Paul Paquet - The Brain Boosting Trivia Book for Adults: 750+ Questions to Help You Flex Your Mind Muscles

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R0 To Laura, of course, who said 25 years ago, You should write a trivia book. Love you MBOA. Thank you. And to those trivia writers whose skills and talents have inspired and entertained me. I would attempt to list you all, but expressio unius est exclusio alterius (to mention one is to exclude the others) . CONTENTS I WAS A WEIRD LITTLE KID.

When I was in grade school, sometimes Id hang out with the teacher supervising recess and ask her questions. She assumed it was normal childhood curiosity. Then she realized I was actually quizzing her on things Id read in The World Book Encyclopedia . As I said, I was a weird little kid. But Ive loved learning, and sharing what Ive learned, ever since. The more I learn, the more I see how things are connected.

The invention of photography meant painters were free to be more abstract. Trying to improve magnets for naval navigation led us to stumble into the discovery of electricity, which led to electric light and urban nightlife. More to the point, the more I learn, the more I can practically feel the synapses in my brain lighting up and making these connections. Im on the wrong side of fifty, but I know much more about, say, opera and the Bible than I did when I was half my age. And Im retaining it, too. That brings us to this book.

I want you to have that same electric experience of building on what you know and discovering what you have forgotten you know. The questions that follow are designed to be fun, but theyre also designed to keep your gray matter humming. Im going to take you around the world. Youll be answering multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Youll be putting things in order, separating truths from falsehoods, and sorting out word banks, either on your own or with friends and family. I cant wait to take you there.

Youre going to have fun learning things. And who knows? If you happen to come across a grade school teacher somewhere, maybe youll quiz her about ancient Egyptian deities. I know. A book with instructions. Odd, right? Dont worry, its easy as pie. Its more like suggestions than instructions anyhow.

THE QUIZZES Ive divided up millennia of knowledge into four categories: . Each section includes twenty-one quizzes. The answers are at the end of this book, starting . If you find flipping back and forth annoying, I hear you. Its why I encourage people to buy two copies. Thats a jokekinda.

Question and Answer Five of the quizzes in each section are straight-up questions and answers. I ask the questions, and you provide the answers. There are ten questions in each quiz. Ideally, youll have ten correct answers. You can choose to make each question worth 1 pointor a million. Im not the points police.

Multiple Choice Nine of the quizzes in each section help you along by providing the correct answer. Unfortunately for you, I mix it in with three wrong answers. The options are arranged alphabetically, more or less. The multiple choice questions are worth the same points as the question-and-answer questions. Sequencing and So On For the Sequencing: Put Them in Order sections, I have you arrange six items in a specific order. For instance, I may ask you to sort presidents by when they served, or mammals by mass.

If you get all six in the correct order, thats 6 points! (Or 6 million.) If youre a super-nice person, you can award half points if only one or two items are out of order, but I wouldnt. Im meticulous that way. Each section has a true-or-false quiz, which is self-explanatory. Each correct answer is 1 point each. Each section also has three word banks. This is a little like multiple choice in reverse.

You have all the correct answers, but you have to match them to the correct question, term, name, or the like. One point is given for each correct match. HOW TO USE THIS BOOK FOR GROUP PLAY Odds are, youre reading this by yourself, or maybe on a bus or a beach, or maybe somewhere that I dont want to be visualizing. Its how books work. But not this book! This book can be played by whole bunches of people. If you like people, youre in luck! Team Answering Divide into teams and consider having captains do a schoolyard pick, one at a time.

Thats always fun and never stigmatizing; or, have that person who was on Jeopardy! play alone. There is no end to the ways you can divide people up. Then pick somebody to read the questions and let the teams retreat to come up with their answers. Return and take turns reading your answers. Which team got the most right? Who had the funniest wrong answer? The options are endless. Solo Answering Personally, I think the fun of teamwork is working together, but another way to do it is to have people on teams take turns answering the questions out loud and all by themselves.

If you want to make this experience even more stressful than it already is, you can put a clock on it, just like Family Feud s Fast Money challenge. Combination You can combine these approaches. For example, the person solo answering might get help from teammates who are not technically playing. Some might call this cheating, but I wont tell anyone if you dont. You can also hear the questions and have somebody volunteer to answer them. (There is no Bulgarian history quiz in this book.) Free for All If youre thinking, That all sounds like a lot of work, youre not wrong. (There is no Bulgarian history quiz in this book.) Free for All If youre thinking, That all sounds like a lot of work, youre not wrong.