Help me in my journey to become a trivia master

General Memory Chat
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Hello ! My name is Allan and I’m 22 yo ! I live in France and I’m fond of trivia games. I have started my journey last year in June, I have joined a trivia club (Club Questions pour un champion if some french people know). Because I have started quite recently, I’m pretty bad and get easily beaten. So I decided to train a lot and I have started to use Anki everyday. For that, I have “borrowed” a 15k questions database from a old french tv show and learned them all and I have made deck on basics such as Capitals, flags, french presidents, Us states etc… Also I have bought general knowledge books, and I force myself to make flashcards on the things I learn in these. My level has soared, but still, it is not enough to make good results.

But I don’t use any technique to learn, so it is really hard sometimes especially on topic I know nothing about, I try lo learn them raw which sometimes is bad. I take sometimes a lot of time to remember, or I remember the answer because of the formulation of the question or worst, I can only remember the question in one way (ie If the question is Who wrote “Last exit to Brooklyn” ? I can say it’s Shelby, but if I’m asked one of Shelby book, it will be so hard to remember).

So I have multiple questions on how to train better:

  • Do you use Anki a lot ? I know it works to learn lists easily but is there anything better to learn trivia ? Or maybe what settings I can change to make my learning in Anki better ?
  • I’ve browsed this forum a lot this week, but I have not seen many topics on trivia. What are the things you think are crucial to learn ?
  • I’m a bit lost with all the methods, I don’t know what to train first. Number pegs, mental palace, etc… ? Will it take me a long time ? Can you give me some concrete example of what methods do you use related to trivia ?

Don’t hesitate to tell your experience with trivia, I’m very interested ! Thanks

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Welcome, Allan!

If I were going to brush up on my trivia, I would first ask myself, “What is my goal here?” That question can help you focus on which trivia subjects to study, thereby reducing your workload.

For example, are you primarily studying trivia from high culture or pop culture? High culture knowledge consists of topics like geography, world history, world leaders, classical music composers, authors of famous works of literature, famous scientific discoveries, etc.

In contradistinction, pop culture trivia consists of questions about famous singers, movies, TV shows, social media, rock bands, and other topics that you probably wouldn’t study in an academic environment.

If you’re hoping to be a Jeopardy! contestant one day, then focusing on high culture makes the most sense: around 85% of the questions on that show are from high culture. But if you plan to compete at a local pub, then pop culture questions might be more common in such a venue.

Once you’ve identified which topics you wish to study, the next consideration is your learning strategy. I agree that Anki is an excellent choice for review. However, I can’t imagine tackling thousands of trivia questions without using memory techniques. Those are absolutely critical for great leaps in your cognitive skills.

Let’s think about a common, real-world example. Medical students have an insane amount of information to remember. My dad was a doctor, and a friend of mine is a physician as well. Nobody has to store more info in his/her head than a med student. And how do they do it? LOTS of mnemonics. Just do a search for mnemonics for medical and nursing students. Heck, you can find books on mnemonics just for particular branches of medicine - psychiatry, nephrology, etc. My point here is that people who need to store massive amounts of information in their heads often rely heavily on memory techniques.

Best of luck!

Richard

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If Anki works for you, that’s great…but I have never used it. To me, its reliance on rote memorization makes it the least effective and most time-consuming method of memorization.

I think you may be much better served by storing trivia in memory palaces. (Perhaps each one dedicated to a specific area of knowledge.) My guess is that your memorizing will be faster, more efficient, and a lot more fun, since you’ll be imagining a wide range of memorable scenes.

Dominic O’Brien has written about memorizing an entire deck of Trivial Pursuit cards using a memory palace. (He’s written so many books, though, I couldn’t tell you where to find this.) If there’s a French equivalent of that board game, that may be another great source of trivia to memorize. It has the benefit of including information across five or six major categories, so it will give you a good grounding in a variety of subjects.

You might want to check out this link:

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Thanks for your replies !

@iOSDeveloper
In France, they are pretty focused on high culture and cinema, there is not a lot of pop culture which I found a bit sad because I like it. So I would say it is my main priority. Thank you for your links, I will try to inspire from this to make my own Mnemonics

@RMBittner
I think you have a bit right about Anki, indeed, a small variation in the question can make you not remember the answer, especially if you are not familiar with it (like a question about a movie you haven’t seen but learn through Anki). The fact is I’m a bit afraid to start mental palace because I feel like it works well for trivia lists like Nobel Prize or Presidents, but not for isolated thing such as “Who discovered X-rays?”. Correct me if I am wrong, because I’m still new in this forum so I may have not understood something. Also thanks to Anki, I managed to learn 15k questions but I have no clue on how could I learn these questions using mental palace, these are so diversified I would practically have a mental palace for each question which seems harder to remember. Thank you for mentioning Dominic O’Brien work, I will try to find his book on this topic, I think I would learn a lot by following its strategy

Thanks you again for your replies !

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To use a memory palace for trivia such as you mention above, you have any number of options. You could devote a palace to scientific discoveries, with either scientists or their discoveries in the loci you’re using. So at a location in your palace you would store a memorable image of W.C. Roentgen there, interacting with something that would trigger “x-ray” for you. My image might be a door marked “WC” (which in many places means “water closet” or “toilet”), then there’s a flash of light and suddenly you can see through the door, to see a skeleton sitting on the toilet. That wouldn’t give you the “Roentgen,” but you could add features to the door for that, if you need something beyond the “WC.”

Your palace could be filled with such images. And you should be able to find the relevant images easily if you just hear the word “x-ray.” You don’t have to walk through every location in your mind to get to where you’re going.

Does that make sense?

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Hello !

Thank you for your answer @RMBittner, I’ve found Dominic O’Brien books where he talked how he managed to remember trivia facts and I am trying to apply your advices. It is very useful thanks !

I have another question about remembering dates: When you have to find for example the year of birth of someone, I feel like it is easy to remember with a mental palace like you said with associating the person with objects representing numbers thanks to the major or PAO system.
But what if you have to find someone based of their year of birth ? For example, if I need to find a writer born in 1802, what is better ?

  • To recall all the images of writer in your head in order to find 1802 among the objects linked with them ?
  • Have a mental palace for every number from 0 to 99 and put people in it ?
  • Or maybe just the fact of having fixed objects for number from 0 to 99 helps to remember images where these objets were used. In this case, it is better to use PAO system for that.

The reason I ask that is because usually in France tv show or trivia contests, they usually begin their questions with dates (date of birth, date of creation etc…) so it would be useful to have a way to link date to people instead of only the opposite.

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I think you might be surprised how quickly you’ll be able to recall your connections, once you’ve had some time to encode and review the information. It won’t matter whether you start with a date or a person.

However, if you know at the outset that you’re going to want to be able to access this information as quickly as possible, I’d recommend always using the same images when encoding dates. For example, for me, the 1700s are always a blue duck (17) doing some activity. If someone is born in 1789, then maybe that blue duck is in the space with them, vaping (89). If you’re remembering other people born that year, I think you’ll be able to find them all faster if you know you’re looking for every locus wherein a blue duck is vaping.

My 1800s are a white dove. 1802 might be a white dove reading a (maga)zine (02). You should be able to quickly recall all scenes where that’s happening and, without much effort, know which one involves a writer, a scientist, a politician, etc.

I wouldn’t personally create special palaces or pegs for this. To me, a memory palace with subject-specific areas should provide the results you’re looking for, and it will give you the foundation for adding additional information about your subjects as needed.

Alternatively, you might want to create a memory journey (think more “streets and neighborhoods” rather than “palace/house”) where you create annual date markers where needed and then place there all of the appropriate people. Unless you get very detailed with this, though, it will only give you the year, not the day/month. And, depending on the year, some loci could get very full and confusing.

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Okay very interesting thank you!

I have done my PAO system for 00-99, now it’s time to learn it and use it ! I will give you some update of my journey