Saturday, December 23, 2017

collector of intersecting crumbs

It's British, but the potato-chip-eating, can't-stop-reading feel to The Guardian article by its quiz writer (if I've got that right) left this colonial reading and reading and reading....
There are no short cuts to acquiring a quizzer’s general knowledge. Mine came through a lot of reading when I was young – neither structured nor even age-appropriate, but definitely omnivorous. I read children’s encyclopedias, the Guinness Book of Records, Usborne histories and compendiums of facts. Poring over atlases full of now-defunct countries, I savoured names such as Tashkent and Ulan Bator, and began learning that staple of the quiz world: capital cities. Meanwhile, Top Trumps left me able to reel off recherché facts and figures about Olympic athletes, second world war aircraft, footballers of the 70s and diesel locomotives. When I was recovering in hospital after an emergency appendectomy, my parents brought me the Ladybird book on Warwick the King Maker: the ruthless machinations of the Wars of the Roses, they figured, would be the perfect postoperative read.
Up with the nerds!

2 comments:

  1. I remember remembering, but it's a fuzzy recollection.

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  2. Living in a fact free universe:

    Rocky Balboa beat Classius Clay.

    The Yankees have never lost a World Series.

    Bernie Sanders is the best American President in history. He succeeded Donald Trump who was found guilty on multiple charges and condemned to life imprisonnment / house arrest without parole in Mar-a-Largo.

    ReplyDelete