout film comedy that launched Steve Carell into stardom. THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN

Question 3

CITY QUOTES Dorothy Parker: said of this city, “It’s 72 suburbs in search of a city.” LOS ANGELES

Question 4

3 WORD/PHRASE IDEALS These are the three unalienable rights cited in the US Declaration of Independence. LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Question 5

CHEM/COUNTRIES What nation in Great Britain has a name that starts with the chemical symbol for Tungsten? WALES

ROUND 2 (Question Round)

Question 1

MC What is the name of the restaurant franchise that carries the name its founders, even though they were driven out of the business by the man who bought them out to begin owning the company in 1961? MCDONALD’S

Question 2

4-PLEX From 1994, this the quintessential British rom-com starring Hugh Grant. FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

Question 3

CITY QUOTES Gertrude Stein said of this city, ”There is no there there.” OAKLAND, CA

Question 4

3 WORD/PHRASE IDEALS This is the national motto of France and the Republic of Haiti, dating back to the French Revolution LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE or LIBERTY, EQUALITY, BROTHERHOOD.

Question 5

CHEM/COUNTIRES What nation in Africa has a name that starts with the chemical symbol for Sodium? (NA)MIBIA

ROUND 3 (Number Round)

In the Number Round, teams estimate four numbers. They receive 20 points for free, but can lose up to the full 20 point gift based on the accuracy of their estimates (losses are limited to 5 points per estimate).

In this round, points were deducted based on the estimated team size. Each player was worth one point.

What is the standard number of players in the “field” of play for these sports?

Football (Soccer) 11

Rugby Union (not rugby league) 15

Water Polo 7

Volleyball (Indoor, not beach) 6

Check in Next Tuesday for the Second Half, or subscribe and receive them in your inbox…

THAT’S IT FOR NOW — SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE THE SECOND HALF’S QUESTIONS NEXT TUESDAY

Thanks for dropping by !….-Tom

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Kevin texted back, “absolutely mad looking bloke.” He’s right, and the man’s gifts suggest that there may be a spot of mad scientist in Manchester Madgwick’s make-up. I mean, start with his name. The “Mad” is right there.

I won’t spoil the outcome of the semi-final, but let me make it easy for you: here’s the always reliable Cosmic Pumpkin’s YouTube posting of the Manchester - Imperial College semi-final.

The winner will face Edinburgh in the Grand Final, which will drop at some point next week on Cosmic Pumpkin. I will say no more about the outcome.

Madgwick’s skills and style are at a level that history might eventually see him as someone who actually changed the game. I think here of James Holtzhauer’s emergence on the scene, which I chronicled in the Boston Globe in 2019. (Globe paywall, sorry, will post here another time).

And since Kevin is in the conversation, he has kept me fresh on the NBA in the last couple years and gotten me wise to LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets. tracks the numbers and the narrative, but you gotta see the pictures. No one plays like LaMelo…except for Madgwick.