Trivia Logica
Some believe that the internet is the demise of trivia. If just about any fact - no matter how obscure - can be looked up in a few seconds on the internet, what’s so great about someone who has a lot of these facts memorized? Pit a trivia genius against a know-nothing with a Wi-Fi enabled cellphone, and the know-nothing will win every time (unless, perhaps, the time limit is a killer).
But as Joseph Weisenthal pointed out, this doesn’t mean trivia has to die, it just has to evolve. He believes trivia’s next step should to test your mastery of logic rather than of facts. You know, quandaries involving sheep on different sides of the river and farmers who only have half a boat for shuffling the sheep around. Trivia Logica wouldn’t test how fast you can skim an article on Wikipedia for the relevant data. It would test things you can’t look up - logical solutions to unique problems that require complex thinking.
Those could revolutionize schools (“Memorization Factories”) as well, since schools currently operate on the old trivia model, testing students how well they remember certain details of what they’ve been told.
4 years ago