Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog

I know I used to love this game back in Canada. Fun. Interesting. Challenging. If you knew the answer, you felt proud about knowing the answer. When you didn’t, you were often interested to learn the answer. It was Jeopardy. Played on a board with your friends.

However, my old, old, old Trivial Pursuit game was left behind in Canada (and sold? I can’t remember.) So, at Christmas I went out and bought a new one. UK Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition. I knew it would be harder — I’m not terribly knowledgeable about UK television, and the music sometimes leaves me in the dark. Football (er, Soccer), Rugby, Cricket, Snooker and Darts are hardly the sports I grew up with. The majority of my history classes were Canadian, American and Ancient. World geography, Canadian geography and even US geography I can manage … naming English counties, less so.

But despite the increased difficulty, I’d learn as I went along. Probably be better for it. And still have fun.

Well … no. Not when the “History” category contains gems like Which former rock came second to Joe Pasquale on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here.

This is a still-running TV show. The season in question ran in 2004. It was not something important — I can’t imagine the history textbook which would suffer to have this information included.

So why is it in the History category? And it’s not alone. I’m hard-pressed to think of an example that dates back to before 2000. I had another question which was something along the lines of “Which US President died at the same time as this UK politician that you never heard of?” Figuring that it couldn’t be that old, I was left guessing between Reagan and Nixon. I guessed Nixon, and was right.

That I can narrow down the “History” category like that is just plain wrong. You reading this Trivial Pursuit people? WRONG!

And it ruins the game. I’m not interested in knowing the answers. And I don’t feel pride when I get them right. I’m just a bit happier that the game is closer to being over.