davidl@teklds.UUCP (David Levine) (12/07/85)
My usual trivia partners and I have played Trivial Pursuit's Genus I to
death and know all the questions.
Genus II was a great disappointment... all of the questions are either
impossible, blatantly obvious, or "I-didn't-know-that-the-answer-is"
questions. (Example: Q:"What does a grateful Swahili mean when he says
<Swahili phrase>?" A:"I didn't know that, the answer is 'Thank You'.")
We're too young for the Baby Boomers Edition and too old for the Young
People's Edition. Most of us don't know enough about sports for the
All-Star Edition or enough about music for the RPM Edition.
So, for this Christmas, I'm looking for trivia games other than Trivial
Pursuit. Problem is, there are dozens, and you just know that most of them
are worthless. So I'm appealing to the Net. Do you know of any trivia
games, or trivia card sets usable with Trivial Pursuit, that are any good?
I'm looking for a generic trivia game, like Genus I, but recommendations
for good single-subject games are welcome. A large number of question cards
is very important. Please MAIL your recommendations to me. I'll summarize
the responses (if any) in net.games.trivia.
<Swahili phrase> in advance. (:-))
David D. Levine (...{decvax,ihnp4,hplabs}!tektronix!teklds!davidl) [UUCP]
(davidl%teklds%tektronix@csnet-relay.arpa) [ARPA]kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT) (12/08/85)
David Levine asks for alternative trivia games. I have a 3M Bookshelf Game called "Facts in Five: A Game of Knowledge." It carries a 1967 copyright on the cover pix and a 1971 copyright on the instructions. The card deck doesn't give specific questions. Rather, it gives Subject Classes and subordinate categories. The object is to name 5 members of the Class/Category. The game can be played without equipment--the players can make up their own categories. I recall a version of this played by my high school cohorts. They would sit in a circle and clap hands to establish a rhythm. One person would name a category and everyone in turn named an instance, ending with the person who chose the category. Then the next player announced a new category. It was mostly done for fun and to sharpen the mind. I don't recall any scoring system. -- Barry Kort ...ihnp4!houxm!hounx!kort A door opens. You enter another dementia. The dementia of the mind.
davidl@teklds.UUCP (David Levine) (12/20/85)
In article <1360@teklds.UUCP>, I wrote: >My usual trivia partners and I have played Trivial Pursuit's Genus I to >death and know all the questions.... So, for this Christmas, I'm looking >for trivia games other than Trivial Pursuit.... Do you know of any trivia >games, or trivia card sets usable with Trivial Pursuit, that are any good? The reponse was not at all what I'd expected. Andrew Klossner (tekecs!lemming.TEK!andrew) mentioned the Oregon Trivia cards currently popular in this area, but unfortunately some of the people I usually play trivia games with are native Oregonians and some aren't, so the contests would generally be uneven. Steven List (luke!itkin) said that there was a "new set of cards that claim to be for use with TP", but I need more to go on than that. The real surprise was that three of the five respondents recommended an old game (circa 1967) called Facts In Five, which isn't what I was thinking of at all. Originally published by 3M (remember those "bookshelf games"?), now published by Avalon Hill, this is a trivia-type game in which the answers require a lot more thought. In the words of W. Keith Brummett (cbsck!wkb): ... the game consists of a pad of playing/scoring sheets, decks of "category" and "letter" cards, and a five-minute hour glass. Each playing sheet has a five-by-five matrix of boxes printed on it. Players take turns picking a category card from a shuffled and spread (face down) deck. The cards usually have a major category and a list of subcategories to choose from. An example would be "famous americans" as a category, with "presidents" being chosen as the sub-category. The selector of the card gets to choose from whatever choices the card presents, and there are some wild cards that let you choose any category and/or sub-category you want. When the selector has made his choices, that category (and sub-cat., if any) is entered at the top of a column on each players' playing sheet. This proceeds until all five columns have category headings. Then letter cards are selected in a similar manner and are used to label the five rows. There are also wild cards for letters. Once the matrix has been fully labeled, the hour glass is turned over, and the players have five minutes to fill in the boxes. The object is to find members of each category that start with each of the selected letters. For example, if column 1 was "presidents", as above, and row 3 was the letter "A", then you would enter "J.Q. Adams" in box 1,3. Of course, if one of the letters was "Z", you'd be out of luck with "presidents". When the time is up, players score their cards as follows. Going down each column, score one point for each filled box in that column. Square that number and enter it below each column. When you have done that for all five columns, do the same for each row. The sum of all the column scores plus all the row scores is your total score for the game. Note that this makes it important to try to completely fill in entire rows or columns. Well, it sounds fascinating, and so I bought it for my SO. If anyone wants my opinion, send me mail and I'll give you a review some time in the New Year. Thanks to the other people who recommended Facts In Five: Barry Kort (hounx!kort) and "Jeff Brown the Scumbag" (utastro!jeff), who suggested that you could avoid running out of score pads by covering a few score sheets with plastic and using wax pencils, and commented that It has a rather higher emphasis on history and literature than Triv Per, and rather less on the "trivia" topics of popular games: Hollywood, TV, and sports. I like it for this reason, since I could care less about TV, radio, and movies. Although Facts In Five wasn't at all what I set out to find, it sounds exactly like what I was looking for! Thanks to all who responded, and Happy Holiday Of Your Choice to everyone! David D. Levine (...{decvax,ihnp4,hplabs}!tektronix!teklds!davidl) [UUCP] (davidl%teklds%tektronix@csnet-relay.arpa) [ARPA] "My hovercraft is full of eels." [MPFC]