The famous riddle of the Sphinx does not appear in the play Oedipus Rex, though the Greek roots of ainigmata are evident here, just as they are preserved in the Book of Corinthians (first letter). The Sphinx herself is described as a "dark singer" rather than a riddle teller, and it is implied that the Riddle she used is what put her out of reach of Thebes' defenses, as it side-stepped the blind seer Tiresias' abilities. This is also why Oedipus does not trust Tiresias toward the end of this tragedy -- he couldn't solve the riddle of the sphinx, so why should he be trusted now?
Shakespeare provides an interesting variation, where the King of Syria poses a riddle to Pericles, and if he can't solve it, he dies. But when he hears the riddle, he realizes the answer is that the King is sexually abusive to his own daughter, and that if Pericles were to solve the riddle, the king would kill him anyway for knowing that secret. The innovation here lies in the hero being in danger if he gets it right rather than if he gets it wrong.
EXAMPLE: What has a head, a tail, is brown, and has no legs? A PENNY
This category is less famous, partly because it didn't make it into the Bible (see Enigmas), and is usually classified as a joke. It alludes to a net, and is like a Koan without the spiritual poignancy: "When is a door not a door? When it's ajar." The answer is a pun, and could not be reached through rational thought (though if the solver knows it's a joke). The net analogy might be because it stops (catches) the flow of thoughts, confounding it with pure silly.
On the one hand, this seems rare, to the point where identifying its ancient antecedent seems pointless. Or, it is the ancestor not only of the riddle-jokes favored by Batman villains, but also of the "trick" questions found on quizzes, which use a slightly ludic interface on the quiz itself to turn a question into an assessment. After all, the riddle about the door above requires some outside knowledge (the more obscure word "ajar") to solve, knowledge without which the question is unanswerable. That is the very point of a quiz, and it is identical also with the purpose implied by this question-type's Greek name, since it's meant to "catch" students who did not study.
EXAMPLE: What gets wetter as it dries? A TOWELL
Generally derived from Latin sources, these riddles take the first person, and claim to have traits which, taken as a whole, do not add up to anything sensible, but if one thing is compared to each of them on their own, each quality will be true of that one thing in its own way. Example: "I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind." (The answer is echo). Scholars disagree about what qualities, other than language, distinguish the Anglo-Saxon versions from their Latinate sources.
The pre-Beowulf Colloquy of Aelfric would seem to extend and modify this into a classroom exercise where, to learn Latin, students take on the role of a hunter, ploughman, or other tradesperson, so that they can answer specific questions in Latin sensibly.
A Teutonic variety precedes the Anglo-Saxon type, but is mostly lost. Those examples we do have typically combine poetry with a moment in the story where the solver is in danger, implying (but not proving) a structural connection with Greek enigmas.
EXAMPLE: I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I? AN ECHO
There's a great article in how to write a Jeopardy clue here
The gist is that the categories' easiest (lowest dollar value) questions teach the contestants -- all of them -- the internal logic of the category. It's odd that a game show with such a silly premise (answer in the form of a question) gained such a buttoned-down, shirt-and-tie image, and that's probably because Trebek insisted on an alteration of a core game mechanic in game shows: He would not allow contestants to buzz in untiul he had finished readinf the clue. This encourages a slightly slower, arguably more dignified approach to answering the question, and removes an incentive to take risks based on quick recall (see Scholars' Bowl)
EXAMPLE: The author who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird" WHO IS HARPER LEE?
Add the number of Brady Bunch kids to the number of Indiana Jones Movies, divide by (something from Pop Culture) -- make it easy but put the challenge in the candy-coated way of expressing numbers, as above, so they buzz in over each other, but every fourth or fifth question it should be difficult for their age group so they choose the physical challenge
EXAMPLE: What is the sum of the number of planets in our Solar System and the number of women on the Supreme Court? At this writing, in 2024, the answer is 12 (8 + 4), but at the time the show aired, it would have been 10 (9 + 1)
The focus here is on the display of students' acquisition and quick processing of sophisticated, specialized knowledge. Unlike a game show, which has to let home viewers believe they could participate and win, scholas' bowls like the NAQT are designed to make spectators marvel at things only the contestants could do.
This may have roots in the origins of trivia as a way to show why students should be allowed to escape the draft if they're in college (more research needed)
These questions are preceded by contextualizing sentences, which themselves contain clues of decreasing subtlety. They may also be part of a connected or successively building series of three or more questions, all united by a common theme (like mirrors, or the life of Salvador Dali, or anything else). Those who ring in earliest are rewarded for predicting where the question was going. Example: "What minister, who once gave a sermon at the Golden Gate Bridge on the evils of suicide, later founded the Peoples' Temple" -- and other facts will go in the middle, but it will end with the part about getting his followers to drink grape Flavorade. The answer is Jim Jones, and the ironic but extremely obscure opening was a first clue. Hints get less obscure as clue progresses. This way "normal people" are actually shut out of the scoring, because this question type is not meant to honor the common person, it's meant to create awe and pride at the abilities of an elite. Trick questions or misleadung introductions, part of the game in other trivia forms, are risibly bad-form here, (see link, just before the half-way mark)
EXAMPLE 1: This mathematician, born in 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England, attended Trinity College at Cambridge before publishing his groundbreaking Principia Mathematica. Today he's more famous for being hit on the head with a piece of fruit and thereby discovering gravity. For 10 points, name this founder of modern science. ISAAC NEWTON
EXAMPLE 2: This element, with atomic number 79, was central to a historical period of migration and wealth accumulation in California during the mid-1800s. GOLD
Inventing the Genus edition was so involved, it was the subject of Canadian made-for-TV movie Breaking All the Rules.The pince-nez graphics and sober navy blue with bright orange curlicued text, satirically contradict the pun in the game's title (Trivial).
The questions were balanced so everyone in a family could get one question right, even in their weakest categories. The "difficulty" is created, not by making some questions more obscure than others, but by aiming them at the common knowledge of different age groups (See the example's Science question).
When all else fails, the answers can often be guessed using logic, informed by the irony (see History). Other ?s were traditional (Lit), and the joy is not recital of knowledge, but surprise at what the OTHER players know. More recent editions lack this deliberate quality.
TP was sued by trivia book writer Fred Worth, who included a deliberate lie (What was Columbo's first name? Worth said Phillip. It was Frank.) The "Phillip" answer was found in Trivial Pursuit, ergo (said Worth) plagiarism. TP said they didn't copy fiction, they repeated what Worth said was fact, as from a reference book. TP won (a fact can't be copurighted, it belongs to everyone [see district court decision]). This precedent classifies trivia ? collections as works of non-fiction or reference works. IDK whether complex forms of fact-based questions can be copyrighted due to their structure (See Scholars' Bowl).
EXAMPLES:
Geography: What African country is the largest producer of cocoa beans? - (Ivory Coast)
Entertainment: What musical TV family travels in a multicolored bus? - (Partridge Family)
History: What war saw the greatest number of American casualties? - (The Civil War)
Lit: What were the names of the three Bronte sisters? - (Charlotte, Emily, Anne)
Science: What is the process by which plants make their own food? - (Photosynthesis)
Sports & Leisure: Is Mr. Clean bald? - (Yes)
Who won the election? In a certain x-word, published right before election day, one solution was "Clinton" and another was "BobDole" -- the rest of the x-word was contrived so that both would work, for instance the clue for the first word down from the first letter of the election winner's name was "A halloween animal" -- obviously, "Bat" and "Cat" both fit.
An accidental Schrodinger Clue I remember was from the Monopoly game show of the early 90s. The contestants were meant to spell a word, N _ _ _ _. The clue was "Reagan's Dame". A contestant answered Nancy, which fits, but it was Notre, where RR had gone to school and played football.
EXAMPLE: 1 across is 7 letters, and can be either ORGANIC (Nature) or ROBOTIC (Technology).
2 down, starting at the third position of 1 across, has five letters, and the clue is "Small, specialized component(s) found in the body".
If the across response was ORGANIC then the answer is GLAND, if ROBOTIC, the answer is BOLTS.
I only had a good conversation about the Socratic Method once, when I spoke with someone at a conference (children and philosophy, I think) who developed an activity for working with children in museums. It involved Socratic questions, but she told me that unless she does it herself, docents ask questions they already have pre-conceived answers to. This experience designer told me she doesn't do that, she asks the children questions whose answers nobody really knows, but she said docents can't be trained to do that. She didn't say why, she seemed flatly to have accepted it as a reality.
It provokes resentment, it's irritating, it's a quiz but in front of people, and half the time the person asking doesn't know for sure that the answer they're trying to get is the right one. Why should anyone have to read their mind? I've never understood the popularity of the Socratic method, nor do I know if it's actually misapplied when people use it like the docents mentioned above or not.
Improv questions are absurd but must be affirmed ("Why are you bowling in the desert?" must be answered as though, no matter what else, the answerer is bowling in the desert). The main (not only) rule: "always say yes". Improv's "rule" doesn't always factor into games, but it COULD. In order to be concrete and feel deep, other elements are needed. One is hidden words (triggers) which operate like the Duck in the Groucho Marx show You Bet Your Life -- say the secret word (the duck shows the audience, so that the audience can enjoy "hunting" for, or predicting when the contestant will say it) and get $100. This "landmine word" might make the conversation with Groucho a secret question, or the same species of question as improv in general, since it does have a consistent mechanic. ("Unvoiced question", where player must pretend they're talking abiout something else, and might even think they are... unknown unknwons, and known unknowns). Does Groucho try to lead them to it? Is G Marx the 1st "Nemesis" game show host who wants everyone to get it but can't give it to anyone?
Constrained improv can be made quantifiable through recognition also (charades, times up, etc) or it can just use the framework of a game with points to keep its shape and strucure, but openly dispense with the stakes, like Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Paul Tevis' Penny For My Thoughts is a storytelling game with concrete rules that anchor storytelling decisions to in-world events which do specific heavy-lifting (not always disclosed to all players) in terms of progressing the gamestate. The mechanic is ostensibly "remembering", for onesself and on behalf of other people -- but it uses the main rule of improv acting. The player MUST agree with the questions asked (or rather, the answer must be yes, though they may modify it after that, with the proviso that the strictest sense of what they said yes to is concretely true).
Baron Munchausen is a pythonesque version of this, where lying salon-goers tell a bit of a story, but leave off right when it gets good (or hard to tell). Then they pick a player and say "Oh but you tell it so much better"... something like "of course, he said the wittiest thing, go on, tell them what you said!" -- always stick another player with the bill. Bigger the better. This is Penny's mechanic w/o hidden info. There is less to perceive. Ludoception, is exercised in that players seek fun predicaments to put each other in, but in Penny, ludoception is also used to discern a pattern to the triggers and thereby navigate what's supposed to be out of yiour control). What does it mean that all of these use the "improvisation as faux-discovery", the rhetorical question disguised as a real question, the exact same mechanic used in improv?
Being asked a question may, in this case, combine somehow Althusser's interpellation and Huizinga's Magic Circle. Maybe ludoception is the way to see that we can be free from interpellation if we decide it IS the Magic Circle? Or we use it to discern, perhaps, when manipulators try to trick us into playing a game or getting conned, that what seems to be a magic circle (an invitingly intense limited space) but it is actually interpellation. Either way, that might be what improv imitates -- those moments when we really are playing by ear, because we're just living without a script.
Family Feud uses survey-based questions rather than factual recall. Players must guess the most common responses given by a group of 100 surveyed individuals to open-ended prompts (e.g. 'Name something you do before going to bed?'). Answers are ranked by frequency, with higher point values assigned to more popular responses. The game emphasizes social intuition, cultural knowledge, and pattern recognition over factual accuracy. Strategic elements include controlling the board, choosing whether to play or pass, and managing the risk of accumulating three strikes. Final rounds use cumulative point goals based on matching the top survey answers.
Many liabilities, like a 50/50 chance of guessing right w/o knowledge of the subject, flattening the skill curve -> less meaningful differentiation btwn plyrs. T/Fs backfire when experts are penalized for considering exceptions, edge cases, etc.. -> a mismatch btwn intended simplicity and the nuanced knowledge that makes stronger plyrs watchable in later rounds -> their early elimination/survival of less compelling contestants. T/Fs do have unique applications if deployed subversively:
Binary structure -> rapid pacing / inclusion in lightning rounds, tiebreakers, or filters. They dare players to choose the less plausible answer, and oncwe this is established, T/Fs allow for a 'believe it or not' challenge rather than a game of quick recall. This can be spectacle for the audience.
T/Fs can support bluffing mechanics if players explain/justify their answers, as a clearly false statement can be defended with confidence to test charisma-under-pressure.
In meta-trivia, T/Fs can simulate moral dilemmas or ideological positioning, and can reveal values rather than facts (e.g. 'Monopoly teaches good financial habits?').
They can be environmental triggers in an ARGs/immersives. A T/F question might determine which room opens, which character appears, or whether a timer starts. I.e. T'Fs can function as input into a larger system.
They can hinge on outdated science or disputed history. In this mode, the question isn’t just about correctness but about how recent the player's awareness of the subject is.
They can be mirrors for the player’s assumptions, or pressure valves for pacing. They don’t have to be throwaways; they can be lenses.
If appropriate, answers to the examples are immediately after the question or clue, in invisible ink (highlight to see)
Yes, like that