Everything Trivial

There is no doubting and, increasingly for some, no avoiding the popularity of quiz nights. Many of us have participated in at least one, for quizzes proliferate in a number of guises, whether weekly down at the pub, less often for charity, and as fund-raisers for schools, clubs and associations.
Most often they are great fun, a great night out, in great company. Yes, they can be extremely competitive and some people may enter them with a greater intensity than they, the quiz and their fellow team members deserve. That was one factor in the demise of the home board game Trivial Pursuit.
But if we go into them with good intent and with a good team—and by good, I mean friendly—a well-run quiz can be deeply, though not initially obviously, satisfying. For example you may not feel that you have a great general knowledge and, as another example, of sport have none at all. But you will be surprised—nobody knows everything, and everybody knows something. Your team may be asked 30 questions; I am prepared to bet you that among them there likely will be at least one to which only you know the answer. That is why in the professional and lucrative world of quiz shows on TV the most feared teams are those with a gender and age balance—they cover all the bases.
Conversely, if you get a question wrong and by force of persuasion got your team to agree to it, then a good team will offer up no recrimination—after all, we all make mistakes and it is like a cricket fielder who drops a catch; you dare not criticise them for that, for the next catch may be your own—for the same result.
I was invited to a few quizzes earlier in life, but nothing regular. These days—or, to be more specific, these Wednesdays—I am to be found regularly down at the local with a team that can number as few as three or as much as seven. Our success is mixed, but we are always thereabouts and last week we won it and, separately, the bar-tab. We won the bar tab again this week, but were third to last on the quiz, such are the vagaries of quizzing. Our team is about as balanced as we can make it: three journalists (which some may say is the least balanced of all professions), an extraordinarily gifted heath practitioner, a teenager and a Vicar. With that combination, we can usually cover most bases and when we can’t, well, God (is there to) help us.
There are less trivial pursuits I could undertake, but at my age and with my mania for minutiae, quiz nights suit me well enough. Besides, there is little better vocation than forging lasting friendships, and in that regard my Wednesday quizzing has been wonderfully successful. No question about it.