Fruit Machine Chat

Aye aye.

Do you think there is any benefit to be gained from memorising certain sets of facts, as far as playing quiz machines is concerned?

I'm thinking of things like:

Grand National winners/jockeys/trainers for the last x years
Derby winners
FA Cup winners and runners-up
Prime Ministers and their dates in office
Obscure capital cities
Christmas Number Ones

Worthwhile or not? And if worthwhile, what else can you think of?

the one single area where i lose most is the first/last words of shakespeare plays. if i could be bothered, that would be worth learning. i realise that certain people reading this will sneer and rightly so.

Learn Latin - you'll be amazed.

Read Dickens and Shakespeare. (Fuck the first and last words, there are endless character references all over games and these two aren't writing any more books).

QM

agree with the latin thing. you can understand most major modern european languages with a decent grounding. i've never studied dutch but those Qs are guessable if you understand transliteration. and scientific names are often knowable with bonus colour/location clues from the latin.

thing is, i have read most of dickens and a lot of shakespeare so i (should) know the characters/plots but first words? that is a different skill.

Aha, yes the Dickens and Shakespeare thing makes a lot of sense. I know instinctively I've had a lot of questions about those.

Come on people, what else?

Are you just looking for suitable material for a continuing career as a question writer?

xyz

From current experience I'd suggest learning every river in New Zealand. These keep cropping up as spoilers/gamebreakers for me.