Review - Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

Finally that review of Ken Jennings's book that I've been coddling for so long that it crumbles before my very eyes every time I edit or enhance or add some surreal flight of fancy. To the river I cast thee.

Something truly surreal happened to Ken Jennings back in 2004. This self-confessed "mediocre" software engineer became the most famous quiz contestant in American television history. Not exactly an easy feat.

His record-breaking 74-show run on Jeopardy!, the hardiest and most enduring of all US quiz formats turned him into a bona fide media star, double millionaire and ultimately the author of a non-fiction book detailing his own bank balance-boosting stint on the show as well as an overview of trivia history. And you know what? It ain't half bad.

Jennings can plainly write (you get the feeling he was one of those many secret scribes who dream of a proper opportunity to show off their writing skills, but otherwise would have stayed safely anonymous) and does so with searching insight and without recourse to predictable platitudes. He interviews dozens, possibly hundreds of key figures from all over the American trivia scene and delineates a world that many non-US readers know precious little about. In fact, I reckon few of our Transatlantic cousins will be aware of many of the trivia crazes that have possessed vast sections of the populace throughout history (you will be surprised).

Yet the strange thing about Brainiac, the thing that subsumes all my thinking about the book, is that it depicts a Bizarro world. To British readers it portrays an alternative universe where the world of quiz developed along starkly different lines. We are through the looking glass, people. Jennings comes to the seemingly startling conclusion that "the play's the thing". The cash don't matter one jot. Yet this is obvious to all regular quiz competitors (or at least those who aren't going all out for Millionaire) in the UK. Any cash is a bonus. You think we play in quiz leagues on Tuesday nights for the food and mayo dip and intellectual badinage? You loon. Truth be told, we just love the thrill of knowing and accumulating trivia and putting it on public display on a regular basis. And, of course, smashing opponents into weepy submission (but we are too modest and devious to say that).

The book makes clear a fundamental dichotomy in the Anglo-American quiz-sphere. While we adopted Mastermind and University Challenge, two no-money, academic and all-prestige shows, as our flagship quiz programmes, it appears that primetime TV in the States could only see the point in big money quiz and game shows. College Bowl, for instance, didn't make it out of the sixties. No money = no sense - they might have asked where's the bright shining aspiration? The American Dream of advancing yourself materially through the means of your own mind? But if a show such as Mastermind had become an serendipitous beneficiary of some scheduling accident sometime in the 70s over there, who knows how the American trivia world might have developed differently?

Some will love exploring this alternative universe, a brave new world few Brits have even fleetingly glimpsed. Meanwhile, others will stare in blankness at Ken's skillfully deployed but intensive use of TV cultural references. I suppose, the British edition could always substitute Man About the House for Three's Company, but how ugly was Milton Berle? I have no idea (didn't have have a giant you know what?) Was his face as craggy and formless as Tommy Cooper's? Did Berle's ugliness cause people to projectile vomit in his face when they caught sight of it? Questions and puzzlement result. Then again, I can always look this stuff up on the interweb. When mention was made of Michael Chiklis's signature smooth dome, I swear I thought to myself: very bald guy from The Shield, yes! I know something about US TV! Or maybe that's because I remember how rubbish he looked playing The Thing in The Fantastic Four movie.

US pop cult connoisseurs will lap up the knowing nods and evidence of a life imbued by the knowledge gained while spent growing up in front of the TV and sucking in such shows as Family Feud. You see, here in Blightly we got Ask the Family and its inbred bastard offspring Dick and Dom's Ask the Family Not too much bending of space and time is needed to get across the fact that they are peas in the same pod, albeit with different accents and prizes.

But semantics matter. Because of the evocative impressions that simple names make in the mind and the emotional connections and flashbacks such titles as The Price is Right incite. You spend ten years watching a show and it becomes a part of the mental furniture, a reliable friend. If you have never come across a show such as Tic Tac Dough before, it is to all intents and purposes a complete stranger in which you have invested not one second of your viewing time. Therefore the show is meaningless. On the page it means nothing.

Thankfully, Brainiac avoids the pratfalls of foreign weirdness and cricket pitch subject matter with regards to what it covers. Foreigners like me won't mind all these strange and unfamiliar show names, because at the heart of it, a love of trivia reigns. Every quiz addict the world over will empathise. Having said that, however, if there is one show you love and it happens to be Jeopardy!, your existing emotional attachment to Jeopardy! means that this book is a must-read. Thankfully, the cultural investigation aspect provides ample reading for those who can't get their head round the weird reverse question and answer format and Trebek-gazing (funnily enough, if you substitute Jeremy Paxman or William G Stewart for Alex Trebek's name it all makes far more sense).

Pedantic British readers will be inclined to point out little things. For instance, Q&A newspaper columns are still alive and well in the UK, most notably in the form of the slightly batty Notes & Queries feature in The Guardian. And ho ho, major pedantry alert, on page 91 Ken writes about a certain Charles Ingram causing contestant contamination problems despite being stuck across a very wide ocean: "an army major won a million pounds thanks to some well-timed coughing by confederates in the crowd" and therefore he invites the nitpicking of those who remember Tecwen Whittock's allegedly substantial contribution from contestants' row. Which isn't really the crowd is it?

Jeopardy! is also advanced as a "fast-paced show" with 61 questions squeezed into every episode. And this is true, compared to the glacial running of Millionaire with its increasingly irritating umming and awwing. However, what about the 40 quick-fire questions finalists in every show of Fifteen-to-One answered in less than ten minutes (forgetting the first half of the programme). And what about the 35 to theoretically maximum 40 questions every Mastermind contestant receives in the space of four extremely nervy minutes in Gestapo-style interrogation (it's true. I never make Nazi jokes)? If Jeopardy is a rat-atat-tat machine gun, then Mastermind is a Gatling gun going "RRRRRRR". Or that Mini-gun Jesse Ventura brandishes in Predator. You get my drift.

This does not reflect badly on Ken's conclusions. Far from it. It just shows up the differences that divide the US and UK quiz cultures (never mind the vast portions of sport, local politics and other paraphernalia that are alien to both ... I mean, NCAA basketball, college football ... sheer bloody madness). We were brought up with different expectations and different formats. We think different things. It is something to bear in mind.

Take the term "trivia". Trivia is the actually the American equivalent of what we call "quiz" or "general knowledge". It took me a few dozen pages of this book to finally get my head round it. Though Ken says he doesn't think much of the name "trivia" and meets aficionados who think the term shortchanges what the true worth of the pastime, he never ceases using the word "trivia" and never does what any Brit would do and call it "quiz". Come to think of it we never even use the term "trivia" over here to denote anything to do with quiz (unless it is a quiz book title that needs a spot of t-t alliteration). I hate the word, not that it is trivia's fault. But it is one letter away from being trivial.

Somehow Jennings's occasional wrestling with the term seemed oddly moot because it is something that never troubles British quizzers like myself. If we've over-used "quiz" and "general knowledge", we then resort to the simple straightforward word "facts". Just like Isaac Asimov (I bet he would have hated calling his Books of Fact "Trivia Books", even though the contents were basically identical to every other trivia book). You cannot doubt the authority of the word "fact", unlike that casual, dumbed down, good for nothing, party dude "trivia".

Actually, I only really recoiled from the use of "trivia" when it was used in the phrase "pub trivia" to refer to that proud British icon the "pub quiz". Even using the phrase "pub trivia" one time was enough to irk me. Once was too much. A desecration of the traditional quiz glossary. This is because term "pub quiz" or "quiz night" implies an event. What does "pub trivia" mean to you? I think it sounds silly. To me, it signals trivia to do with the pub; i.e. questions about The Lamb public house; pub rituals like drinking beer from trainers, and questions on all bar snacks from chilli rice biscuits to cockles. Where's the beginning and the end? When will it stop for the love of God!!!

I can't for the life of me recall a single pub quiz book that had the words "pub trivia" in its title (yep, go prove me wrong with dozens of examples and rub them in my face). It was the only chapter (Ken has a fun old time playing in a pub trivia contest with a long serving and nicely obsessed team) I felt like going "Oi! Jennings no!" (that's a British TV reference by the way ... une peu de vengeance).

Looking at it objectively, the American use of the term "trivia" and our use of "quiz" does reflect something of the national character, if I may say so very haughtily. Trivia is breezy and easy-going and fun. Quiz on the other hand stands for seriousness, respect and achievement. Both have their positives and negatives. Plus, you have to remember that quizzes are called tests in UK schools. Us Brits reserve purely the "quiz" word for trivia contests and competitions, so there are no real connotations of educational snootiness.

Sample line for British readers: "So why is pub quiz still a niche activity in America when it's practically a national pastime - certainly up there with cricket, whining and overcooking their food - in the United Kingdom?" (p.219)

Don't worry I've whined myself out.

Those niggly little things should, however, be overwhelmed by the countless gems and trivia-related factoids, starting the revelation of the one time big money British radio quiz champion Plantagenet Somerset Fry, who won a princely sum of £512 back in the fifties. Then there are the various phenomenona laid out before us: the long history of the trivia book, the campus trivia fad of the sixties, the infamous Columbo's first name lawsuit, why women don't go for quizzes the way us blokes do - all explained and discussed in compelling detail. These mini-investigations could have been stand alone chapters, but are instead skilfully weaved into the chapters that begin at some point in the Jennings' success story. Come to think of it, it's like those flashback scenes in Wayne's World. I liked those bits and the way the screen went wavy.

The chapter on question-writing and the nine styles of questions may not have revealed anything that this setter didn't already know, but it crystallised many of the precepts I adhere to, as well as give me the word "pin" for that arduous process I endure every fortnight when I have to triple-verify a batch of 59 quiz questions. Were it not for that self-imposed process I might again suffer the horrific pain and indignity of numerous know-alls posting on websites, emailing me, writing me letters and phoning me up, just to tell me that Z in the phonetic alphabet does not stand for Zebra. If you get something wrong, be sure that there are teeming masses of people who want to wag their figures in your face and correct you with glee.

Only my reasons for writing vast numbers of questions seem out of kilter with the rest of the setting-community. Granted I do it for a bit of money, but the overwhelming reason is because I want to learn more about subjects I feel relatively weak on (just like Quiz Bowlers). I also write questions on what interests me. In truth, it's just another weapon in my unceasing bid for quiz champion pre-eminence. Yes, world domination. There I've said it. And since it has gone into overdrive during the last year, it has helped me no end in nailing down stuff I've been confusing for years. (As it has undoubtedly aided Kevin Ashman since he gave up his civil service job to write questions for Brain of Britain that Radio 4 "general knowledge contest").

Brainiac also builds on and illuminates the stories you heard before. The explanation of the Twenty One scandal also makes for compulsive reading as it extricates the history from the death of the American dream fictionalision portrayed in Robert Redford's film Quiz Show. Much of the story and incidental details made it into the film, but somehow I found Jenning's take on it and his analysis of the original show tapes much more compelling. He has the quiz addict's eye for what really matters to us, e.g. there was no way they could possibly spell out the full name and title when the surname will surely do.

However, being a sucker for stories of the Quiz Bowl circuit I found that particular chapter the most fascinating. QB is quiz competition taken to its highest, most esoteric and academic heights and is played by hundreds of teams and thousands of players across the US. Just reading that Subash Madipotti wrote 8,500, yes, eight and a half-thousand possible lead-ins for starters at the 2003 NAQT ICT where he top scored in astounding fashion by averaging 11 starters a match, not only plants a note of sheer admiration and awe in me. It also gives me ideas I never considered about my so far seemingly shoddy preparation for tourneys.

That level of organisation, obsession and participation has never taken root here, despite the valiant attempts of Rob Linham (quoted here as "British quiz veteran" and lover of questions to do with Viagra) and the Oxford University Quiz Society. So I am extremely envious of our American cousins in that regard. In the UK, University Challenge sates most students' trivia ambitions and has the added bonus of being on evening television. Why would they want to do it away from TV cameras and adoring audiences? Who sees the fun in competing with harder questions against battle hardened teams? Apart from me and my mates, that is.

The writing style never grates. For the most part Jennings avoids the bombastic wise-ass prose adopted by AJ Jacobs in his yuk-yuk book about reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and seen at its most off-putting in such mouthy gits as sports scribe Rick Reilly (hmm, then again, there is that comment about Alex Trebek's now departed moustache ... I said "for the most part"). One reviewer has commented it is too glib, but then it is a high-wire balancing act trying to be funny and self-deprecating in a book that at the heart of it boils down to one giant march to trivia glory. He could have fallen into the sad and cheap celeb biography trap that ensnares so many overnight stars or turned his book into the trivia equivalent of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom (which might have been funny). He doesn't.

In Brainiac Jennings never once looks like plummeting to earth or teetering in woah-there fashion, though yet another reviewer (perhaps the same one) has mentioned that the book is a bit light on the whole Jeopardy! winning streak. Sure, you do realise that you get a number of snapshots and vignettes rather than the full-on Jeopardy! experience. And that's a good thing. Including more games, no matter how scintillating, might have resulted in the balancing act being upended. You don't want to skirt the realm of the obsessive chess kibitzer, analysing game after game in microscopic detail. Having said that, people can always go on the J-Archive and relive the matches in their own little way (wigs, flat daddies as contestants, home-made set with Xmas tree lights, tape recordings of Trebek).

Jennings's book acts as a worthy companion piece to our own survey of the British quiz world, Marcus Berkmann's Brain Men, as if illustrating the aforementioned alternative dimension. I just hope it sells more than Marcus's nifty little opus, which he told me in disappointed tones sold one-fifteenth as many copies as its quasi-prequel on obsessed club cricketers, Rain Men.

The crux of the problem, as I see it is that quiz subculture in the UK let alone in the US may not be pervasive enough to make a book examining the trivia phenomenon a true bestseller. The problem is not that the books are bad - far from it - the problem is convincing sizeable numbers of book lovers and quiz show and trivia fans to buy it. There are many trivia books out there, take fancy Schott's Original Miscellany, but they provide pure streams of knowledge and the constant joy of discovering something you don't know in a sea of apparent randomness. Try to explain the obsession and readers might think you lose some of the magic. Try to explain that you have written a book about why people like to answer questions and they may think you are nuts.

The very concept of a book which surveys the entire quiz subculture is utterly alien to the book-buying public (and I would say trivia buffs are firmly in that camp). In fact there is no tradition about first person quiz show addicts exploring their obsession in book form. In this way, Brainiac is trying to set a precedent in the US market. I am inclined to believe that it has to create a new audience or at least draw the willing yet disparate readers out from their assorted nooks and crannies and get the book in their hands and set them off. It is a hard ask.

Put simply, trivia buffs are not united by a common format everyone adheres to like chess or Scrabble. It is nebulous and diffuse; the formats, games and TV shows are many and varied in number. People often subscribe solely to one form of the quiz: be it pub trivia, quiz bowl/buzzer quiz or just doing TV and radio shows. Many shy away from attempting them all or leaving a self-perceived comfort zone.

There is no central organising body as in games such as Scrabble and therefore no unified system to buy into with a clear set of achievable objectives and ultimate endgame (e.g. the nationals or the world championships). Of course, things have changed in recent years, but the vast majority of quiz lovers live in ignorance of such events as the World Quizzing Championships. There is something about addiction to trivia that is not specific enough. There is no single board game that people can pull out the world over with the word QUIZ emblazoned on it. People most definitely have the urge, but not the uniform means to indulge it with absolutely everyone else.

Certainly, Stefan Fatsis's brilliant book on Scrabble - Word Freak - took advantage of everyone's singular focus on that game. There aren't any rival word games diluting the audience. Scrabble is the master of its lettered domain and so there was a massive ready made readership waiting to see their almost identically passionate and no doubt fraught relationship with the game reflected in the highs and lows of Fatsis's attempt to make it as a first rate Scrabble player.

Trivia fans are different. They can live in their own world, just feeding off a weekly showing of University Challenge. Scratching that fact-hungry itch every Monday night is enough. Then they easily slip back into civilian life. Figures may suggest that one in ten Britons consider themselves a "quizaholic", but the vast majority (99 per cent I think) are happy to sate the quizzer in them by just sitting in their comfy armchair and shouting their answers at the screen.

I am certain that TV love of quiz shows has dissipated the appeal of competitive quizzing. If it wasn't such a regular presence on TV, acting as a convenient and cheap schedule filler where everyone can play along at home, then more people would get together and indulge their hobby. Sturdier organisation and heavily subscribed tournaments would surely follow.

Therefore, a lack of standardisation that makes for a weakness in harnessing a trivia-loving audience for not only the book, but also quiz championships. Also, think of the way that a beautifully simple format such as Texas Hold 'Em has enthralled millions of poker players all over the world. The trivia world does not have that.

How can we unite and become one global community? Give me a few years to ponder that particular dilemma. And a few thousand quid as well. For my trouble.

Anyway, I'm just rambling now. I hope Brainiac sells well. It deserves to. Spirited, pleasingly inquisitive (as it had to be, as Ken admits: "I started writing this book knowing next to nothing about the history and culture of trivia") and perhaps most importantly witty. Wit matters. If something doesn't make you smile on a regular basis, then it just ain't worth it.

Brainiac basically tells you things you never knew before and introduces you to people you have never heard of but certainly want to know more about. Which is all I can ever ask of my chosen reading material. Oh, and the book has trivia questions up the wazoo. Obviously. Each chapter includes about a dozen embedded trivia teasers that directly relate to the narrative, with their answers revealed at the end. They are pretty good.

Finally, there is one line for British quiz fans that will certainly ring bells of realisation. When asked why the British filled their life with trivia and extraneous detail which they loved to collect and hoard and later spread the habit to the States like some nerdy plague, one interviewee replies "the weather". Gosh. Everything suddenly makes sense.