Lego Trivia


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What's the deal here? What's this about a "game show", anyway?

At BrickFest 2004, we had the 1st ever (to our knowledge) Lego Trivia Game Show, complete with tons of trivia, Mindstorms buzzers, and of course a bevy of cool Lego prizes (and some Bionicle, too). This is an attempt to bring the Game Show experience to some of you who might not have had a chance to participate at BrickFest, and also in general, just to have fun, anyway.

Who's responsible for this stuff?

Well, Dave Eaton's the prinicpal offender. He came up with the idea, most of the questions, most of the answers, did some research with AFOLs before the game, hosted the game show, and wrote this handy-dandy online version. If you've got a correction or a question, let him know.

But he was not alone. In order to rank questions, and to get corrections to some, he enlisted the aid of 11 other AFOLs. So special thanks to Dan Boger, Jenn Boger, Joe Comeau, Tom Duggan, Doug Eaton (no, no relation, just a baffling coincidence), Don Heyse, Matthew Miller, Chris Phillips, Clark Stephens, Shaun Sullivan, and Teddy Welsh for helping out!

Also, a special thanks to Jake McKee for some help with finding a few obscure answers, and perhaps most importantly a big thanks to BrickFest 2004 and its organizers for allowing the show to happen, and for funding the prizes!

So, what happened on the game show?

Well, we had "Contestant's Row" just like on The Price Is Right-- Audience members got called at random from at hat, and filled up the 3 seats in the front row. All 3 were asked a random Lego question (random question level 1-3), and the 1st to buzz in on their Mindstorms buzzer with the correct answer got called up on stage to play the Lego Game Show. All in all, we had 17 people get called up from the audience, and 15 people who actually got up on stage to do some time in the hotseat.

Of the people who got called up, we had:
Consolation Prizes: 5 people (got none right or didn't get on stage)
Level 1: 2 people
Level 2: 2 people
Level 3: 2 people
Level 4: 5 people
Level 5: 1 person (Go Tom!)
Level 6: nobody (Level 6's are HARD!)

Prizes were given for all levels, although no additional prizes were given away for getting to Level 6. Level 6 was solely for the honor and glory that comes with being a trivia-know-it-all. Prizes ranged from roughly $2.00 (consolation prizes) all the way up to $100 (level 5/6 prizes).

How hard are the questions?

Really, really, hard. Most of the AFOLs who took our preliminary survey only got 30-40% correct, and as you can see from the statistics of the Game Show, there were a fair number of people that didn't make it very far up the ladder. Don't feel bad if you get a lot wrong-- these are questions are both to test you and to help you learn useless facts about Lego.

The questions also come from a variety of places. We tried to cover all the major areas of the hobby, from the products Lego makes to the fan community to the company history. There's questions about Lego CAD, major fan sites, people's MOC's, world records, and everything in between. We learned a lot in coming up with the questions, and don't expect anyone in their right mind to come up with 100% of the answers without doing some research.

Here's a rough key of relative ease of the questions:
Level 1 - Pretty easy. Most AFOLs should know these questions if they don't already.
Level 2 - Tricky. If you've been involved in the Lego community, you probably know most, but not all of these.
Level 3 - Hard. You'll need some experience to get these answers.
Level 4 - Very hard. To get these right, you'll have to know your stuff pretty well.
Level 5 - Nearly Impossible. The very most knowledgable AFOLs will get many if not most of these wrong.
Level 6 - Insane. Nobody knows these. Count yourself as a Grand Pope of Trivia if you know these.