Now normally, I loves me a game of trivia but sometimes, some questions are just HORRIBLE, or maybe even wrong. Like this one from the deviantART trivia channel: What is pellagraphobia the fear of?
…
…
…
… pellagra.
What.
Well, it’s the fear of pellagra, naturally.
By the way, nice to meet a fellow Westralian on the boards 
Last week’s pub quiz: What is the only word in the english lanuguage to end in “mt”?
Didn’t get it 
Dreamt.
An old fun one from back in high school:
What is the opposite of nocturnal?
Diurnal or crespecular.
Who was the first African-American to die in a U.S. conflict?
Does Crispus Attucks count?
Only if street riots count as “US conflicts”, and only if you backdate the formation of the US a few years.
Butbut… that’s not the point! D:
Nice to see you, too.
Woah … False_God knew crepuscular too !!! (I thought I was one of the few folks that knew that word. Then again, I forgot this is the SDMB whose members are sesquipedalian sharpshooters).
And I agree about horrible trivia questions.
Here’s one I hate - who was the only person to play for the Boston Celtics, Bruins, Patriots and Red Sox?
John Kiley. He was the organist for all those teams. (I think the person who thought of that question deserves a serious beating).
Here’s one encountered in a trivia chat room:
What’s the leading cause of death for American children age 5 and under?
Abortion
Needless to say that question and answer met with a lot of hostility. Not because of the political / ethical slant of the question but because it is very similar to the John Kiley question above.
How many stitches in a baseball?
One
(Yes the urge to kill increases doesn’t it?)
Thank you for the OP. I can hardly believe there are so many beeves-crap questions out there.
Uhhh… how do you figure that?
What really bugs me are questions whether it’s not clear if it’s a trivia question or a trick question or what. I remember one from high school in which as a class project one group had put together a Jeopardy-style quiz, and one of the questions was “What are the 5 main islands of Japan”. Now, normally, one refers to the FOUR main islands of Japan, but I suppose you could argue that the five mainEST are the four main ones plus Okinawa, and there’s really no way to tell which answer is intended.
As for the number of stitches in a baseball, the person who asked that (who also deserves a serious beating) was implying that if it is one thread it is just one big stitch. Yes I think it’s a shit question and answer too.
Or how about “How many eggs does the peacock lay each month on average?” The answer being of course that peacocks don’t lay eggs, peahens do. Anyone who asks that needs a dictionary to the face.
I don’t know where this came from, but every rosary I every owned or saw had 53 small beads and 5 large beads, a cross, and a medallion. Every time I hear that line in that movie, I want to smack the writers. Of course, thru the course of the movie, we find out Annie is a flake anyway, but it still makes me nuts!
Don’t forget the ever popular: “How many grooves on one side of a typical 33 1/3 record album?” Does this one even come up in these days of CDs?
First one who asks anything to do with the letters GRY gets the firing squad.
I’m hungry and angry… that doesn’t mean you have to get all gory on me.
So whats with those letters?
[lights last cigarette, puts on blindfold]
FairyChatMom snippet:
but every rosary I every owned or saw had 53 small beads and 5 large beads, a cross, and a medallion. Every time I hear that line in that movie, I want to smack the writers.
Get your rosary out and count again.
No Joke, FCM
(And I think you’re gonna be a little embarrassed.)
Maybe they were referring to pre-1945 Japan, in which case the fifth would be Sakhalin/Karafuto. 