When it comes to trivia, I think I’m pretty good. Though it’s been several years since I played it, Trivial Pursuit remains one of my favorite games, and my wife and I, acting as a team, generally do well on the Columbus Dispatch‘s weekly “Super Quiz.” So when my friend Bob offered me the chance to join his trivia team, The Mustard Seeds, I said yes without hesitation.  The Mustard Seeds are one of 25 teams in Fun Trivia’s B League. (There’s also an A, C, and D League.) Other teams include Movie Buffs, Devil’s Advocates, All 50 States, The Usual Suspects, and Kilted Kangas.  Some teams in our league have as few as 7 active players; others have 60 or more.  But since a team’s top 6 scores are the only ones that count in any given quiz, the playing field is fairly level.

The questions posed in the various quizzes and competitions cover no fewer than twenty categories. My strongest are history, religion, and movies. I seek out quizzes emphasizing questions in these categories.  Conversely, I avoid competitions emphasizing hobbies and video games. The hobbies category is a bit deceiving. It can include questions on gardening, cooking, and astrology about which I know very little. To be sure, most quizzes are in a multiple-choice format, so even if you don’t know the answer, an “educated guess” will be right at least 18-25 percent of the time.

The specific competitions vary widely in terms of both content and difficulty. There are hourly quizzes and daily quizzes.  In the former, you have Mixed Trivia, Piece of Cake, Word Wizard, Who’s the Expert, and Crystal Ball.  The latter includes Who Am I? Global Challenge, Quick Quiz, and Fill Me In. Many, if not all, of the questions in these quizzes are composed by Trivia Fun participants, who number over 2.3 million. Here are some sample questions:

Mixed: Which British movie director was responsible for such classics as “Rear Window”(1954), “Vertigo”(1958) and “Psycho”(1960)?

A. Friz Freleng   B. John Ford   C. Alfred Hitchcock   D. Ron Howard

Word Wizard: Flatter with the intention of getting something.

A. rip up   B. wear away   C. butter up   D. symphonize   E. repine   F. conform

Fill Me In: Which president shares his last name with a cat cartoon character?   ____________ (full name or last name only)

Piece of Cake: What natural disaster struck the United States coastal city of San Francisco, known for its cable cars and Golden Gate Bridge, on April 18, 1906?

A. Landslide   B. Flood   C. Tornado   D. Earthquake

Who Am I? British Royalty; former King from 1509 t0 1547; known for his 6 wives.

A. Henry VIII   B. Ronnie Corbett   C. William Thomson, Lord Kelvin   D. Robert Mugabe   E. Kepler Wessels   F. Enrico Fermi

Perhaps the most-difficult quiz is “Crystal Ball,” in which quiz-takers are given two or three letters of a word and then asked to figure out what it is, based on that limited information. Each person taking the quiz has only one chance per word, which changes every hour. I’ve only tried this quiz once. Given the opening letters “SC,” I guessed “scavenger”; it turned out to be “scaffolding.” But overall, I’ve done very well on most of the quizzes I’ve taken.  As of today, I’ve taken 101 quizzes, with 1,135 questions, answering 971 of them correctly for an 85.6 percent rating. But the point system that determines how you compare to other players depends not only on your success in answering questions but also on the time it takes you to answer them. And speed in answering questions is where I fall behind the pack. I’m too much in the habit of reviewing my answers before submitting them, and that costs me points. Still, to date, I’ve racked up 31,198 points and rank second in my class of 10,000 players who entered league competition on March 18. I’ve also won several badges for accumulated points and individual game performance.

There are opportunities to socialize on Fun Trivia. Players can join discussion forums as well as send e-mail to their teammates. Those who are really into trivia can even organize and compete in tournaments. It’s clear from the points some players earn that they spend far more time on this activity than I do. But that’s the beauty of Fun Trivia. You can enjoy it as much or as little as you want. If you score well on a quiz, it can lift your spirit. If you score poorly, so what? After all, it’s called “trivia” for a reason.