About Trivopædia

TRIVOPÆDIA

www.trivopaedia.com

If you need a competitive edge in Pub Quizzes (cheating is such an ugly word), or you're just an obsessed fan of trivia, then Trivopædia aims to be the resource for you. Tons of topics likely to show up in trivia contests are pared down to their bare essentials and listed alphabetically on the left.

Curated by Steve Litchfield, Mike Pollock, Roy Currlin and Stan Schwartz. Adapted for Google Sites by Mike Pollock.

Some material, as cited and/or embedded, comes from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons License, or other sites. Formatting may vary.

Please send ideas and content updates to mike@trivopaedia.com.

Trivopædia is freeware. Note that older versions with now-outdated content may still be found in Mobipocket Reader, Palm Desktop, iSilo, Plucker, iPhone and DOC formats (in various version numbers) elsewhere on the web.

While you're here, why not check out 3-Lib, general articles, info and links for Psion and Symbian PDAs and smartphones (stevelitchfield.com)

A brief history, by Steve Litchfield

Started with rregal@cix.co.uk back in the mists of time and merged with data from my own Trivia program for the Psion Series 3 classic. And then added to in various bits as we went on, thanks particularly to Stefan Wolfrum, Christian Eyrich, Michael Hoehne, Louwe Brink, Steve Hawtin, Richard Lambley, Roger Burton-West, Jim Willsher, Ian Sayers, Alan Jones, Simon Williams, Colin Smith, Andrew Giddings, Andre van Linden, Thomas Floyd, Richard Weeber, David Aldous, Stewart Shine, Mark Wilder, Daniel Pope, Kevin Turner, Neil Jowett, Roland Francies, David Rushall, Austen Gower, A Nieman, Paul Ward, Colin Spurdle, Jim Ventola, Patrick Hahn, Richard Moss, Paul Bamber, Jim Johnston, Joshua Holman, Jonathan Winter and others on the net.

A less-brief addendum, by Mike Pollock

I stumbled upon Trivopædia while stocking my then-new Palm OS device with apps around the turn of the century. As a fan of trivia, I became a fan of Trivopædia almost instantly. When I moved to Android, I realized Trivopædia wouldn't easily make the transition with me, and indeed development seemed to have stalled around 2008. It also occurred to me that many current apps involved some sort of online component, and Trivopædia especially would benefit from having some updated content for its annual awards topics, among others. I reached out to Steve and he graciously gave me permission to convert the Trivopaedia 2.3.DOC  to a Google Docs version. I spent hours tweaking it, making sure the Table of Contents at the top linked to all the articles below it, and doing a little updating, adding some topics, and reformatting as I went (I really like tables, apparently). Still, the massive single-page format seemed a little clunky by today's standards, so my next attempt was to convert that document into a Google Sites website, with each article on its own page, and a vertical navigation bar running down the side. That made me happier, but I soon realized that the annual upkeep of the various awards pages was becoming a chore. I knew that Wikipedia contributors keep track of such things, so I decided to take advantage of its open-source nature, and embed Wiki content (usually tables of some sort — what a surprise!) into the relevant articles to make them more-or-less self-sustaining. If you're viewing on a mobile device, you might have to click ▽ to expand some sections to see the content in question. And most, if not all, articles contain a link to Wikipedia or another external source for additional information and further study. Which brings us to where we are now. Still a little clunky, but at least a little more up-to-date. I'd owe a debt of gratitude to my friends and collaborators, the late Evan Marcus, and the not-yet-late Roy and Stan, but what have they done for me lately? And as for where we're going: the current AI boom might make this entire concept go the way of button-shoes. As of this writing, Google's Bard experiment is still free, so you can try surreptitiously asking it your pub-quiz questions, between sips of your smuggled-in beer.