Is trivia good for your brain?

What we do not claim

First, the things you will not read here. We do not claim that Trivvy makes you more intelligent, trains your brain, improves your memory in general, or prevents any illness. Some products sold as brain training have been criticised for promising more than the evidence supports, and we are not scientists. Trivvy is a quiz game that is fun to play. Anything it does for your head is a bonus.

Recalling something helps you remember it

There is one idea from the study of learning that we are comfortable building on. Learning researchers call it retrieval practice: trying to recall something from memory tends to help you remember it later better than simply reading it again. It is one of the more consistently reported findings in the field, and it is the everyday reason behind flashcards and practice tests.

A quiz is retrieval practice with a scoreboard. When a question makes you search your memory for a name or a year, and then shows you the correct answer straight after, you have just done something close to what a good study technique involves. That is why the solution after every question matters as much as the question itself.

Why you type the answer

Multiple-choice quizzes let you recognise the right answer among four options, and recognising is much easier than recalling. You can score well on a multiple-choice quiz by elimination and by hunch. In Trivvy you type the answer yourself, so you have to produce it from memory. That is the main design choice in the game, and it is why the score says something about what you actually know.

To keep that from being frustrating, the judging is forgiving. A typo, a missing accent or a common alternative name still counts, so you are tested on knowing the answer, not on spelling it perfectly.

The part that is simply pleasant

Much of the value of trivia is not about the brain at all. It is a reason to sit down with friends or family and talk. A question about a film sparks a story about the evening you saw it; a wrong answer becomes a joke that lasts all week. Quizzes give people with different backgrounds something to share on equal terms, because anyone can know the answer to something.

There is also curiosity. A good solution screen teaches you something you did not know, and that small moment of surprise is a large part of why people keep playing.

How to get the most from a quiz

If you want a quiz habit that is useful and not only entertaining, a few simple things help. Play a little often rather than a lot rarely; the daily quiz of five questions takes a couple of minutes. Read the solution after each question, especially the ones you missed. Mix categories, so you meet topics you would not choose yourself. And play with other people when you can, because explaining an answer to someone is itself a way of remembering it.

None of this needs to be a chore. If it stops being fun, stop. A quiz that you enjoy and play now and then is worth more than a plan you abandon after a week.

Quizzes with children and with older relatives

A quiz is one of the few activities where a nine-year-old and a grandparent can sit at the same table and both have a chance. Children often know things adults have forgotten, such as the names of animals and characters from the latest film, while the older generation knows things nobody else does. The question is the same for everyone, and the answer is the thing that decides who is right.

For a mixed group, choose an easy level and let the adults answer the hard questions only. Trivvy's family game was built for exactly this: every player gets questions at their own level, so a child can beat an adult. Let the children be the quiz master for a round; reading the questions aloud and judging the answers is its own kind of practice.

Keeping it light

A quiz should feel like a game, not a test. If someone is embarrassed by a wrong answer, the evening has gone wrong. Celebrate funny wrong answers; Trivvy even lets the room vote for the funniest wrong answer of the round. A good question is one that people remember and talk about afterwards, whether or not they got it right.

What a good quiz should do

Whatever the benefits, they only appear if the questions are right. A quiz with wrong answers teaches the wrong thing, which is why we spend so much effort on checking the cards, as described in our guide to how Trivvy questions are checked. If you ever find a mistake, tell us with “Something wrong with this card?” on the solution screen.