Friends:

It's about time for me to start writing material for this year's Game Show Tournament. Naturally, amongst them is my flagship game Sale of the Century, so I need to write quite a few questions. However, it dawned on me that it might not be a bad idea to pick some fresh reference material. In browsing my local corporate book barn, I was surprised to see quite a few choices as to what I might pick up. It suddenly dawned on me that this might be a good topic for our group to discuss (and in the process give me a better idea what to buy).

If you were the head writer/researched of a new quiz show, assuming your show works from a traditional general-knowledge/cultural-literacy base, what books would you buy (besides the obvious multi-volume encyclopedias and annual almanacs) to populate your research library to give your show a good range of accurate material to use as question fodder?

At least one obvious choice springs to mind: 10,000 Answers, the popular trivia encyclopedia by Stanley Newman and Hal Fittipaldi. This book was recently revised and updated, and is now known as as 15,003 Answers, and features a new foreward by Ken Jennings.

Any other suggestions?

TV Game Shows magazine about 20 years ago did an article on the Jeopardy! research staff, which at that time (perhaps still, even in the Internet age) had a roomful of books, including old encyclopedias. It takes more than one encyclopedia (as it did in Art Fleming's day) to research a lot of today's stuff, including pop culture (most clues need to be double-sourced).

What would be the barest minimum of books:

A good encyclopedia or two
An unabridged dictionary, not on the scale of the OED, but close
Almanacs
Facts on File
Who's Who volumes (even though most of the people therein pay to be in it)
Yearly reviews of TV, movie, theatre
Any good book on movies with reviews, such as Leonard Maltin's, Roger Ebert's, or Video Movie Retriever (or whatever it's called)
Subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, as well as The New York Times Book Review section

Wasn't it found that several of the 10,000 Answers were in fact inaccurate?

/mind you, I suppose they didn't call it 10,000 Correct Answers

Indeed! I have a copy of that book and I recall one glaring fact that said the phrase "Where's The Beef?" came from a BURGER KING commercial. I've seen the updated version at B&N and they have corrected it. A lesson to all that it pays to double check your sources.

/ It's Wendy's for those who are playing at home.

Most of the sources Dave mentioned can be found online. But to echo his point, most everything needs to be double-sourced. I use Britannica Online, but I've even found mistakes there.

I'd also throw in the latest edition of Brooks & Marsh's Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows. It's invaluable for writing TV questions. The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge can also be helpful.

I have that one on my bookshelf, but it's not even in my top ten of useful ones. It's designed to be a fun browse, and not a Definitive Source, which makes it immediately suspect. Frankly, the vast majority of the entries are pretty obscure pieces of truly trivial information, which aren't much help to you in writing questions you want your players to actually be able to answer.

My copy has the Burger King error. Just for fun, I tried to source some of the other entries on that same page and found several very questionable references. On one page. So I suggest you proceed with caution if you're going to use that one.

The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits

[quote name='Matt Ottinger' date='May 13 2008, 10:55 PM' post='185966']
[quote name='Game Show Man' post='185943' date='May 13 2008, 03:47 PM']

My copy has the Burger King error. Just for fun, I tried to source some of the other entries on that same page and found several very questionable references. On one page. So I suggest you proceed with caution if you're going to use that one.
[/quote]

On just that ONE page, Matt? Wow. I don't remember ALL the facts but that Burger King one I did find a bit perturbing. I have written and hosted many trivia contests myself and I have used this book for questions (as well as almanacs, encyclopedias and the like). While it is also not in my Top 10, I always follow the old Journalism 101 adage of always double checking your facts. You are given trivia FACTS not fiction, for crying out loud.

I do know that the inspiration of the "10,000 Answers" book was Fred Worth's "Trivia Encyclopedia"...and even some of the facts in that book were erroneous. Some on purpose! Case in point, Trivial Pursuit's "Phillip Columbo" incident.

http://www.triviahalloffame.com/columbo.htm

The New York Times book was was one of the titles I was looking at. I was also looking at the National Geographic Book of Knowledge as a possible source.

Another, more subject specific source I've looked at is an astroturf-covered book called The Sports Book, a volume detailing the rules to a wide variety of sports. It isn't detailed enough to tell you really obscure stuff, for example, what which pitcher on the winning team actually earns the "win," but it's still pretty detailed.


So what ARE your Top Ten, Matt?

The interesting thing is that there is, literally, a shelf I can check. It has twenty books on it, I just counted. I keep my television stuff separate (my television reference library would scare you), so the Brooks & Marsh book isn't there, but would have to be in the top ten. Of the rest (in no particular order), the ones I find myself opening the most are:

The World Almanac
The People's Chronology (sadly not updated since 1991)
A Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia
The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits
Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever
Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
New York Public Library Book of Popular Americana (1994)
Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins

Because of my particular needs and interests, I also pick up the World Almanac for Kids every year, and another favorite reference book is On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, which is too specific to be relevant to this discussion. I lack a decent sports reference work.

ESPN releases a sports almanac annually. It's well worth the investment.

Do we know if it's actually a product of The Mouse, or do they just license the ESPN name to someone else's work? If the former, that would be one of the few worthwhile things to come out of ESPN these days.

Suppose there would be an easy way to tell: turn to the hockey section. If it's fewer than 5 pages, they're doing it themselves. :)

The Disney influence doesn't matter. I own a copy of the almanac, and have had copies of it for the last 8 years. I am giving Matt my highest recommendation as it for his sports reference material.

The almanac also has Information Please's name attached. If that isn't akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, I don't know what is.

Why the Kids' edition? If, as I thought, you deal with high schoolers, I'd think the flagship edition would be more useful.

There's also QB Jr, for younger teams. Sort of a Quizbusters farm system, as it were. :)

/Not really, but it's amusing to contemplate

When I had to write questions for a high school & middle school tournament, I was in college at the time so I pretty much used the current reference section of the college library. I narrowed it down to one book (or a set) for each subject. For example, I used Masterplots and a guide to poetry for Literature, a Science dictionary, a four volume history of the world, an almanac of geography, and so on. For current events and pop culture questions, I relied on my memory for answers and did research to write a good question.

The day of the tournament, I told my old quiz bowl coach (manager of the tournament) about what went into writing questions (current references, double sourcing, and rewriting if necessary); her response was, "you put way too much effort into it."

I agree, and I believe that answers my question. :)

Now we can expand personal libraries based on the "Ottinger Index". Good deal, that! Alas I've only 3 of these titles. No wonder Jeopardy! never called back... or was it the baldness... hmmm...

I was surprised to not see a world atlas of some kind on the list... as a geography fanatic and meteorologist, that gets used at work almost as much as the Billboard book my co-worker keeps at his desk!

One title I like is Webster's New Geographic Dictionary, if only for the pronunciations of unusual place names.

/ Like Gallipolis, Ohio

The Billboard Book of No. 1 Hits by Fred Bronson also has a lot of great musical information in it; I'm always referring to it when trying to recall something about past hits.

It is a good resource, but there were quite a few errors in the first edition that needed to be fixed (some were corrected for the second edition--I haven't bought future editions beyond the second). So while I wouldn't say to take everything in the book with a grain of salt, I would say to have an additional resource to double and triple check.

Good catch. My atlas is oversized and on a different shelf, so I completely forgot about it.

As someone already figured out, the bulk of the writing I do professionally is for QB Jr., the middle school version of our show, which is why The World Almanac for Kids comes in so handy. We use NAQT for the biggest chunk of our regular high school game, but they're not comfortable writing any younger than that.

Typically, the way I write is to use reference books to come up with a subject I think would be a good answer, then work back from that to construct the question, consulting various resources along the way.


That's a shame. She of all people should appreciate your diligence. As a player, there's nothing more frustrating and disappointing than to come up against a poorly written or poorly researched question. The PlayCafe gang are still in the process of learning that.

Even better for pop music reference are the Joel Whitburn Billboard compilation books, particularly the Top-40 and Top-100 books. Expensive, but well worth it.

Another might be Famous Name Finder by Coral Amende. It has some errors too, such as Pat Sajak's real name listed as Sadjak rather than Sajdak.

If you're interested in the other 60 positions of the Hot 100, the latter is certainly interesting.

I've got about half a dozen Whitburn titles... pop and country top 40s, the Hot 100 version of the Top 40 hits, the decades reprints for the 70s and 80s, and the Top 10 lists for every week book. Mr. Whitburn gets a lot of shelf space! I even have a Canadian Top 40 book I found in Winnipeg a few years ago.

Today at work someone quizzed me on who sang "Major Tom". A little *too* easy. I countered with his lesser known "The Different Story (World Of Lust and Crime)". We spend *way* too much time on music trivia at work... :)

Matt

Yeah, I was kind of angry as well, but it was eclipse when she asked me wheter I wanted to manager the tournament (volunteers, scores, all the jazz) or read. I decided to read in all of the rounds and got to see my questions in action. Second, I was paid $150 for 400 questions (20 hours of work), not a bad transaction.

Now that Playcafe has introduced Letter Perfect, lets see if those episodes of Scrabble and Definition has rubbed off.

I've got a lot of his books too, but mostly just for pop, and the top albums. I've also got the books with the reprints of all the Hot 100 charts (...and also seem to have committed to memory the peak positions of most of my favorite songs over the years!)

OBgame shows: Casey Kasem, who used to count down the Billboard charts, was the voice on 100%.

Of course, when you have the books at work...

Here's our music/movie/TV reference library at my place of employment. Picture a bookshelf 7 feet high, three feet wide filled with books or magazines. Now multiply that by 28.

Be wary of almanacs, since they will lend you to dry question writing and they'll make your questions uninteresting. Back when I was more into question writing, I would tend to use the almanac as an answer getter and then use other sources to actually come up with the question. The hardest part of question writing is not the question -- it's coming up with an interesting answer.


--Mike

Man, I'm glad I looked some stuff up before I put my foot in my mouth with a reply.