a love letter to fun facts on national trivia day
I remember the first fun fact I ever learned.
I was on vacation in New Hampshire with my family and my friend Dan. I don’t remember much from the trip, but it was 2001 and we were 12 so whatever we were doing and saying was not good or cool.
We were staying in a town called Sutton [an Anglo-Saxon name meaning ‘South Town’], at the house of a longtime friend of my dad, Mike. He suggested we all play a game of Trivial Pursuit, and I can’t remember if we agreed outright, or if my parents forced us to play so we’d stop talking like Stewie Griffin for 30 minutes. But we joined.
I had recently learned that in the 80s, Mike was a bona fide [Latin for ‘in good faith’] competitive Trivial Pursuit player. My dad told me that Mike and their other friend Jim (I say other friend because to this day I’m not sure if any of them have any other friends) would do pretty well in Trivial Pursuit tournaments all over New England.
That was about as impressive as anything I’d ever heard of. How could anyone remember this much stuff? And pre-internet, no less, so looking back I’m like, how did you even learn it in the first place? I was a smart enough kid, but even the brightest 12 year olds (with the best Stewie Griffin impressions) are no match for the average round of Trivial Pursuit. But I had two main strengths though: sports (ideally, the roster of the Boston Red Sox at that exact moment), and state capitals (which I had memorized the year previous and was very proud of myself for).
After what must have been an exhausting number of incorrect answers, I finally got a question about the state capitals:
What is the only capital city that does not share a letter with its state?
I was stumped. I didn’t have enough time to run through all of them (the Sargents were strict hourglass flippers), and I just could not come up with it. I knew it wasn’t Atlanta, Georgia [home of Georgia Tech, alma mater of both Nomar Garciaparra and Jason Varitek]. Time was up. I didn’t have it.
After I learned the answer, I found a pen and a yellow legal pad [like the ones on which David E. Kelley writes all of his scripts], and in between turns I would recall as many of the state capitals as I could, to fact-check the question. An obvious waste of time, which all were quick to point out, but important to me for some reason (you’re welcome, Selchow and Righter [who also made Parcheesi]). I was just so delighted with all of it. Who thought to include this question in a trivia game? Who would even notice such a frivolous detail in the first place? Only someone with an unmitigated love of fun facts could have even conceived of a question like this, and in that moment, that love was passed onto me.
I was so thrilled. Who knew there was more to learn about the state capitals than their names? But there was! So much more! What about which state capital is farthest north [Juneau]? Which one has the most people [Phoenix]? Have any state capitals been named after people who were executed [St. Paul and Raleigh?! What the deuce?]? The fun fact possibilities were endless.
This quickly blossomed into a passion. I would dig up old BrainQuest cards [called Les P’tits Incollables in their native France] and peruse them for fun. The Jeopardy! games we’d watch at home became more competitive. We had been keeping score using tally marks, but realized that this system didn’t allow for the earned reward of getting harder questions correct. Soon, there were hand-drawn game boards with dollar amounts & frantic commercial break arithmetic to keep up to date scores.
I entered high school in 2003, and was lucky(?) enough to experience the lawless, amoral nascence of the World Wide Web as we know it. Fun facts had never been more accessible. So to complement my daily Jeopardy! intake, I was also falling in love with sites like Wikipedia and Sporcle and StumbleUpon. Were there some drawbacks to this time period on the internet? Of course. But even someone as unseemly as Mr. Hands had something to teach [‘perforate’ comes from the Latin ‘per’ meaning through, and ‘forare’ meaning ‘pierce’] (I hope to god you did not understand that reference). Overall, the good outweighed the bad. Or, probably not, but I didn’t really care.
One of the reasons that Jeopardy! has had such unparalleled success in its field is because of their unique clue-writing. Much like the character of Shrek [from the film Shrek, the first ever winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature], the clues have layers. Often, they are strategically using fun facts as guideposts to help find the right answer — er, question.
To use the state capital example, here’s what a $2000 clue might look like in a category called ‘Geographical First Names’:
“The 2nd least populous state capital is this city, the only capital city that doesn’t share any letters with its state.”
See? Now I know two fun facts about this state capital!
That Fun Fact Spirit (FFS) was important to me when I started Lucky Guess. If a team is going to get a question wrong — and of course I hope none of you ever do — I’d like for them to walk away with something. So maybe at their next trivia night, they can have it in their back pocket! That’s the FFS, ffs!
I’ve thought a lot about where my love of fun facts comes from, and I think I’ve landed on the obvious and pathetic-adjacent conclusion that it’s to do with my need for attention. I absolutely love the way it feels to hit a group of friends with a fresh new fun fact. The look on someone’s face when they learn that Randy Newman co-wrote Three Amigos? That Elle King is Rob Schneider’s daughter? I enjoy it so much that the whole endeavor feels selfish. It’s like those people who devote their lives to doing good because they love doing good, and you’re like, okay but then aren’t you just doing it because you love it? Then is it actually good? My point is, I’m a lot like Mother Theresa [one of only two people, along with Winston Churchill, to be made an honorary citizen of the United States while still alive].
Even more than the attention it brings, learning bits of trivia (and having a curious disposition in general) has made me more appreciative of the world around me. Knowing that Layla was written by Eric Clapton about George Harrison’s wife [Patti Boyd] makes me listen more closely to the lyrics, to the song as a whole. It makes me want to go and listen to a song that George wrote about Patti. It makes me wanna Google what Eric Clapton’s thoughts are on the AstraZeneca vaccine!
Actually no I changed my mind, the best part is the attention.
Every bit of information you learn, no matter how random or seemingly unimpactful to your life, is a revelation. I’m very grateful that I get to share my love of trivia with so many people, and to show that gratitude, I’m going to leave you with 5 of my most favorite fun facts of all time! Happy National Trivia Day!
(5 OF) BRENDAN’S FAVORITE FUN FACTS!
5. An Olympic gold medal is about 93% silver.
4. The toy ‘Lincoln Logs’ were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, John Lloyd Wright
3. Jeopardy! Champion & Lucky Guess Trivia Founder/CEO Brendan Sargent was born on National Trivia Day in 1989.
2. On March 12th, 1951 the US and the UK — by total coincidence — both released unrelated comic strips titled “Dennis the Menace.”
1. The only capital city that doesn’t share a letter with its state is Pierre, South Dakota.
