Academic League and Trivia for the Whole Family

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, you know my house is a trivia house, right?

Yes.

Do you know what that means?

Well, I know that you guys know a lot, all of you.

Well, we read true pursuit cards at mealtimes.

Wait, what?

Yeah, we read each other trivia questions.

And my wife, Sarah, and I are part of Learned League, which is a high-level online trivia competition.

She has tried out for trivia television shows like Jeopardy.

She watches trivia like Jeopardy every night.

And she’s part of several online quiz leagues that do their competitions on Zoom.

And this year we added one more thing to our trivia household.

Our son Guthrie has taken up Academic League, which is a high school quiz league.

You mean like College Bowl or Quiz Bowl, something like that?

Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly like that.

So after a couple years of doing it remotely because of the pandemic, San Diego public and private high schools are now meeting face-to-face to have these competitions.

They compete at three levels, and they answer questions on academic topics like history and literature, physics, geography, theater, art, poetry, and more.

And what’s interesting to me is how the questions are phrased.

They start difficult, like obscure even, and then they get simpler.

So the kids are sitting there, poised over their buzzers, waiting to hear the thing that they recognize before they can buzz in with the answer.

So the easier, more likely-to-known facts appear last.

So I’ve got a sample question for you from the National Association of Quiz Tournaments.

Do you want to hear it?

I think so.

All right.

Here we go.

Buzz in.

Just go buzz, buzz as soon as you know the answer, okay?

Okay.

I can’t ask for a lifeline or anything like that.

No.

Oh, here we go.

Oh, dear.

Are you smarter than a high schooler?

In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Vardaman is encouraged to eat this fruit instead of pondering his mother’s death.

It is the less starchy of two similar fruits one can fry to make the Asian snack pisan goreng.

Jacobo Arben’s Guzman was overthrown at the urging of a company that mainly grew this fruit in Guatemala, which along with Honduras was this type of republic.

Oh.

What?

Okay, I got it.

You have to buzz in.

Buzz, buzz.

Buzz, buzz.

Do I have to say it in the form of question?

No, no.

Okay.

What is it?

I finally got it.

It’s got to be banana, right?

Yeah, it’s a banana.

Yeah.

The last part was, for 10 points, name this fruit sold by Chiquita.

That’s absolutely.

Oh.

If you didn’t know it by that point, that was going to give it to you.

But I love the way that initially it seems really difficult.

I can’t remember fruit from As I Lay Dying, but then as you went farther and farther along, it’s sort of like watching a sunrise.

Yes. You would have had to have read the book recently or analyzed it recently really to, or have been an expert in Faulkner to remember the banana, I think.

I guess so. But I love that construct of starting from difficult to easy.

Yeah, the tension is palpable when a question goes on and on and on and gets to the simple part and nobody has buzzed in.

Most adults wouldn’t do much better than the kids because they’re difficult questions.

Although it is clear that there is an advantage for adults because just the more decades that you live, the more that you know.

And even the 80s and the 90s are distant history to children born in the 2000s.

Sure, sure. So I’m picturing you and Sarah in the audience trying not to raise your hand.

Yeah, we elbow each other when we know that the other one knows the answer, because that would be something that we discussed recently or something that came up in trivia at home.

I would encourage our listeners to try to get involved as a supporter or even a coach at Academic League in their high school or middle school.

Sometimes they’re just looking for someone to attend and applaud.

Sometimes they’re looking for someone to provide refreshments.

So it’s really not a bad way to spend a couple hours once a week.

It sounds like great fun, Grant.

It is.

And we invite you to quiz us about language.

I don’t know if we’ll do as well as high schoolers, but we’ll give it a try.

877-929-9673 or send your questions and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.