The first part of Bzzwords.com to be revised and functional is the Trivia Training portion of Bzzwords University. These aren’t cute little multiple choice quizzes. You have to engage your brain and actually come up with the right answer. The first four letters anyway.
Why not multiple choice? First of all, we only want to visually associate a single, correct answer to a question, not a list that includes incorrect answers. Secondly, it forces you to engage your brain and actually try to recall (or figure out) what the correct answer might be. Making a guess, even one that is incorrect (but plausible), will help build your recall of the correct answer.
Why only the first four letters? Because we want to be able to repeatedly drill a lot of questions quickly. Four letters is enough to differentiate the vast majority of possible answers, and enough to keep you from being correct simply by chance.
Why do we use a bizarre, onscreen letter/number selector instead of the standard keyboard? To prevent recall through “muscle memory.” This is the phenomenon where your fingers remember say, a password, but your language center does not. You probably won’t have your keyboard available during a trivia contest.
Why is only one form of an answer accepted? For example, why is “ABRAHAM LINCOLN” accepted as correct, while “ABE LINCOLN” is not? Because during drilling, you need to pick one form of the answer that you will see exactly the same way over and over again. We picked for you. You’re welcome.
What if you have no idea what the answer might be? Just guess. An incorrect letter will be corrected automatically. Try to guess the rest.
Here’s a tip: Don’t try to memorize. Just drill over and over and over again. Once you have a topic down perfectly, go do something else for a while. When you come back, you’ll have forgotten quite a bit. Drill until you’re perfect again. The next time you come back, you won’t have forgotten as much. At some point, you’ll stop forgetting.
So that’s it, all you need to become a fully operational death star of trivia.
