Trivia World
A six-letter word (and a 10,000
entry encyclopedia)
He may have written one of the definitive resources for
trivia fans, but
Stanley
Newman says he “feels like something of an interloper”
when told that he’s becoming as much of a brand name in the
trivia world as he already is in the crossword world.
 In
fact, Random House, his former employer, is even putting his
names on books he hasn’t written, as a sort of endorsement
badge, much as Tom Clancy or Isaac Asimov gets their names
above the marquee of books that their names alone can sell.
Newman became a crossword legend when he won the 1982 US
Open (that’s crosswords, not golf or tennis). Since 1987,
his crossword puzzle in Newsday has been syndicated
and now reaches more than 100 newspapers. Next May will see
the publication of his 100th book for crossword puzzle
enthusiasts.
In 1996, after Random House had hired him as the
publishing director of its puzzles and games division, it
arranged to have Newman’s skill at cruciverbalism tested
under fire. In front a TV cameras, he did the New York Time
puzzle a day in advance of publication. It took him just 2
minutes and 14 seconds.
Trivia and crosswords: a natural
fit
Since then, he has moved on to trivia, having co-authored
10,000 Answers: The Ultimate Trivia Encyclopedia. But
for Newman, this is a natural fit. “There is more crossover
between trivia and crosswords than you might think.”
He explains this crossover with a brief history of
crosswords. In the 1950s, crosswords were written by what
Newman calls “English majors and people from literary
backgrounds.” Their puzzles emphasized vocabulary and for
them, “putting trivia in crosswords puzzles would have been
blasphemy.”
But in the 1980s, Games magazine began producing
puzzles that incorporated knowing facts rather than simply
words and, in a genre-shifting move, the New York Times
turned its venerable puzzle over to Will Shortz, who was
part of the “New Wave” of puzzle writing in which, as Newman
explains, “you could use references from movies or TV or
advertising or whatever else was around you.”
For Newman, the love of facts goes way, way back. “The
first book I remember reading was the 1962 Information
Please almanac. I found a copy recently at a garage sale
and I went straight to the photo section. It really took me
back. I remember reading everything. Well … I wasn’t that
interested in aluminum production in Kenya, but state
capitals, baseball statistics … I read everything else!”
How a new trivia encyclopedia was
born
In the 1970s, Newman found himself devouring
Fred L Worth’s trivia
encyclopedias. “But I thought there were a few flaws,
especially the choice of information. Like all the license
plates. If you want to know the license plate of the car
that James Mason drove in A Star is Born, you’ll find
it there, but how interesting is it?”
As a crossword writer, Newman was also frustrated by the
difficulty in finding information. “It was organized by
trivia answer instead of by subject, which made it
interesting browsing. But I could never find anything. It
needed an index.”
It was these ideas that led to 10,000 Answers.
Newman’s book avoids lists you can find anywhere, such as
state capitals, and goes instead for hard-to-find lists,
such as New York ticker tape parades, or Jelly Belly jelly
bean flavours. Instead of listing college sports team by
college, it organizes them by team names. “That way, you can
find all the colleges whose teams are Tigers.”
Next up for Stan
The book is now a trivia reference staple, selling 40,000
copies. An updated hardcover edition has also been
published. The book inspired Newman to do other trivia
products. In 2005, for example, Random House will publish
Assorted Trifles, a book modelled on Schott’s
Original Miscellany and marketed to look like a box of
chocolates. “It includes some of the best of 10,000
Answers and some new material based on things I’ve been
reading.”
And in August 2004, Newman replaced LM Boyd as the author
of his
Trivia Bits daily trivia column. Boyd started his
column in the 1960s, writing as Mike Mailway in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. He retired in 2004.
A sample Trivia Bits column
Thursday, December 30, 2004
French artist Toulouse-Lautrec was 4 feet, 6 inches tall.
There are only "three degrees of separation" between Rudolph
Valentino and Reese Witherspoon. Valentino costarred with
Gary Cooper, who costarred with James Garner, who costarred
with Witherspoon.
The middle name of George Grinnell, who founded the Audubon
Society in 1886, was:
A) Bird
B) Eagle
C) McFly
D) Wing
The middle name of George Grinnell, who founded the Audubon
Society in 1886, was Bird.
Newman’s Web site is
http://www.stanxwords.com/.
January 2005
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