I’ve finished reading Ken Jennings’ book, and it was, as Sir Monkeypants says, “Both gripping and boring as poo.” We both liked the parts where Ken described his own personal experiences on Jeopardy, as well as time he spent at other trivia events. The chapters on the history of trivia, though, are a wee bit dry.
Anyway, one throwaway line in one of the chapters happens to mention that the biggest single-day trivia event in North America is World Trivia Night…which takes place in none other than Ottawa, Canada!
A few years back a friend of mine mentioned the trivia contest and tried to get a team together, but no one from our little circle except me responded to his email. But this year, I am determined to pull it together. We need a team of 10 people of varying specialities, ages, and backgrounds. How hard can it be to find ten people actually interested in a night of trivia? With food? And possibly funny hats? And the glory of attending an event that is on the radar of Ken Jennings? It practically sells itself.
World Trivia Night is held every year in November — ooh, it’ll be like a little birthday party for myself. So I have about 10 months to find a team…and more importantly, to train.
KenJen describes in his book how he studied up on certain common Jeopardy categories before going in, and it paid off. I might get around to such focused work, but before that, I feel like I just need to limber up my brain a little bit. The lack of sleep and lack of adult conversation lately has left me in a truly addled state, and sometimes I can’t even remember the name of that actress who played Daphne on Frasier. You know, red hair, English accent? It’s killing me!
So in these early days of training, I’m focusing on watching as many trivia-based game shows as I can. Weakest Link and Jeopardy are the best, because the fast pace of these shows means lots of trivia crammed into a short period of time. In fact, I think I should start taping Jeopardy every day — the writers’ strike means I have a lot of free TV hours on my hand to train, especially now that I’ve FINALLY caught up with all those back-episodes of Heroes that were kicking around on the PVR.
After my game show orgy, I hope my brain will be stirred enough to handle a few run-throughs of all the cards in the Trivial Pursuit box we have. Maybe I’ll head out for a few games of NTN at the East Side Mario’s.
And after that, I hear that the same people that run World Trivia Night run a weekly trivia event at the Barley Mow, which is nice and closeby. Once I get my crack team of trivia buffs (or just avid snackers, whatever) together, maybe we can do a few nights at the Mow to warm up. Go team go!
Then, it’s on to World Trivia Night! Last year, the top two teams tied with a perfect score — they answered all 110 questions correctly. I’ll be happy to get in the 70-80 range this year, mostly because I have no idea what to expect from the questions or if the Wee One will (SO HELP ME GOD) be sleeping through the night by then.
But just the thought of participating…it has me salivating. People I know…consider yourselves targets for recruitment! Let’s DO THIS THING!
TurtleHead 
If you’re really serious about putting together a team, I’m in. And I can all but guarantee that DK will want to do. He’s like some sort of crazy trivia wizard.
I’m not so much into the trivia…but I’m a fairly avid snacker. Dunno…you probably wouldn’t succeed at recruiting me.
The reason I’m commenting is to point out that Daphne had brown hair. It was Ros who had the red head. My other uber-pop culture knowing friend Spudd tells me that it’s something like Peri Gilsom. Not quite, but LIKE that.
Totally awesome! I’ll sign you up! I was just reading about the Barley Mow nights — they are Mondays at 7. I’ll try to put one together in a couple of months, I think.
Actually it was Jane Leeves. I heard this question on The Weakest Link last night and kicked myself for not being able to come up with it in time. Roz was played by Peri Gilpin.
And really on the hair? I totally remember them both as being redheads. Hm. I will have to go look for a picture of her!
Take a look at http://dreamers.com/indices/imagenes/peliculas.5066.IMAGEN1.jpg
I wouldn’t really describe either as “carrot top” or anything, but Roz is clearly redder than Daphne.
I have a vague recollection that she dyed her hair in a later season…but I’d stopped watching before then so I don’t remember the colour.
Well, you already know I’m useless at trivia, but I can offer to babysit that night at least.
Oooh… now I’m missing Canada just a wee bit more. You know if we lived in Ontario we’d both jump at the chance to be on your team. Did I mention that we’ve been on competition-winning trivia teams? (Once at Newbridge and once in Australia.) Anyway, good luck. Sounds like you’ve already got some people interested…
Thanks for the link. I agree, it’s Roz with the red hair. I blame the baby brain!
Actually, I was hoping you’d come out for the music stuff.
Here is a link to some sample music-related trivia from the Barley Mow game.
I’m not clear on all the details of the World Trivia Night format, but I believe it is a timed event — 10 sets of 10 questions and you have a limited amount of time for each set. But there is one set of questions called the “Marathon” that you get all night to work on. Last year the Marathon was one of those audio things where they put together blips of many different songs and you have to identify each one. I’m not sure if it will be the same this coming year but if they do the same kind of thing, you’d be great at it!
Sigh, I know. I would love, love, love to have you and on my team! You would totally rock.
If you decide that it’s really not too much trouble to fly up for the weekend with a toddler and a new baby, then you’re in :).
Ooh, I love that game (and I’m fairly good at it too, although I’d probably be handicapped by my lack of knowledge of more recent stuff).
played that game on her iPod for a while; of course it’s a little easier when all the songs come from your own library, but it’s still good practice.
What I think is interesting, though, is how little you often need to uniquely identify a song. It’s amazing how incredibly huge the space of all ‘short’ sound clips is.
Well, as I’ve said before, if you really can’t get anyone else, of course I’ll help you out, but I doubt I’m the best person for the job. I got the first 2 of those questions, but not the last 3 (after a few minutes of thinking. I’m guessing these types of questions require immediate answers, right?)
I’m not great with lyrics; I do much better at naming a tune than I do naming lyrics. Still, I suppose off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone else you could ask. But if I come across any music gurus, I’ll let you know!
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