Facts are funny things . It was a fact, for instance, that in the spring of 2024 I won $132,000 playing trivia. That May, I’d flown from Oxford, where I was a graduate student, across the Atlantic to a soundstage in Los Angeles, and played for eight good days on Jeopardy!

It was also a fact—one I liked to tastefully overlook when asked at holidays or on trips home—that I was unemployed, that I’d gone to Oxford for a master’s degree in large part to escape further unemployment. But I had been decent on Jeopardy! , and I knew that decent trivia players were often invited back for a second chance at more money. Returning to the show, however—for something like the Tournament of Champions or the Jeopardy! Invitational—meant facing tougher questions against better players. And it was a fact that, to prepare for this possibility, I would need to throw myself into the world of competitive trivia, or quiz.

Quiz is many things to the disciple. It is not simply trivia. It is not simply a hobby.…