By Sam Lowenstein
Teaching Fellow: Computer Science, Engineering, and Design
As a lifelong trivia fan, the thing I’ve never liked about trivia is that it often feels exclusionary. It’s a really great feeling when you know the one esoteric piece of knowledge that everybody else doesn’t, but most of the time you’re the “everybody else.” That’s the problem: either you know it or you don’t—either you can get it, often right away, or you have no possible way of ever getting it. That’s why, when I set out to design the GFA Advisory 2020 Kahoot, I based many of the questions on one principle: a good trivia game rewards critical thinking as much as it rewards knowledge.
Take this question about Hamilton:
This question is great for die-hard fans of the musical who might already know the answer and feel smart right away, but even someone who knows nothing about Hamilton stands a fighting chance of getting it right. Why? Because the three wrong answers are all fairly well-known to fans of other media (movies, TV shows, and books), and none of them would ever have written a biography about Alexander Hamilton. So if you don’t immediately know the correct answer, you can still use logic to eliminate one, two, or even all three of the wrong answers, giving you at least more reasonable odds of eventually guessing the correct answer—and then you feel even smarter for having puzzled it out. Add to that the mild amusement at the concept of Harry Potter’s best friend writing an 800-page book about some dead muggle on another continent, and you’ve got a great question.
Not all the questions are exactly like this one, of course. Some of them are trick questions, aiming to punish players (like me) who try to choose an answer before thinking it through. Others ask you to combine concepts in ways you almost certainly haven’t before (like...what if planets were fruit?), putting everyone on a level playing field. And the questions about GFA will hopefully be just as challenging to those who have been here for years as they will be to newcomers. It’s important to have a diverse range of topics so that everyone gets a question about something they’re passionate about. I hope that, with questions like these, everyone can be welcomed and included in a trivia game, which will spark conversations and help students form connections over shared interests. I really enjoyed creating this game (with the help of my brilliant girlfriend), and I’d love to make more in the future!