Information about Trivia

For the Wikipedia guideline on trivia, see:

Trivia (singular: trivium) are unimportant (or "trivial") items, especially of information. In the late twentieth century the expression came to apply more to information of the kind useful almost exclusively for answering quiz questions: a perfect "trivia question" is one that initially stumps the listener, but the answer subsequently sounds familiar once revealed (otherwise the question would be considered either too familiar and therefore not trivia, or so unfamiliar and obscure as to be unanswerable and not as entertaining). The study or collection of trivia is known as spermology, which literally means collection of seeds.

Etymology

The etymology of the word trivia seems to start with Latin tri- = "three", and via = "way", "road", thus trivium, which has been treated in two ways:

• "Where three roads meet", especially as a place of public resort. The Latin adjective triviālis, derived from trivium, thus meant "appropriate to the street corner, commonplace, vulgar." The first known usage of the word "trivial" in Modern English is from 1589; it was used with a sense identical to that of triviālis. Shortly after that trivial is recorded in the sense most familiar to us: "of little importance or significance." Gradually, the word trivia came to be used in English for what in Latin would have called "triviālia", for anything information or concern which is treated as everyday and unimportant.
• "The Three Ways" (first known used in English in a work from 1432-1450). This work mentions the "arte trivialle", referring to the trivium, which was the three Artes Liberales (Liberal Arts) that were taught first in medieval universities, namely grammar, rhetoric, and logic. (The other four Liberal Arts were the quadrivium, namely arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, which were more challenging.) Hence, trivial in this sense would have meant "of interest only to an undergraduate".

The word "trivia" was popularized in its current meaning in the 1960s by Columbia University students Ed Goodgold and Dan Carlinsky, who created the earliest inter-collegiate quizzes that tested culturally important and unimportant facts, which they dubbed "trivia contests".

Quiz shows

Before the trivia subculture became widespread, via radio and TV quiz shows and books, the term commonly referred to bits of information to which most adults in the culture had at one time been exposed, via standard education or via popular culture. In time the term came also to comprise more obscure and arcane bits of knowledge. The first book treating trivia of this universal sort was Trivia (Dell, 1966) by Goodgold and Carlinsky, which achieved a ranking on the New York Times best seller list; the book was an extension of the pair's Columbia University trivia contests and was followed by other Goodgold and Carlinsky trivia titles. In 1974, a former Sacramento air traffic controller named Fred L. Worth published The Trivia Encyclopedia, which he followed in 1977 with The Complete Unabridged Super Trivia Encyclopedia, and in 1981 with Super Trivia, vol. II. The popularity of all these books laid the groundwork for the first edition of Trivial Pursuit in the early 1980s.

The enormous success of this game led, in the United States, to the re-launch of Jeopardy!, reviving a quiz show genre that had been dormant since the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. The American TV broadcaster ABC had a surprise hit with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, an import of a successful British quiz format which launched another wave of interest in trivia. In both the UK and Canada, the quiz format has enjoyed continuous success since the 1950s, untouched by the scandals that dogged the American format.

In addition to the mass media trivia, there have also been two entrenched trivia subcultures. One is the pub quiz phenomenon, which is especially prevalent in Great Britain and in select U.S. cities, particularly in pubs that serve a large Irish-American community. (The U.S. pub quiz scene is crimped by the popularity of Buzztime, a satellite-based game.)

Quiz bowls

The other subculture is the quizbowl format found in high schools and universities in the U.S., as well as in elementary, middle, and junior high schools; the Canadian equivalent is competition geared toward Reach for the Top, among high schools, whereas Canadian universities are beginning to participate in U.S. quiz bowl leagues.

The largest current trivia contest^[1][2] is held in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point's college radio station WWSP 89.9 FM. This is a college station with 11,500 watts of power and about a 65 mile (105 km) radius, and the contest serves as a fund raiser for the station. The contest is open to anyone, and it is played in April of each year spanning 54 hours over a weekend with eight questions each hour. There are usually 500 teams ranging from 1 to 50 players. The top ten teams are awarded trophies.

The University of Colorado Trivia Bowl was a student contestant featuring a single-elimination tournament based on the GE College Bowl.^[3] Many of the best trivia players in America trace participation through this tournament including many Jeopardy! and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? contestants.

See also

• Factoid
• The Book of General Ignorance
• Hey! Spring of Trivia (a Japanese television show on Fuji Television)
• List of radio trivia contests
• Sploofus website

References

Resources

• American Heritage Dictionaries (2000). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-82517-2.

External links

• Trivia at the Open Directory Project – An active listing of trivia links.
• Interviews with many of the people and organizations mentioned above