Ken Jennings in an interview with Grant Barrett on a minicast from A Way With Words:
People think trivia questions must come automatically from a book or a computer. It’s a very tight and controlled art form. It’s like writing haiku or a villanelle or something. It’s this very tight, constrained format that really requires a lot more work than people suspect to get the trivia to work right.
I’ve said that trivia questions land halfway between haiku and jokes on the writing spectrum.
Hi James,
I see that you are a trivia guru, and I am wondering if you are looking for another night, namely Sunday night, to host trivia at a bar. Namely the Living Room, a bar that I own on Capitol Hill. We have a trivia night from 7 to 9, but our host has talked about maybe wanting to scale her involvement back, so I figured I’d put the word out. From what I’ve read you share your trivia duties with others, and I wonder if this is something that your and your fellow trivia hosts might be interested in doing. I imagine you get lots of requests for your trivia guru-ness, so if you are too busy or just plain not interested, I’d be all ears and smiles if you had any recommendations at to other good hosts who are in the trivia biz. I hope you have the time write back, but if not, I hope to meet you sometime.
Monika