Are you a whiz a Trivial Pursuit? Do you blurt out the question to a
Jeopardy! answer before Alex Trebek has a chance to finish talking? If so,
The $25,000 Challenge might just be your cup of tea. Billed as the world's toughest trivia challenge, this book contains more than 1,500 questions ranging over nine categories: technology, geography, sports and games, arts and humanities, science, history and politics, television/film/pop music, photo recognition and miscellaneous. The challenge is quite simple. Buy the book, answer all the questions correctly, send the answers in, and win $25,000! Sound easy? You might think again, after perusing some of the questions in this book. Sure, there are the simple giveaways, like "What is Mozart's full name?" and "Who is the patron saint of bricklayers?" But other questions will tax the mental power of even the most wide-ranging polymath. For instance, do you know how much the TV detective Jim Rockford charged his clients? What city is the capital of the Hyogo Prefecture? How is the "Babinsky Effect" produced? Not quite as simple as those Trivial Pursuit questions, eh?
Scattered throughout the book are little trivia boxes with all sorts of interesting tidbits, such as the longest word in the English language (floccinaucinihilipilification, but please don't ask us to pronounce it) and the longest chapter in the Bible (Psalm 19). These little morsels, while not part of the contest itself, do sometimes offer clues to some of the questions, and are quite fascinating and entertaining all by themselves.
In addition to the $25,000 grand prize, the contest offers prizes for the first top five runners-up, and anyone who gets at least 60 percent of the answers right receives a handsome Trivia Challenge Certificate of Excellence. The contest ends on September 12, 2000, so get those mental muscles into shape, then dive into The $25,000 Challenge!
