Trivia In The Age of Google

The questions started out extremely pop-culture based. Music, Movies and TV were all touched upon.  The difficulty of the questions increased as time went on. Only one sports question was asked, and eventually the questions became centered around Buzztime itself.

The question no one could answer was, "Who won the 6 month long Player of the Year Contest?" (5 Year old contest). Buzztime questions before this asked about "Passport" (a now canceled game) and the name of the original Buzztime Gurus (Sarge, Red, Rags). However, the person who asked the unanswerable question did not have a source to back up his answer- just his memory (and integrity).

This begs the question of what really qualifies as a complete trivia question. A trivia question can only be a trivia question if it is centered around collective knowledge by a relatively large amount of people, or if it is about a quantity of people. Therefore, "What did i eat for Lunch?" is not a trivia question, but "What is the most popular fruit in the U.S.?" is a trivia question (FYI- the answer is Bananas). The caveat to trivia questions though is that you have to have a source to back up your answer. And in the age of Google- there may not be any such thing as an unanswerable trivia question for that very reason. In an age where information, so vast and broad, is at your fingertips, is there anything you can know that no one else can know AND that no one else can find out that fits the criteria of a trivia question? This remains to be seen.

What makes Buzztime so great at the location and in the Bar is that it's still a game that makes it impossible (if you want to do well) to use Google to cheat. It's trivia that really values acquired knowledge and not acquired smartphones.  And now we are also valuing acquired badges on Facebook. :)

What do you think? Can you come up with an unanswerable trivia question?  Check back in every Tuesday at 11am PT to Buzztime on Twitter and see if you can!

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