A Thanksgiving trivia quiz

During this blessed week, we here at The Big Quiz Thing give thanks for many things, both big and small, both quizzy and otherwise. But there's nothing we're more thankful for than trivia. Join us in our joy by taking our Thanksgiving-themed trivia quiz. (Want answers? Visit us on Twitter or Facebook.)

1. In 2013, for the first time ever—and most likely the last time ever—Thanksgiving coincided with what other holiday?

Do you dare peek inside the BQT question file?!?

Presenting, the further adventures inside the trivial mind of Big Quiz Thing quizmaster Noah Tarnow…
Today, let's talk about the trivial firmament of nearly every BQT event: the questions. Where I keep them. How they're organized. And how Microsoft Word is the single greatest invention since the spatula.

In preparation for a typical Big Quiz Thing event, I must equip myself with 60 questions. At least 20 of those bring the multimedia fun (the video round and the audio round), but they are their own exotic zoo animals, so let us focus instead on the verbal questions. Typically, I require 40 of those: Ten for Round 1 (including a Four-Part Question and a two-pointer), ten for Round 3 (likewise), ten for the Lightning Round, and ten for the Three-Way Finale. Damn, I crank out a lot of material.

People very often asks how long it takes to assemble a quiz, but I never have a coherent answer for that, because the work has no beginning and will have no end: I maintain a Microsoft Word file of original trivia questions that I add to (and, in rare critical moments, subtract from) on a daily basis. (Actually, there are two versions of my question file: One is full of questions I've never used before—or haven't used in at least six years, wink wink—and the other collects ones I have used, which are still valid for out-of-town shows, private events, Twitter, all of my multifarious other trivial outlets. Hey, whatever, it's new to them; I recycle because Al Gore told me to.)

So when I sit down and begin constructing one specific event, I have a convenient storehouse to draw from, hundreds of questions, broken down by 17 categories, arranged alphabetically…

Celebrities: There's often a lot of overlap here with Movies, Music and Television, but it's a handy delineation. Really, where else can I cover celebrity fragrances?

Oh, we had a bully good time!

Commerce: A rather highfalutin name for all those queries about fast-food restaurants and breakfast cereal spokescharacters.

Food: Often some overlap with Commerce, but more in the food-snob realm. It also tends to share territory with Language, since—not being a big fan of food myself—a lot of my cuisine questions are about how various dishes got their amusingly idiosyncratic names.

General: Everything that doesn't fit everywhere else, or perhaps straddles the line between two other categories. I tend to toss a lot of current-events subjects here, since it feels wrong to call it History, and it also inevitably becomes the repository for my myriad wacky questions about comic books (I love 'em, but it's really "Literature" when you're asking about the Flash and Ant-Man) and pro wrestling (call that Sports and you'll catch hell from the world's most insufferable sports snobs). This is also where I keep questions in categories too small to merit their own delineations; art, dance, other things that don't especially interest me, and aren't screamed for by the trivial masses.

Geography: All that fun stuff with state capitals, foreign boundaries, rivers and mountains, etc. This was my favorite trivial category as a child (in the early '80s, I leaned on the blue Trivial Pursuit questions hardcore), so I feel a somewhat-insane fondness for this one.

The blue wedge gave me the least trouble.

History: A natural standby, recent or ancient, foreign or domestic. This is where you'll find all of my trademark presidential-trivia delights.

Language: Fun with words! These tend to be the most figureoutable of them all.

Literature: I'm not a huge book guy, but hey, what kind of former Reading Rainbow fan would I be if I neglected this one. Within this section, I keep a link to Time magazine's list of the 100 greatest novels of the past century. Anytime I sort through my Lit questions and feel like I need more good stuff, this list comes in handy.

Movies: Of course. I mean, how could I not?

Music: Double of course. The reason I got into the quiz business to begin with.

New York: A very useful category lo these many years ruling the NYC trivia scene. Not something I get a lot of use out of in Boston and other cities, though. Does the top quizmaster in, say, St. Louis have a "St. Louis" category?

Apparently so.

Politics: Some crossover with History, but this feels essential for all the political horse-race puzzles that run through my mind, particularly during campaign season.

Religion: The smallest category. I go months with adding to (or drawing from) this one. I could probably fold it into General, but inertia is a bewitching mistress.

Science: I have to force myself to keep this one well stocked, not being a science guy. But it's necessary, especially for the nerds I so love.

Sports: Similar to Science; an Achilles' heel. Except my crowd doesn't seem to demand it as much. Nonetheless, I'm fairly diligent about keeping this larder well stocked, which is why si.com is bookmarked on my computer (as if it's hard to type in).

When I put "si.com" in Google Image search, this was the first result. In fact, none of the first 11 images feature sports at all.

Television: The no-brainerest of all.

Theater: Another one that has less currency outside of NYC, since I deal in Broadway a fair amount. But it's hardly useless elsewhere: Everyone loves Shakespeare, if not Eugene O'Neill. Serious overlap with Literature.

Thus, in assembling a quiz, I move methodically through the file, category by category, drawing a couple of questions from each, placing them in the proper part of the quiz. (On the easier end? Lightning Round. Harder? Round 3. The kind of thing that works best when you have only scant seconds to buzz in? Three-Way Finale, baby!) This process would have been completely different, of course, if I were doing this before the advent of the personal computer; I'd be swimming in little blue index cards, I assure you.

Another interesting element of my new-question file, and perhaps a frustrating one: It's littered with subpar questions that I will never, ever use, like unsightly weeds crawling up through the cracks of a pristine sidewalk. Take this one from the History section: "According to Cicero, what is the chief law?" I wrote this so long ago, it's practically in cuneiform, and I never liked it—it commits virtually all the sins of bad trivia questions, and I will almost certainly never use it. But I can't bring myself to cut it from the file, along with so many others, because I'm a man with commitment issues. I kill the Cicero question, craptastic as it may be, and I might someday regret it. Besides, space in a Word file is free.

Why would this guy's opinion matter in the first place?

But fuck it, I'm killing it now: Search "Cicero," highlight, delete. Done. The question file has been minimally cleansed. It thanks you.

The pros and cons of multiple-choice questions

So tell me: The multiple-choice question format is (a) a perfectly fine tool in the quizmaster's arsenal, or (b) a regrettable but handy structure for certain quiz games and questions that demand it, or (c) totally lame and a sign of a waste of quizzing time. You wonder why almost all smartphone trivia apps suck? It's because technology hasn't advanced to the level where you can properly answer a real question on a tiny phone. (Plus, they remind me of standardized tests.)

My answer used to be (c), but lately, I'm not so sure. If you're familiar with the Big Quiz Thing, you may know that I very occasionally utilize the multiple-choice format for my questions. There was an example at our most recent quiz spectacular, to wit: "What’s greater: (a) the number of billions in Mayor Bloomberg’s net worth, or (b) the number of Americans richer than he is?" I dug this question: It took an interesting but basic fact (Bloomberg is crazy rich) and made something more creative out of it than just "How crazy rich is he?"
Some people really like multiple choice; on the surface, it seems to make questions easier, and the challenge-averse are legion. But as a general rule, I very rarely use it. In fact, I've long considered myself to have a bias against multiple choice. Some reasons:

—They take too long to ask. An ideal question is an economic one. That's not a hard-and-fast rule, but basically, the more you have to say to ask the question, the worse off you are. Listing the correct answer and two or three others has the habit of slowing the whole process down to a crawl.

—They're very easy to mess up. An unseasoned trivia writer often falls into uniquely regrettable traps when working in multiple choice (unlike the pitfalls that a seasoned quiz writer falls into). One thing that particular chaps my hide is stupid multiple-choice questions that flat-out give away the correct answer. I can't find the example, but I once read an explicitly labeled "food and drink" quiz, with a question that included four possible answers: (a) and (c) had nothing to do with food or drink, and (d) was clearly a joke answer. Um…which ever one could it possibly be?

—They're less fun. The whole mental journey of getting from question to answer, of discovering the correct response, seems less interesting and enjoyable when your options are so clearly narrowed down. If the question is figureoutable, in some respects, it's already been figured out for you. Or, if you're confident of the answer and proud of your own knowledge, you may feel cheated that you don't have the opportunity to pluck it from your mental foam without any extra assistance. Which leads me to the most important point…

—Multiple-choice questions give away the answer. Really. Not that they necessarily tell you which answer is correct (though see that food-and-drink example above), but they do indeed state the answer right off the bat. Even if it's among other, incorrect ones, it's been put out there, so there's no real "a-ha!" surprise moment of interest when the quizmaster reveals which response is the right one, let alone when you manage to figure it out on your own. Multiple choice sucks some of that juicy drama from a great quiz game.
But recently, my thinking has changed a bit. Not long ago, I was hired for a quiz writing/consulting job, and the client asked me to provide 50 trivia questions. No problem; I sent them some of my best. To which I got an e-mailed reply (paraphrasing):

"Oops, sorry! Maybe I forgot to tell you, but I needed multiple choice questions!" (Actually, reviewing my notes, I was told this, but several months earlier when we'd first made contact, and neither party had reiterated the point in subsequent discussions. So blame is shared.)

Being the awesome quiz problem-solver I am, I was able to modify most of the questions to accommodate the format, no sweat. But part of me kept thinking they'd ultimately be happier if we'd left them as is, multiple-choice-free. In modifying them, I felt like more than a few of the questions lost some of their zip.

However, as I entered the next phase of this particular project (sorry, have to be vague on details; I signed a nondisclosure agreement), I realized that I was wrong: For this particular project (an excellent one, I might add), multiple choice was likely the way to go, or at the very least, a valid avenue well worth pursuing. And I started seeing the particular advantages, such as:
—Sometimes slowing things down is good. What TV game show comes to mind when you think of multiple-choice trivia? Right, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And that show is all about slowing things down, to extend the nail-biting drama. Sure, like the rest of the world, I'm completely sick of that damn show by now, but man, no denying that back in '99, that was some of the most compelling TV out there.

—Sometimes easier is better. The best question is easily recalibrated for different levels of difficulty. Often, multiple choice is the way to do that: When taking a trip into new territory, it helps to have a map, even if it's a rough one. Yet at the same time…

—They introduce a unique element of challenge. A canny multiple-choice question might give you two (or more) possible answers that seem equally valid. Take this one: "On the air from 1955 to 1975, what TV Western is the only American comedy or drama show to exceed 600 episodes? a. Gunsmoke; b. Bonanza; c. Rawhide." Perhaps your first impulse is to say Bonanza—I mean, how else did Michael Landon become such a big star?—but then wait, the quizmaster did say Gunsmoke, maybe your initial impulse was wrong. So Bonanza or Gunsmoke, which is it? Or perhaps it was Rawhide; I mean, all of these shows went off the air so long ago, they all sound plausible to anyone under the age of 45. Multiple choice can lead you to doubt and rethink your thinking in a way you might not with a simple fill-in-the-answer query, inspiring a whole new, often very enjoyable routine of mental gymnastics. You get to experience a different way of thinking through a trivia question.

—They add a nice opportunity for comedy. Want to build a little laugh into an otherwise perfectly valid trivia question? Tack on a funny, obviously wrong (d) answer. That TV-Western one above? (d) The Lone Ranger/Howdy Doody Racial Stereotype Comedy Adventure Variety Hour (Fine, not the greatest joke, but the possibility is there.)
So what's my answer to the question stated at top? (a), (b), or (c)? Have I swung from (c)—multiple-choice hatred—to (a)—respect for it as a staple of the quizmaster's tool belt, granting multiple choice the status of perfectly reasonable trivia format? Eh, not quite. On balance, I think open-ended is more fun, more appropriately challenging, more creative. So let's call it (d): Multiple choice is a helpful tool, and it's a good thing for a quizmaster to have a strong understanding of. But if you want it to take center stage in a Big Quiz Thing project, you're going to have to be the one paying the bills.

Anatomy of bad trivia questions

Last week, I analyzed what I consider a nigh-perfect trivia question, discussing what I feel makes it such a sterling example of the quizmaster's art. Strutting my peacock feathers, sure. But to keep it fair and balanced, I promised to look at the opposite side of the coin: lousy trivia questions, and what makes them so bad.
I've written thousands of questions over the years, and some were just flat-out rotten. Perhaps the worst were the ones with which I failed due diligence; for whatever reason, on rare occasions, I just plain didn't do my homework, and ended up asking a question that is factually wrong. (Really? The first female U.S. senator was elected in 1986?!?) There are a million moving pieces to every Big Quiz Thing event, so it's inevitable that every now and again something slips through the subway grate. But the truth should never be one of those things, so it kills me when it's happened, as rare as it is.

But as soul-crushingly crappy as baldly wrong questions can be, that's not what I want to look at here, because I think their badness is self-evident. I want to dig a little deeper into what can make for a piss-poor trivia question. And rather than examine one shining example, as I did when looking at the perfect question, let's examine two that are varied in their suckitude. "Enjoy"…

Q: This is the essence of trivia: Within 50, how many dimples does a modern golf ball have?

I actually said that when I asked the question: "This is the essence of trivia." And I suppose I was right, if you adhere to the traditional definition of trivia, which is "useless knowledge." But over the years, I've come to prefer working with a different definition, which is "interesting information." (Plenty of trivia questions are about dumb bullshit, but just as many other deal with knowledge that's well worth having. There is literally no topic that can't produce a good trivia question, under the right circumstances.)

There are several major problems with this golf-ball question:

(1) It's not easy to verify. Search the Internet and you will find many answers to this question, none of them passing my reliability test. Moreover, I gather that there's no official number of dimples for regulation balls, so it's perhaps ultimately unverifiable.

(2) It's impossible. Not even remotely figureoutable (all right, fine, I suppose some incredible, ultraevolved physicist or mathematician might be able to take a stab at a designing a model that will give him an educated guess, but come on, we're trying to enjoy ourselves here). Also, I don't know what school you went to, but you were most likely not taught this as a youngster, so there's no digging-through-your-memory element here.

(3) It's cliché. This same question has been asked a million times in a million places, judging by ye olde Interwebs; my little "essence of trivia" disclaimer hints at it. I essentially ripped this question off from various anonymous sources. I mean, geez, if I'm going to be a thief, I should be more discerning, shouldn't I?

And perhaps most importantly, (4) it's just not very interesting. The answer is 360 (or at least that's what I declared it to be when I asked this at the BQT). Big fucking deal. An impossibly difficult question might be worth something if, at the very least, a player feels they've been enlightened once they hear the (verifiably) correct answer. (Really? The Mr. Men books were the U.K.'s best-selling kids' series of the '00s after Harry Potter? Hm.) But with something like this, the audience is left with nothing. This question provides neither fun nor victory nor knowledge, just a big pile of boring, obscure, squishy information. Terrible.

And this stinker:

Q: In the film This Is Spinal Tap, how did the band say their first drummer died?

This was actually the very first question asked at the very first Big Quiz Thing, and it's terrible. (Though in hindsight, a lot was terrible that night.) Spinal Tap is easily among my favorite films, and many others would agree, so it is definitely prime trivia-question fodder—it was an answer to a great four-parter about fictional rock bands (the Thamesmen!). But this query doesn't qualify. It relies on one's memory of a minute detail from the movie (a funny detail, but small)— not figureoutable. Moreover, it's a bit of a trick question, isn't it? Everyone remembers the drummer spontaneous combusting, and many others recall that another drummer "choked on vomit." But yes, the very first drummer (played in a cameo by Ed Begley Jr.) died in "a bizarre gardening accident." So it's a bit of a swerve to put this little-known aside front and center. And, perhaps most importantly, I asked this as the very first question of the night! Of the first BQT!

This gets at a very important yet overlooked element of quizcraft: Question order and placement is nearly as important as the content of the question itself. Sure, I could've asked about the bizarre gardening accident in a later round, perhaps at a movie-specific quiz. It would've been a toughie, but fair-enough game. But as my opening salvo of my quizmaster career, it was a bad move, indicating that perhaps I subscribed to the dicky you-have-to-know-everything-ever-to-succeed school of trivia, rather than the, you know, actually fun one.. Thankfully, the nerds there that night forgave me, I recovered, and went on to my glory as the greatest quizmaster who ever strode the face of this world.

What do you think? Are these questions really so bad? What do you consider the hallmark of a trivia clunker? Share your discerning voice!

Anatomy of the perfect trivia question

People often ask me, "What makes a good trivia question?," especially as I make myself available for consulting on the subject. This is an excellent query (not a dumb one), because the answer isn't as obvious as it might seem. There are the basic qualifiers, of course—it has to have a discrete, verifiable answer; it needs to be phrased clearly—but there's a lot more to it. Writing the perfect trivia question is an art I've worked at pretty diligently in my quizmaster career (yeah, I'm an artist, so suck on it). I've written some awesome ones, a lot of good ones, a bunch of mediocre ones, and sadly, too many lousy ones. Allow me to present a case study with one of my favorites.

What current Hollywood star’s name is the inverse of a popular casino game?
(Want the answer immediately? Okay, fine.)

I wrote this question in the spring of 2009 and debuted it as the June 8 edition of the NYC BQT. (My trivia archives are pretty well organized, in extremely sharp contrast with, oh, my bedroom.) I can't remember the exact response it got at the time, but it must have been good, because I've since reused the Hollywood Star Casino Game Question as much as anything I've ever written: It's been featured at dozens of private quiz shows, it's appeared in an edition in every BQT satellite city (including last week's L.A. debut), it shows up in more than a few BQT press releases and on our latest promo postcard, it was even featured in the City Scoops article about New York's best quiz events. I can't recall how I wrote it, and that story probably wouldn't be very interesting, but I'll tell you why it works so well.

It's figureoutable. This is what we're talking about with that wacky "figureoutable" sound effect at live shows. It's not a dry, you-either-know-it-or-you-don't query, it's something that the average culturally literate American can puzzle out with a little bit of effort. Not every good trivia question is figureoutable, but perhaps the best are, not just because they might be easier to get right, but because they're simply more fun to answer; the process of puzzling it out is just more entertaining than trying to remember what the capital of Burundi is. (The correct answer is "Who cares?") Some may disagree—there's an argument to be made that figureoutability makes it hard to separate the trivia men from the trivia boys, and I respect that. But that opinion runs counter to my personal philosophy that playing trivia should be fun, even when you lose. The Hollywood Star Casino Game Question is eminently figureoutable; it even gives you multiple entry points (do you start by thinking of Hollywood stars? or casino games? definitely easier to do the latter).

It appeals to a broad audience. I once asked this question: "The Nebraskan indie-pop group Tilly and the Wall is notable for rarely performing with a drummer, and instead using what for percussion?" Watch this video, listen to this great song, for your answer:

Hardly anyone got it right. I liked the question anyway—I mean, they're tap-dancing rock stars!—although I realized there are very few audiences I could use it in good conscience; there needs to be a significant music-geek quotient in the crowd. But the Hollywood Star Casino Game Question covers almost every culturally conscious American; the answer is a star who covers a broad demographic: started as a hipster favorite, now familiar to your mom and your pop, has become a frequent presence in kids' movies. There are few live-trivia crowds it wouldn't fly with, I think.

It's timely, yet has a decent shelf life. The fact that I'm asking for a "current" Hollywood star grounds it in the here-and-now, but not the this-exact-moment. Ultra-timely questions can be great, but they're nearly impossible to use after a certain sell-by date. BQT long-timers know that each year, I like to ask about Super Bowl commercials shortly after the big game, a fun way to test people's powers of perception (and the efficacy of the ads themselves, which I'm a lifelong cynic of). But it has to be shortly after—a week later, memories aren't as fresh, the relevance has faded away, no one cares that the Dodge Charger rather sexistly declared itself "Man's Last Stand." (That was from 2010; this year, there wasn't a BQT till several weeks later, so I skipped the theme entirely.) But assuming this celebrity stays in the public eye for a few years—and that seems to be more than a safe assumption—the Hollywood Star Casino Game Question is a gift that can keep giving. Even if the star fades a bit, the query is still usable, which leads me to…

It's adjustable. Once "current Hollywood star" becomes a stretch in accuracy, we can go with a more generic "actor," or "American actor," or "comedic actor," or "musician/actor." More importantly, we can make adjustments to make it more or less difficult. Easy it up with "What comedic musician/actor, born 1969, has a name that's the inverse of a casino game?" Or even, "What star of Kung Fu Panda has a name…" The ability to dial back the stumpiness is especially helpful for private events, where the generally less-self-selecting crowd dictates that I scale down the trickiness. Conversely, we could make it super-challenging by tweaking to "current Hollywood star" to just "celebrity," or alter "casino game" to "card game." Be careful, though; there could be other "celebrities" whose names qualify (can't think of any), or other "card games" that give us equally valid answers (probably impossible to mentally check every card game ever; "familiar card game" might be a safe hedge, but even then you might need to invoke quizmaster's prerogative to define "familiar"). Such are the challenges of the trivia-writing business, even when starting with an excellent baseline question such as this.

It's Google-Proof…theoretically. Or at least it was when I wrote it; as I said, I've spread the Hollywood Star Casino Game Question around, so now you can find the answer pretty easily via BQT press. True Google-Proof questions are rare (despite their daily appearance our Twitter feed; it's a lot of work), but their advantage is not just in the way they foil cheaters (who are blessedly rare at our live events). They're also simply more original than something whose answer is just laying out there for all to stumble across.

It's entertaining. I covered something of this when discussing figureoutability above, but the Hollywood Star Casino Game Question passes perhaps my most important test for a trivia question: It's entertaining in its own right, regardless of whether you get it right or wrong. A somewhat unlikely juxtaposition of concepts, the realization of how unusual this person's name really is…there's a lot to like here on a purely entertainment level. Sure, that's a matter of opinion. But hey, it's my opinion, this is my blog.

All told, I'm very proud of this question (as if you hadn't gathered). In fact, I'm a little conflicted about actually publishing this post. I mean, the more it's out there, the less I'll feel comfortable using this query at future events. (Even the best question is ruined when you've heard it before, never mind when you've read a long, navel-gazing analysis of it.)

And in case you haven't figured it out yet, I got the answer right here. A great scene in easily his best movie:

Coming soon: An analysis of a terrible question. Fair and balanced is our slogan, after all.