Friday's factoid

Here's a nice one I made up. It might be a $16K-er on Millionaire:

Which three-digit number is designated for use in the United States as a telecommunications relay number for assisted calls to deaf and hard-of-hearing people?

1) 211

2) 511

3) 711

4) 811

I caught a whiff of a commercial today for this service and realized I hadn't remembered the number. We all know 411 and 911, but there's a set of government-designated rapid-dialing numbers, known as the N11's. Here's what I got from the FCC's Web site information sheet on N11's:

211: Assigned for community information & referral services

311: Assigned nationwide for non-emergency police and other government services

411: Unassigned, but used virtually nationwide by carriers for directory assistance

511: Assigned for traffic and transportation information

611: Unassigned, but used broadly by carriers for repair service

711: Assigned nationwide for access to Telecom Relay Services

811: Unassigned, but used by local exchange carriers for business office use

911: Unassigned, but used nationwide for emergency services

011 and 111 are unavailable because "0" and "1" are used for switching and routing purposes.

 

A factoid for Thursday

"Which President Killed a Man?" is the title of a handy little book by former presidential speechwriter James Humes.

Presidents and their families yield an overflow of trivia. Those of us who do it a lot know most of the basics, including the answer to the title of Humes' book. (Pssst, it's Andrew Jackson--he killed a man in a duel. Presumably those who fought in wars also killed people...) Humes also has this gem: Whose immortal last words were "My nourishment is palatable"? Our thirteenth president, Millard Fillmore. (Now we know why he wasn't reelected...the man needed a speechwriter...)

All the news that's fit to broadcast...

You've got to be alert at all times for stuff you can use when you're on a quiz show. Once you get into that habit of mind, you start doing it automatically. I can have the news on and be only minimally engaged with it, multitasking right along and reading, writing, practicing a dance move, playing with my son, then all of a sudden--pow!--I get hit with a factoid. I've learned to filter out all the commentary and grab onto those cold, hard facts that make for good trivia fodder. And here's one from last night:

Chris Matthews (of whom I've become very fond, despite his weird pronunciation of "Amurrica"...) on MSNBC was talking about President Obama's trip to Europe for the G-20 conference. Chris mentioned that Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has met 11 U.S. presidents, all of them except Lyndon Johnson. Now, I give professional courtesy to MSNBC's fact-checking department, so I won't bother to verify it further--that's good enough for me.

And in it, you've got several ways to cook up a question. You might get asked, oh, for about $100K on Millionaire, or in the $1,000 slot on Jeopardy!, which U.S. president was the only one not to meet Queen Elizabeth II (of course, Jeop! being Jeop! would have some other descriptor in the question as a clue...). Or for a really wild and woolly high-level Millionaire question, you might get asked who was the first U.S. president to meet her. I calculate that as Harry Truman, though Chris didn't mention it. Thus: If she's met 11 of them, all of the most recent but Johnson, it stands to reason that there have been 12 of them she could have met. She just met Obama, so working backwards that gives us: GW Bush, Clinton, GHW Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, (skip Johnson), Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman. Truman turned over the office to Eisenhower in 1953, so you have to calculate carefully and not assume he met her. (I just verified that I'm right by checking the USA Today story about her meeting with Obama, which mentioned that she'd met Truman when she was still a princess.) 

Btw, the queen was in my $100K Millionaire question, so I'll always be fond of her...not to mention that Helen Mirren did a bang-up job portraying her... :)

Every time you watch the news, be listening for just this kind of thing and file it away. Newspapers like USA Today are fantastic for inserting little factoids in to liven up their stories--read it regularly and you'll pick up a lot. Be reading popular newspapers and magazines written for the adult general reader. Pay special attention to what we in media call sidebars (those little boxes that contain more information); often they're filled with interesting trivia. And pay attention to the captions on the illustrations, which are often written with an interesting fact in them.

Every time a big news event happens, such as Obama's trip to Europe, news outlets are pouring forth copy describing it. While your aim as a human being is to be well-informed, your aim as a potential trivia maven is to think like a quiz show writer and be hyper-vigilant for those wonderful little bits of flotsam and jetsam that could turn themselves into questions...and remember, one little bit of flotsam can twist itself into multiple lengths of jetsam in the hands of a Millionaire or Jeop! writer...

A Wednesday factoid...

I haven't been paying much attention to commercials lately, which I would have if I were studying for a show right now. You need to know your consumer products, and especially the ads, symbols, slogans and songs associated with them, past and present. Like this one I just made up:

John Mellencamp took some flak from fans for licensing his song "Our Country" to be used in commercials for which pick-up truck?

A) Nissan Titan

B) Chevrolet Silverado

C) Toyota Tundra

D) Dodge Ram

Nice, tight little question? 

I'm putting the answer at the end of the post so you can figure it out first. I was reminded of this when I heard Mellencamp interviewed today on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. If you're studying, you can pick up lots of useful things from radio and TV talk shows. There's a certain way of listening to/watching them: Just as you would skim a magazine for interesting little factoids, and pay less attention to speculation, suggestion, nuance, etc., that's how you have to listen to a talk show or news story. As much as I enjoyed Gross's convo with Mellencamp, my quiz show antennae never quite go down, so they started quivering madly when I heard that the song had been used in the commercial. That's how quiz show writers think: nouns, nouns, nouns, hard and indisputable and at least mildly interesting or unusual facts. That's what you need to be ready to pounce on and file away every time you listen to the radio or watch TV...don't worry, once you train yourself to do it, it NEVER quite goes away, even years afterwards... :(

Oh, the answer? The Chevy Silverado.

One Bobby Jindal (are there others?), or what bothered me about today's Millionaire

And another thing...

Getting back to today's broadcast of Millionaire...the first contestant had as a $50,000 question the following:

Bobby Jindal is the first Indian-American governor of which state?

The choices, as I remember them, were Michigan, Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana. Now, who among us doesn't know this now? I was astonished that it was pegged at $50K. I might have written it as a $2,000 or $4,000 question, since he's been all over the news. The poor contestant Double Dipped, for first Michigan and then, I think, Kentucky. Which makes me think this episode was taped well before Jindal gave the response to President Obama's address to Congress, which means at least several months. Had he been as prominent when it was written as he is now, I doubt it would have been worth $50K to the show's writers.  

So, the lesson to be learned from this is: Get our your World Almanac (the best one-volume quiz show resource around) and run down the list of state governors. And keep paying attention to the news. Jindal had been mentioned during the course of the campaign, with attention paid to the fact that he is of Indian (East Indian, I believe, not Native American) heritage. Quiz shows prefer the unusual: An Indian-American governor of Louisiana is unusual. A woman governor, an African-American governor, a governor with an unusual position on something, are all more likely to be used in a question than a middle-aged-white-male governor in the Midwest...(sorry, middle-aged-white-guys, that's just the way it is...) :)

Factoid du Jour...

When you study for a quiz show, you have to be on top of the news all the time: Here's something you should have noticed, just in case a 2010 game of Millionaire goes like this for about $4,000:

In March 2009, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly announced that he was boycotting films featuring which actor?

A) Tim Robbins

B) Richard Gere

C) Sean Penn

D) Mel Gibson

(See, Meredith, I'm really good at writing these...hint hint...)

In case you missed it, here's the answer:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090330/tv_nm/us_oreilly

Another useful study thingee: Every time you sign onto AOL or Yahoo, look at the news they put up. It's filled with the kind of things Millionaire (and Jeopardy!) love to ask. 

Millionaire Analysis

Today's Millionaire had some good object lessons for would-be contestants:

1) My heart broke for a lovely young man who was obviously very bright, but he left with $1,000 because he didn't talk himself through the question: How long does an Olympics typically last? He jumped on C) One month and seemed thoroughly sure. I knew it was B) Two weeks, but started doubting myself because he seemed so sure...and he said "Final answer" much too soon. 

Read the question word for word. Consider each choice, even if some of them look improbable at first. Always pause and take a breath or two to make sure that answer resonates within you as the right one before popping out "Final answer." Even if it's a $2,000 "easy" question--you just might be reading it wrong or jumping to conclusions. Talk yourself through each answer choice aloud (I never cared if my vamping looked stupid--the point was to be absolutely certain...and they edit out most of it anyway...)

For this one, I just "knew" it was two weeks: I could taste the layout of the TV Guide schedule from a few years ago when I saw it in print...and I got a brick red sort of impression, which told me that the Beijing Olympics last year took up about two weeks of my time--that's synesthesia for you...

2) The next guy used a lifeline on a $4,000 question when he probably shouldn't have, although I always tell people to use them when they need them--but only when they're *sure* they need them...Which country uses the phrase "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" on its euro currency? Two of the choices were not French-speaking nations, so for a question that low, they are out of the running...we were left with France and Belgium. The phrase should resonate because of French history, but if it doesn't at all, a better choice might have been the Ask the Audience or Double Dip lifeline instead of wasting Ask the Expert (if you saw me do Ask the Expert, you know I can only dream of being called in for such a simple question... ;) Lesson: Choose when to use a lifeline very carefully, and choose WHICH lifeline to use very carefully, based on the level of the question and how likely you might be to need it later: Look at the categories coming up...

This same lovely guy--a comedian by trade--has medicine as a hobby, so he knew that the anterior cruciate ligament was in the knee. However, it was a lower level question, so there were references within it that could come in handy: In 2008, Tiger Woods had surgery on his anterior cruciate ligament, which is located where? 

If you study for your quiz show as I recommend, you'll be regularly skimming things like USA Today, People Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly...these are prime sources. And time them. I've noticed that Millionaire often uses events in politics or pop culture that happened in one year for shows that will broadcast in the following year. If you know your tape date, figure on a scheduled broadcast date a few weeks or months later, assume that the questions are being written at least a little bit in advance (breaking news the week before your tape date is VERY unlikely to be used--I've certainly never seen it) and gather up issues of these magazines from your friendly public library (including their year-end compilations) for one to two years prior. Skim over the stories looking for unequivocal, solid factoids using persons, places and things: A celebrity like Tiger Woods is injured and has surgery; a major sports tournament is held and you see winners and notable things that happened with losers; a famous couple splits; an unusual thing happens, such as pandas visiting the U.S. from China; someone famous blurts out something particularly humorous or obnoxious; you see a list of best or worst dressed celebs; a new kind of car enters the market. Jot down quick reminders in a notebook--I've found that the act of writing them down helps. Just don't spend too much time on them--the chances of any of these particular factoids being among the questions you get is slim. The idea is to pack in as many quick bits of info you can, as systematically as you can, so that if you do get one you'll recognize it, and also to help you get familiar enough with stuff so that you can actually eliminate wrong answer choices...