Trivial Pursuits

I hope all you folks out there had a good holiday season, however you celebrated – burning Yule Logs, decorating trees, yelling at uncles – I trust it went well with you.  Me, I spent it in my own traditional manner: sitting alone, in the dark, drinking red wine and absinthe, until midnight rolled around at which point I went out on my balcony to projectile-vomit my Christmas Cheer down onto the streets of this miserable city.

After that, I lay on the floor for a while, reminiscing of Christmases Past, while trying to focus both eyes on what may have been a centipede crawling across my ceiling, or may have just been a physical manifestation of the Guilt which is so endemic to the Writing Profession.

Its Bizarre movements and Gravity Defying behaviour brought me back to a girl I’d once Known and Loved, and the many arguments we shared.  Specifically it brought me back to a single evening in a long-lost December, when I first got to meet her family, and we played a game of Trivial Pursuit in their townhouse.

In retrospect, this should have been a sign of Clear and Present Danger, but the Aurini from those days was Naive, and Hopeful for the Human Spirit.  He hadn’t yet learned to judge.

Trivial Pursuit’s a strange game, isn’t it?  So aptly named, yet so popular.  Each card contains datums which are utterly obscure and largely irrelevant – ‘Who was the Oscar’s Best Actor in 1997?’ ‘Who was the first leader of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party born after the Russian Revolution?’ ‘What hurdler won 122 straight races from 1977 to 1987?’ ‘What brand began hyping cheese products with a blue-winged bovine mascot called the Dairy Fairy?’ – the odds are decent that you know the answer to at least one of these, but that isn’t something to brag about.

Occasionally you’d find a question with at least a bit of relevance for day-today productive life – ‘What is Pi to 6 digits?’ ‘What is the earliest bird-like Therapod?’ ‘What Billy Joel opus listed 120 significant people, places and events from the previous four decades?’ – but there are the exception, not the rule.  The more useful something is, the less likely it is to be included.  The Dictum is Trivial, after all, but they have to fill the Science- and History- questions with something, and from what I gather ‘Which war did Hitler fight in?’ is actually unknown by most of the game’s audience.

[Hint: it’s a trick question!]

Needless to say, I fared quite poorly against competition which had never heard of a man called H.L. Mencken.

These problems don’t stem from the format of the game, however – the problem is the material.  But this problem is innate to its creation: anyone who knows enough trivia to produce such a monstrosity, is going to show an inability to apply said trivia; it’s like knowing your log tables off by heart.  While this is technically useful, it will only occur in a mind which has no use for logarithms.  Processing power, or data storage: you can’t pick both.  These meat-machines ain’t got the best architecture.

But like I said, the format of the game has potential, but nobody who understands Smart will make a Trivial Pursuit for the Intelligensia.  So what are us thinking folk supposed to do?

Well, one of my favourite old curmudgeons had an idea from his childhood:

I remember that we played a parlor game in which the contestant called out numbers, as for example 234, 2, 6. He was then read whatever word was found on page 234, column two, entry six of a massive unabridged dictionary. He was expected to spell it, and give its etymology and first and second meanings. People do not, I think, play that game today.

He’s probably right that nobody does.  But maybe it’s time to start up again.

Go to Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day archive; pick a year, roll a D12 for month, and a d4+d10 for day.  Laugh at your friend for failing.

Then sip your port, and discuss the Underclass.

That’s all for now, folks.  Think I’ll go lay on the floor again.