Fantastic Quiz Night…Can intelligent people be lousy at trivia games?…

Last night was Quiz Night at the Giraffe, and once again, we gathered around the table with our usual teammate Albert, along with our friends Kathy and Don. With the five of us together, we felt pretty good about our chances. After all, several intelligent people sat around that table, and between us, we had a lot of life experience, education, travel experience, and general knowledge.

Unfortunately, none of that seemed to matter much last night!

The questions were particularly difficult, and we struggled with quite a few. By the end of the evening, we had managed to come in last place among all eight teams playing. That’s not our usual position, and I have to admit that it was a little humbling. We weren’t expecting to win, but coming in last certainly wasn’t what we had in mind when we sat down.

It got me thinking about something I often wonder about. If we consider ourselves intelligent people, why aren’t we better at trivia games?

The answer, I suppose, is that intelligence and trivia knowledge aren’t necessarily the same thing. Being intelligent doesn’t mean a person has memorized thousands of random facts about obscure historical events, television shows, sports statistics, scientific discoveries, famous people, geography, music, or the names of actors from movies 40 years ago.

Trivia often tests recall rather than intelligence.

Someone can be extremely intelligent and still not know the capital of a country they’ve never visited. Another person may have an incredible memory for facts and can rattle off the names of obscure rivers, presidents, movie stars, Olympic medalists, or the winners of sporting events from decades ago. That person might be absolutely brilliant at trivia without necessarily being more intelligent than someone who struggles with those questions.

There is also the issue of what we happen to know and what interests us. Tom and I have spent nearly 14 years traveling around the world, so we know quite a bit about geography, different countries, cultures, transportation, wildlife, and all sorts of things related to our travels. But if the question involves professional sports, popular music, television programs, or some obscure historical fact, we may have absolutely nothing to contribute.

The opposite is true for other people on our team. Each person brings a different collection of knowledge to the table. That’s one of the things that makes a team useful. When one person doesn’t know an answer, someone else might suddenly say, “I know this!” Unfortunately, last night there seemed to be a lot more questions where none of us knew the answer.

Memory also plays a huge role. Sometimes I know the answer, but I can’t pull it out of my brain when I need it. I’ll sit there thinking, “I know this! I have read this somewhere!” But the answer refuses to appear. Then, five minutes later, it suddenly pops into my head when it’s far too late to be useful.

Of course, there are also those questions that make us wonder who in the world knows these things in the first place!

That’s probably the real lesson from Quiz Night. Intelligence isn’t measured by how many random facts a person can retrieve under pressure. Knowledge is enormous, and no one can know everything. We all have areas where we are knowledgeable and other areas where we know very little. Also, many of the questions are South Africa-inspired, and four of the five of us didn’t have a clue regarding the answers.

So, despite coming in last place last night, I don’t think any of us has suddenly become less intelligent. We ran into a set of questions that didn’t happen to fall within the areas we know best.

Still, I’ll admit that we’d like to do better next week. Coming in last has a way of making five reasonably intelligent people feel like they have something to prove!

And perhaps that’s part of the fun of Quiz Night. We get together, laugh at our wrong answers, celebrate the few answers we do know, enjoy a drink and some dinner, and have a good time with friends. Winning would certainly be nice, but spending an evening together in the bush is the real prize.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, September 23, 2016: