ken-jennings.com

Busy busy busy

Ken Jennings — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:04:21 +0000

UPDATE! I am getting a lot done during all the time I spend not writing anything on this blog.

My kids’ book about the presidents is done! I now know that Benjamin Harrison was deathly afraid of light switches. And when this book comes out next spring…so will you.
I’ve seen cover designs for the first two Junior Genius books and an “Advance Reader Copy” of the first installment in the series, The Junior Genius Guide to Maps and Geography. It looks so sexy! For a kids’ book I mean. Sexier than Little House in the Big Woods or The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food. I’m not allowed to post the covers yet as they’re still being tweaked, but the illustrations are by Mike Lowery (known to my kids for his fine work on something called Fart Powder) and they’re perfect.
Yahoo! chose my Twitter feed as one of the first they recommended in their new Follow Friday feature (I think I might have been the second profile, after fellow Seattleite Rainn Wilson) and you can read the resulting interview here.
I got in the ring with a Mexican wrestler last weekend to promote Trivia Death Match with Ken Jennings! Did I win? No. Am I great-looking in a unitard? Absolutamente lo soy. Pics/video to come.
I got asked to do something super-awesome next Thursday and I’m pretty unbelievably nervous because I don’t want to seem like an idiot and anyway a national audience will be able to sample me seeming like an idiot next Saturday.
Oh, and this happened, speaking of things I’ve known about for a while but was sworn to secrecy about.

Stay tuned.

Weekend Update (aka “Ken, you ignorant slut”)

Ken Jennings — Sat, 04 May 2013 16:55:55 +0000

Last weekend I made a quick trip to L.A. to be a trivia whore. I’d been hired as a last-minute “ringer” by one of the teams in the Global Gourmet Games, a food-themed fundraiser run by financier Michael Milken. Apparently Milken (previously known to me only as “that jailed ’80s junk bond king whom Albert Brooks’ character in Out of Sight is clearly based on”) has bounced back as a big time philanthropist/cancer activist. This “Gourmet Games” benefit is one of his biggest of the year. (…I assume, based on the number of people I saw casually raise their hands to pledge six-figure donations. Yikes.)

I was enlisted, I presume, for my food trivia acumen, but it turns out that trivia is a very small part of the Milken format, so I wasn’t all that much help to my team. (Most of the points, we learned are for nutritionist and wine-tasting skillz.) Still, it’s probably the only time in my life I’ll ever get to compete against Larry King at the table to my right and John Salley at the table to my right. A good time.

Also, I was thrilled that my coming-out as a trivia whore happened at the ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire–the actual hotel from Pretty Woman!

Here’s your quasi-regular reminder that, if for some insane reason you don’t have copies of my two latest books yet, you can win them absolutely free from Parade magazine! Submit your own “Kennections” quizzes to this brand-new Web page and we’ll be giving away two books a week! (As I’ve written before, most of the submissions we get are not all that trivia-savvy, so if you know what you’re doing, your odds of winning are very good.)

Belated Wordplay Wednesday! Take a six-letter word that names an unexpected film icon of 2002–making his first and (as it has turned out) last movie. Spell it backward and replace an ‘E’ with an ‘I’ and you’ll get a different unexpected film icon of the early aughts, who also made his last screen appearance in 2002. Who are they?

Edited to add: gwynn1984 was the first to answer this one…

Bee ready

Ken Jennings — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:59:11 +0000

I’m back home from my lecture tour to Parts Unknown–and about to leave again. Tomorrow night I’m going to be up in Bellingham, Washington, for the 17th annual Whatcom Literary Council Trivia Bee. This is always a fun event that benefits local literacy efforts, and this year I’m co-hosting for the first time with local radio guy Scotty VanDryver. Doors open at Bellingham High School at 6pm, trivia gets underway at 7. If you’re a Whatcom County-ite, come enjoy the silent auction, the trivia, etc.

The tunnel

Ken Jennings — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:08:18 +0000

In another week or two I should be done with the third of the first three Junior Genius books I’m writing for Simon & Schuster Kids–and should actually have some time to breathe, for the first time in months.

The third volume is about U.S. presidents. As someone once said, “Politicians are people who, when they see a light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.” This is certainly true of writers as well, since I’ve just agreed to write two more books in this series of kids’ fact books. Not due until the fall, though, fortunately.

I’m also taking part of next week to speak at two college campuses, one in Ohio and one in Georgia. Both seem to be open to non-students from the community, so I’ve belatedly added them to my little list here.

We used to have lots of picture puzzles on this site, right? Whatever happened to those days? Here’s one. What do these movies have in common? Can you name them all, working backward if necessary?

Edited to add: Answered and discussed over on the message boards.

The fourth wave of cloud computing (feat. Wordplay Wednesday)

Ken Jennings — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:16:06 +0000

In the first episode of At the Intersection, the EMC-Intel web series I host from time to time, we looked at how cloud computing and big data are changing the way Jaguar makes cars. This brand new second installment takes us behind the scenes of the New York Stock Exchange.

Also: Wordplay Wednesday! Take a common four-letter English word of just one syllable. Move its first letter to the end of the word and suddenly, presto! It’s a four-letter word with three syllables. Where did they come from? Whatever happened to Newton’s laws conserving syllables? And most importantly, what are the words?

Edited to add: Aaaand here’s the answer, courtesy of skullturfq.

The list is good. The list is life.

Ken Jennings — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 23:54:54 +0000

A couple years ago I blogged twice about my love for The Spy List, a gossipy “what do they have in common?” feature in the beloved 1980s magazine Spy that helped inspire my weekly Tuesday Trivia quiz. The idea was to crowdsource solutions to these never-officially-solved “puzzles,” which actually happened a bit on this message board thread before everyone lost interest.

But I was reading some old Spy on Google Books the other day and thought, why not revive the feature? Here’s the next unsolved “Spy List,” from the July 1988 issue. (This one is not in the Google archive, so I tracked down a paper copy.) Not too tough, especially with a little Google help.

Loni Anderson
Seema Boesky
Oscar de la Renta
John Duka
Phyllis Gates
Kezia Keeble
Grace Kelly
Jillie Mack
Bess Myerson
Annette Reed
Diane von Furstenberg
Gloria von Thurm und Taxis
Johannes von Thurm und Taxis
Leonard Woolf
Xanthippe

You might quibble with a couple of the entries (I’ve at least heard the Loni Anderson rumor, but Seema Boesky? Grace Kelly?!?) but that’s all part of the fun.

Here’s the one from the following issue–September 1988–that stumped the message boards. After pondering this lo these many years, I think I have an inkling. But I’ll open it up first to the group. What do these people have in common?

Ginger Baker
Aaron Copland
Agnes de Mille
Douglas Edwards
Graham Greene
Huntington Hartford
Harper Lee
Zeppo Marx
John Mitchell
Les Paul
J. B. Priestley
Roy Rogers
Dean Rusk
Stephen Spender
Edward Teller
Virgil Thomson
Robert Wagner Sr.
Harold Wilson
Sam Yorty

Edited to add: Give up? Answers tossed around here.

Now we are six

Ken Jennings — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:30:51 +0000

Hans Christian Andersen would have been 208 years old today, if he was some kind of ageless wizard. His birthday, April 2, was chosen in 1967 for the annual observance of International Children’s Book Day.

And speaking of children’s books, here’s an alphabet mural I painted on my daughter’s wall when she was a newborn. Somehow, she’s turning seven this year and will probably want this painted over one of these days, sigh. I posted these photos on the blog many years ago as I finished each letter, but here they are in one place. Click for larger images.

Go Panthers

Ken Jennings — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:17:43 +0000

Last week I finished the new “bonus” chapter for the Because I Said So! paperback, due out in the fall. For the paperback, I’ve fact-checked twelve new parental cliches suggested by curious readers of the hardcover. From bed-wetting to head lice to public toilet liners to the virtues of carob–all your favorites will be there.

Here’s an exciting sneak preview of my other new project. I know we’re getting to market a little late, but we had some trouble with our Chinese suppliers. I think this little guy is going to be a million seller. I give you…

FRIDAY NIGHT-LIGHTS.

The bulb is guaranteed to last for two years, and then three more if you plug it into your satellite feed.

Clear eyes. Dark room. Can’t lose.

TED man walking

Ken Jennings — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 03:44:45 +0000

I’m still perpetually short of time for the blog, having just returned from a short trip to Albert (speaking at the University of Lethbridge, go Pronghorns). But in case you missed it: here’s the TEDx (i.e. do-it-yourself TED) talk I gave here at Seattle University last month. “The Obsolete Know-It-All.” I don’t think I really nailed the format my first time out, but it was a lot of fun to try.

Let the death match begin!

Ken Jennings — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:48:25 +0000

Today’s the day: TRIVIA DEATH MATCH WITH KEN JENNINGS is in the App Store!

This fun quiz game from the makers of FilmWise.com and MovieCat is a no-holds-barred Mexican wrestling extravaganza in which you, the lowly player, can see how you match up against me, the godlike trivia champ. I answered all 1,000 of the game’s questions, and my timing and answers were captured in our state-of-the-art testing facility. So as you play each of the 50 quizzes, you’ll be going head-to-head with me (as well as yourself, your friends who also own the game through the miracle of social media, yada yada).

The game is cheap and fun and if you own an Apple device, I highly recommend it. Let the trivia battle begin! And make sure you let me know if you beat me, so I can transfer what’s left of my Jeopardy! winnings over to you. ¡Vaya con Dios, compañeros luchadores!