Customer Reviews

The Ultimate TRIVIAL PURSUIT Question & Answer Book

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Within each category of this book, it asks the same questions over and over in different ways. For example, in the "Entertainment" category, the main topics covered were: Teletubbies, SpongeBob, Johnny Depp, The Beatles, Reservoir Dogs, the Usual Suspects, Beyonce, and Eminem. There is no variety whatsoever to this book. If you are going through this book, you will find as you proceed that the deeper you get, the more answers you know, as the questions are literally slight variations of previous questions.

I haven't even gone through the entire book and have found SEVERAL errors. Many of them are detailed in other reviews, so I will not repeat. One question I did not see on the reviews asked who was the town drunk on the Andy Griffith Show. Their answer was "Barney Gumble." Barney Gumble is not even a character on the Andy Griffith Show. He is the town drunk on The Simpsons.

Complete waste of $15.

This is a fun, partible trivia activity to use alone or with a group. If you're with family or friends and you don't want to drag out the Trivial Pursuit board, cards and pegs, you can just read the questions in the book and test each other's trivia knowledge. It's stimulating, educational and would be enjoyed by any trivia fan. It's portable, easy to use when traveling. Take a litle trivia break at work, in traffic jams or when socializing with friends. I highly recommend it. You can also use the questions in the book in conjunction with your Trivia game board if you like.

I like reading trivia books occasionally not just to test and improve my general knowledge, but also to stimulate and improve my memory. Digging for answers that are on the periphery of your memory is good for the old neuronal network. However, the most fun I get out of a book like The Ultimate Trivial Pursuit Question and Answer Book (hereafter referred to as TUTPQAB) is getting answers correctly to questions that I don't initially know the answers to. In other words, approaching some of these questions as puzzles instead of as just straight 'do you know it or not' questions. This is the advantage of encountering these questions at your leisure in book form instead being harassed and badgered by obnoxious, hidebound, ultra-competitive opponents as you would be if you were playing the actual Trivial Pursuit board game. (You know the type. He or she is supposed to be your best friend or your folksy, do-anything-for-you neighbour, but get them on the other side of a Trivial Pursuit board and they are ready to call a lawyer before they'll give you a slice of pie just because you've answered 'Santa Claus' instead of 'Father Christmas', or 'Fujiyama' instead of 'Mt. Fuji'. You can find better behaviour in wrestling pits or Boxing Day riots that in the typical Trivial Pursuit games I've been involved in.)

At 864 pages TUTPQAB is a very generous book and nicely presented with good production values. There are six questions per page, with the answers on the flip side of the page -very uncluttered, very convenient, with no flipping to the back of the book to check answers. The book is divided into six chapters of the six traditional Trivial Pursuit categories -144 questions in each category.

There are some errors:

-P. 131, Q. 6 -'What capital city touches two continents?' -Answer: 'Istanbul' -Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey, Ankara is.

-P. 161, Q. 2 -'What Peter Sellers Inspector Clouseau movie doesn't have Pink Panther in the title.' -Answer: 'The Wrong Box' -Wrong answer. The Wrong Box is not an Inspector Clouseau movie, although Peter Sellers does have a small, but hysterically funny part in it. The correct answer is A Shot In The Dark.

-P. 663, Q. 4 -'What radioactive element was used in the Fat Boy bomb dropped on Nagasaki but not in the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima?' -Answer: 'Plutonium' .Which is correct, but the bomb that dropped it was called Fat Man not Fat Boy. I know this might be getting picky, but we're talking about the world's only nuclear devices ever used on human beings and we really should get it right.

Other quibbles:

-The entertainment section is much too easy. An entertainment/junk culture know-nothing like me was able to answer/guess far too many questions. After a few pages obvious patterns emerged. The answers to most 'pop diva' questions were either 'Madonna' or 'Britney Spears'. Other unusually repetitive answers involved SpongeBob SquarePants, the Simpsons, Teletubbies, Spiderman, and the movies Groundhog Day, Being John Malkovich, and Fight Club.

-The Arts and Literature questions could be a lot more varied and interesting. Why so many John Irving questions? Where are the Paul Bowles, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabakov, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Paul Theroux, Flannery O'Connor, Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, and Joyce Carol Oates questions?

-And in the Science and Nature section why are there so many questions about the Zodiac? Shouldn't they be in the Superstition and Balderdash section?

Nevertheless, errors and irritations aside, this book is extremely entertaining, and as noted above, can be used in a variety of ways -to test and expand your general knowledge, improve your memory, as a puzzle book, and for an impromptu board-less game of Trivial Pursuit.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite questions from the book:

P. 701, Q. 2 -'What did George Green patent in 1875 that was voted the second most terrifying thing known to mankind, after nuclear warfare, in a 2003 poll?' -Answer. Sorry, you'll have to buy the book to find out the very surprising answer, which I didn't get.

I bought this so that we can plan learning games while on the road. One of us asks the question and the other tries to answer. Good book.

This book lacks variety. For example, there will be 8 questions about olympic curling in a small section of the book. Similarly, I've found that at least 10 questions are asked about Guinness while no other beer questions are present. It's as if they took each topic, came up with 20 (very similar) questions, and just scattered them in a section. The book is a fraction of what it should be.

My family has been draggin the box of cards around camping and on car trips to quiz each other and play without the actual board, just as a way of competing with each other and proving what each of us really knows.... this is much more convient! All the categories of the regular game are there, it's well organized so the person doing the reading can be mixing up the topics and still not lose where they are in the book. And because the questions are on one side of the page and answers are on the other the reader can be playing right along with the rest of the group!

I have a group of friends that love to play trivial pursuit with me and I this book is a great way for me to get a gift that corresponds with our interests. I love getting gifts that have to do with something personal or have to do with my relationship to that person.

A great gift idea for the trivia nerd in your life.

Twenty words may be a stretch. BUT!... The book is fun. Several friends have enjoyed the dialog with me. It is a wonderful ice breaker. It is a book that can make a warm gathering on any topic. If you have another book in the same bent....... Pass the topic along to me. Many thanks........... Maybe this did make 20 words........... If others would like to compare notes, I'd be pleased to share an dialog. Thanks again, WBB

Great book with a variety of question categories. We have a weekly get-to-gether for Trivia. As many as 350 people play (teams with a max of 10 people). Questions from easy to difficult. Great reference!

Great for any length trivia challenge around the campfire (or cheese platter, where ever your organized gathering might take you)!
A reasonable level of assorted difficulty within each questions.
Overall enjoyable.