The Anatomy of a Trivia Question

What constitutes a good trivia question? The following passage comes from Brainiac, a book by Ken Jennings that is a must-read for trivia fans.

Maybe the best test of a well-composed trivia question is how you feel when you DON’T know the answer. Anybody can enjoy getting a question right, even if it’s poorly written or dull. It’s fun to show what you know. But the ideal trivia question is so good that you even enjoy getting it wrong: you liked the mental exercise of rooting around for the answer, and you like the surprise of hearing the right answer after you gave up.

I agree. This concept should be the guiding principle when coming up with a question — there should be an interesting fact at the heart of your creation. The reader should come away feeling smarter even if they get it wrong.

Here’s a *bad* example:

Q: How many people are enshrined in the American Pro Football Hall of Fame as of May 2018?

The answer — 318 people. If you got it wrong (as I did), how do you feel now that you’re armed with that knowledge? Enriched? I certainly don’t. This is a textbook example of minutiae, a minor detail of no importance. Let’s try again:

Q: In what city is the American Pro Football Hall of Fame located?

Answer — Canton, Ohio. This is a bit better. A lot of sports fans are familiar with Canton and its association with football, so we’re moving away from the world of minutiae and into the realm of relevancy.

Still feeling unfulfilled? I understand if you are. Let’s kick it up a notch.

Q: Canton, Ohio, home of the American Pro Football Hall of Fame, was named after what Asian city that boasts over 10 million people?

Before I reveal the answer, aren’t you already intrigued? A football town in the Midwestern United States was named after an Asian megacity?

Answer — Guangzhou, China.

Guangzhou used to be known as Canton, an Anglicized name for the city. A related word you might recognize is Cantonese, the second most popular dialect of Chinese, which finds its roots in and around Guangzhou. The guy who named Canton, Ohio did so as an homage to a trader he admired who did business in China.

I recently submitted a dozen questions through the HQ Trivia app. In each case I first started with an interesting fact. Here are a few:

• Starbucks’ name comes from a character in Moby-Dick.
• The most populous city in both Oregon and Maine is named Portland.
• Albert Brooks, the voice of Marlin in Finding Nemo, was born Albert Einstein.

In a separate post, I’ll give my two cents on how to turn these into trivia questions — a challenge in a world where Google is ubiquitous.