Ken Jenningss Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days by Ken Jennings


Ken Jenningss Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days
Title : Ken Jenningss Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0345499972
ISBN-10 : 9780345499974
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 544
Publication : First published January 15, 2007

Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac is the ingeniously organized book where, for a change, the all-time Jeopardy! champ gets to ask the questions–and where every day of the year will give you the chance to test your trivia mettle.

For example–February 21: In 1912, on this day, Teddy Roosevelt coined the political phrase “hat in the ring,†so Ken Jennings fires off a series of “ring†questions. What two NFL quarterbacks have four Super Bowl rings each?* What rings are divided by the Cassini Division?** Also on this date, in 1981, the “goth†music scene was born in London, so here’s a quiz on black-clad icons like Darth Vader, Johnny Cash, and Zorro. Do you know the secret identities of Ivanhoe’s Black Knight*** or Men in Black’s Agent M****?

In this ultimate book for trivia buffs and other assorted know-it-alls, the 365 entries feature “This Day in History†factoids, trivia quizzes, and questions categorized by Jennings as “Easy,†“Hard,†and “Yeah, Good Luck.†Topics cover every subject under the sun, from paleontology to mixology, sports feats to Bach suites, medieval popes to daytime soaps. This addictive gathering of facts, oddities, devilishly clever quizzes, and other flights of fancy will make each day a fun and intriguing new challenge.


Ken Jenningss Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days Reviews


  • Mindy

    Alright, I haven't read all 7,777 questions. (By the way, there are more than that! Ken just thought 7,777 sounded good in the title.) What's more I can not answer very many of the questions. I actually would like to give this book a lower rating because it interfered with my trip to Italy- Ken was correcting proofs. On the other hand the advance helped to pay for the trip to Italy. Alright, 5 stars it is.

  • Erikka

    What a fantastic trivia collection! This kept us occupied all through quarantine. My husband and i both love trivia and this was the perfect challenge level: not impossible, but also not painfully easy or repeats of trivia from 20 other books. I also loved the categories and that classic Jennings snark.

  • Anne

    There were some HARD questions in here! I really liked the formatting, and some of the trivia categories were very clever.

  • Jessica

    I joined a trivia league last fall and am really spectacularly bad at it, but it's a lot of fun and so I've been trying to find ways to improve. I've been on Ken Jennings's "Tuesday Trivia" email list for a few years now, so working through his trivia almanac seemed like a good next step.

    The book is designed to be read one page a day over the course of a year. Each page leads off with the month and day and is separated into two or three sections. Each section starts off with an "on this day in history" factoid and then presents you with 5-15 questions loosely themed around that factoid. Some of the themes work out better than others - I frequently walk away feeling like I've learned something, but other days the questions feel too esoteric, or too silly, for me to care about them very much. (I tend to skip over the ones that give two lists of elements and ask you to find the item in column A that corresponds with the item in column B, but those are fortunately not too frequent in the book.)

    I was particularly pleased yesterday to discover that the book does include a page for February 29. It felt very timely to be working my way through this book in a leap year!

    This is a very well done trivia book - most days I know the answers to a few questions in each section, and there have been a handful of times when I knew a category well and could get almost everything in it right, but in general there are more questions I don't know than questions I do. The answer keys are clustered together at the end of each month, meaning it's easiest to keep two bookmarks in the book, one for the trivia questions and one for the answers. It's a little cumbersome flipping back and forth while trying not to inadvertently glance at answers for an upcoming day, but it works well enough.

    I wrote all of the above after a month or two of working my way through this book. Having finished the whole thing now, I have to say it's a really well done trivia book, and if you're looking for something like this to entertain or educate yourself, I highly recommend this book. I definitely felt like reading this book was a major factor in how much my trivia league performance improved over the course of the year. I developed a ritual of reading the day's page from this almanac before reading the day's questions in my league, and my favorite coincidence was on June 28, when a set of questions themed around musical instruments asked me, "What trumpetlike horn is jazzman Chuck Mangione's instrument?" (Answer: flugelhorn) I nearly lost it when I checked my league questions for the day and found this one among them: "With what musical instrument, related to the trumpet (and resembling it, but producing a mellower and darker sound with a more conical bore), is the artist Chuck Mangione most closely associated?"

    I've picked out a new book to work my way through over the course of 2017 (
    The Intellectual Devotional), but I think I may flip back to January 1 and start my way through this almanac a second time, too. It will be interesting to see if any of the things I learned from this book last year stick with me enough to make questions easier on the second time through.

  • Nucking Futs the Fire Fairy Book-a-holic

    This is probably the most fun trivia book i've read so far. The trivia questions are really interesting and the organization of the segments is entertaining. My only problem here is the position of the answer key. I wish the author had made it easier to check the answers.

  • Tomi Alger

    This is a fun book, even though some trivia categories were beyond our knowledge. Dale, Allison, and I challenged each other with the trivia in all kinds of areas, including music, sports, movies, television, and literature. Sometimes we surprised ourselves in what we knew.

  • Rory

    I really enjoyed Jenning's "Brainiac" and really enjoy his blog and, wow, does this compendium deliver, too! Jennings is obviously very smart, but he's also down-to-earth, funny and connected to people who--like him--just love knowing stuff for the sake of knowing it. Especially knowing strange and amazing and surprising and obscure things. This is set up as a daily almanac of facts and questions and it's really well put together. I wish I owned it!

  • John

    My wife and I love trivia games. Ken Jennings has masterfully created a great book of questions and answers on everything from sports to politics to geography and some even very random categories. My wife and I quiz each other in the car or whenever we have a few minutes to kill. It's not a book you read cover-to-cover, but it's great for ocasional perusing. We love it!

  • Missy

    I'm a little confused by the icon as the book I have contains 8,888 trivia questions... but it appears to be the same book described. It's cleverly written and organized and Raj helped edit it!

  • Ricky

    brain overload

  • Krystle

    Not really done, just sick of seeing it on my Currently reading shelf:P

    Love what i've read to far though!

  • Sarah Murphy Traylor

    OMG. This trivia is LEGIT, son.

  • Julie

    I didn't like the way it was laid out - you had to keep looking up the correct answers in the back of the book...

  • Blaine DeSantis

    A lot of info, which is good, but not overly thrilled with the organization of the book

  • Adrianne

    Wonderful trivia.

  • Katy

    Buzzfeed List, November 2017, "9 Books That Actually Helped Me Win On 'Jeopardy!'"