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before you can hope to succeed at pub trivia, you must first understand what success means in a pub trivia context. now, there may be some people who show up to a bar on a weeknight with no intention of answering any questions correctly. and there may well be others who will refuse to accept "gangster's paradise" as the title of coolio's song from "dangerous minds" because, actually, it's "gangsta's paradise." but the vast majority of attendees strive for an evening that is filled with lots of check marks in their answer booklets and plenty of fun with friends.
in short, success at pub trivia means having fun and getting questions right.
1) your team: you will be spending about two hours huddled over an answer booklet with two or three teammates. remember: the more well-rounded your team is, the more likely it is that you'll be able to handle questions on such diverse subjects as history, sports, pop culture, language, geography, and religion. on the other hand, you will be spending two hours with these people! recruit a team that is defined by camaraderie, diversity, and an ability to resolve conflict quickly.
speaking of teams, which north american cities have more that one major league baseball team?
2) your prep: read the newspaper, browse wikipedia, play sporcle, and watch "the simpsons," if you enjoy doing those things already, but remember that the point of pub trivia is to make use of the seemingly useless - hence trivial - facts your brain has clung onto. ideally, playing the game makes you more curious and more present to the mundane details of everyday life. it does not require you to pursue an additional degree.
speaking of research, the library in alexandria is the oldest in the world, but it is no longer active. in which country would you find the oldest active library in the world?
3) your answers: talk it out with your team, but err on the side of going with your gut instinct. if you get it wrong, you get it wrong. but if you ignore your instinct and it turns out that instinct was right, it may ruin your evening.
speaking of your gut, crohn's disease was first documented not by the american gastroenterologist from whom it takes its name but in 1904 by a surgeon from which european country?
4) your guesses: there will often come a time when neither your collective knowledge bank nor deductive reasoning produces an answer in which your team is confident. usually, there's no penalty for guessing, so here are my tips for that. mara-approved guesses come in two species: a) wild and b) tame.
a) the wild guess is so crazy that whoever is marking your booklet might think you were joking. on the other hand, if it turns out you are randomly right, your grader will be very impressed
b) the tame guess, while possibly wrong, will never inspire anyone to judge you or assume you are an ill-informed twit. if it's about a female american poet, and you have no idea, you might as well guess emily dickinson.
speaking of questions requiring a guess, what is halle berry's middle name?
my third and fourth points demonstrate that there's a close relationship between the two prongs of the pub trivia fork: it's hard to have fun when you keep kicking yourself for not going with your gut or when your ego is bruised. follow my tips and you'll prevent those catastrophes.
what you must remember, however, is that it is possible to have fun even when you don't win. in the final analysis, there are no tricks to getting every answer right. as my mentor in pub trivia once said, "there's no such thing as easy questions or hard questions - there are only answers you know and answers you don't." succeeding at pub trivia means allowing yourself to celebrate the answers you knew and the answers you pulled out of the air... and being surrounded by people who won't dwell on the answers you missed.
highlight the following to find out the answers to the trivia questions!
1) there are three such cities: the los angeles angels of anaheim and dodgers, the new york mets and yankees, and the chicago cubs and white sox.
2) egypt - st. catherine’s monastery in the sinai is home to the oldest active library in the world!
3) poland - his name was antoni lesniowski
4) halle - her first name is maria.
3 comments:
without knowing the context for which it's intended, either way it seems thorough, fun, and very encouraging!
I've never even heard of this pub trivia of which you write! But I imagine that success at pub trivia requires much more than your advice can give... A lot of people just wouldn't have enough trivial knowledge to be of any value to a team, and I feel like that's the boat I inhabit.
i think we all know more than we realize... but even so, it's not fun for everyone. should i work that in? this is my audition for an lsat prep teaching position!
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