Cento giuochi

[Zyada]

While I don't have a copy, this should help

[tanjak]

Alternatively, you could follow links from www.sca.org to the local group in North Carolina nearest to Duke U and ask if anyone could help.

I'll bet there are SCAdians in that area of the country who would LOVE to do research into that.

[Ken Jennings]

I can see it now. "Can you all please stop hitting yourselves with those wooden swords and do some 16th-century Italian research for me? Guys? Hello?"

[econgator]

I can see it now. "Can you all please stop hitting yourselves with those wooden swords and do some 16th-century Italian research for me? Guys? Hello?"

I think it's more like, "Pardon, my lords, bide a moment..."

[jzerocsk]

I can see it now. "Can you all please stop hitting yourselves with those wooden swords and do some 16th-century Italian research for me? Guys? Hello?"

Cue post from offended RenFaire geek...

Not knowing anything about the subject previously I definitely would have assumed straight away that trivia games of some sort existed at least back into the days of classical civilization. Tell me you don't think that in between affectionate caresses and philosophical musings those Greek academics were grilling their students about the minutiae of such topics as wrestling, theater, minotaur vanquishing and odysseying! I've seen the Elgin Marbles, including this frieze clearly depicting a trivia game of some sort.

[Nick Aretakis]

Ken,

You might want to follow this link to the OCLC database:

http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSF ... :numrecs=1

It locates some 38 libraries with copies of the 1551 edition of CENTO GIUOCHI LIBERALI, including more than thirty in the U.S. Heck, if I spoke Italian I'd go over to Yale and translate it for you.

Best,
Nick Aretakis (your friendly neighborhood rare-bookdealer)

[gameshowcongress]

Ken,

You might want to follow this link to the OCLC database:

http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSF ... :numrecs=1

It locates some 38 libraries with copies of the 1551 edition of CENTO GIUOCHI LIBERALI, including more than thirty in the U.S. Heck, if I spoke Italian I'd go over to Yale and translate it for you.

Best,
Nick Aretakis (your friendly neighborhood rare-bookdealer)

I can't seem to get Nick's link to work, but if anyone can and list the libraries that would be great.
Then, if anyone has a 5 megapixel or better digital camera, and the libary will permit it, then why not just photograph all the pages and post them on something like Fliker or Picasa? Then that link can be passed along to the Italian language gurus.

[econgator]

I can't seem to get Nick's link to work, but if anyone can and list the libraries that would be great.

Yeah, it's a timed link and our time is up!

[RingoOSU]

I prefer WorldCat over FirstSearch:
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2227139&re ... ef_results

[econgator]

Hey, my alma mater has one!

[Nick Aretakis]

Sorry about that everyone, I did the search through an OCLC link provided to subscribing booksellers, which does have a time out (and I didn't consider that when posting the link). WorldCat is the publicly-available way to search OCLC, so the link provided after my posting is truly more useful.

It's that kind of quick decision-making without thinking it through all the way that was just one factor in getting my rear kicked by Ken on Jeopardy some 4 years ago (has it been that long?).

[Ken Jennings]

Hey Nick! Looks like almost every large California university collection has one, but nothing closer to me. That's good, it gives me more time to learn archaic Italian.

[ArtVark]

Io parlo un po ti Italiano, but this sounds like it will be out of my league. I've got two sources fairly close to me (UCLA and the Getty) and so I may be able to take a peek. The sister of a friend of mine was a classical Italian major in college, and so I may be able to get a little help.

[gameshowcongress]

Hey Nick! Looks like almost every large California university collection has one, but nothing closer to me. That's good, it gives me more time to learn archaic Italian.

I'm in LA this weekend doing prep for the GSC, but perhaps if one of the collections has hours later this afternoon I can visit. Of course I don't have my best camera with me but I will see what there is to see. There is one in the Munitz Chess Collection at Cal State LA - I'll leave Artvark to the UCLA or Getty ones.

[Ken Jennings]

I definitely wouldn't ask anyone to make a special trip, but if anyone finds this kind of thing interesting and would like to take a look at the book, I'd love to hear what you find out.

[Le Master]

Damn, I thought for sure my library at UGA would have one. Sadly not.

There seems to be one at the University of North Carolina, though. You could try getting in there.

[geniusonwheels]

You should have said something a month ago, and I would have gotten it for you.

I was in the library at Duke everyday for about 3 weeks!

[gameshowcongress]

Hey Nick! Looks like almost every large California university collection has one, but nothing closer to me. That's good, it gives me more time to learn archaic Italian.

I'm in LA this weekend doing prep for the GSC, but perhaps if one of the collections has hours later this afternoon I can visit. Of course I don't have my best camera with me but I will see what there is to see. There is one in the Munitz Chess Collection at Cal State LA - I'll leave Artvark to the UCLA or Getty ones.

Turns out the special collections person was not available on Saturday, so I could not get into the Cal State LA site.

[RingoOSU]

There's a reason why it's called "Special" collections. He probably was off eating that new burger from Burger King.

[Ken Jennings]

Wow, I'm impressed that gameshowcongress actually tried to take a peek here. Thanks for the legwork.

[ArtVark]

I double clutched the send button again. See next article.

[ArtVark]

I've just come back from the UCLA research library, and here's a summary of what I've figured out about this book.

There is no place in the book that is obviously Innocenncio Ringheri's 8888 trivia questions in 365 days. No sets of numbered questions with answers in the
back. However, there does appear to be a lot of general knowledge stuff in the book.

The layout of the book is 10 sections of 10 chapters each. The title of each chapter is Givocho dell <subject>. The last chapter of each section tended to
be long and contain poems, madrigals, and sonnets (called sonnetta, 14 lines long -- rhyming somewhat (this is in Italian, so a lot of the words end in O)).

There were no illustrations, no maps, no diagrams, and no chess boards (I could not figure out which part of the book had a chess game in it).

In general, each chapter consisted of four parts: A bunch of text, a list of some sort, another bunch of text, and what look to be like questions, although
there was a dearth of question marks (there were some, however, so I know that the punctuation mark did exist at the time).

Using just the titles and the lists, I could figure out what most of the early chapters were about. Chapter 11 was about Oceans and Seas (the list consisted
of words like Atlantico, Indio, Ionio), Chapter 14 Rivers (Rubicon, Arno, Gange, Nillo), Chapter 15 lakes (Lago Maggiore, Lago Como...), Chapter 16
islands (Corsica, Capri, Malta), Chapter 17 Cities... Section two seemed mostly to be Geography, and the two sonnets at the end of the chapter were
about oceans and Mount Etna.

Other easy to figure out chapters were about metals (oro, argento), gems (diamante, perla, rubino, zaphirro, asbestes!), and animals (leone, rinochero,
pantera, volpe, hyene),

My general impression of this stuff is that it is more of a cultural literacy guide than quiz book. The text after each list seemed to describe the items in the
list, and the question at the end seemed more like "further things to think about," or "questions left for the reader." They were not referenced elsewhere,
and as far as I can tell, no answers were given.

One thing that may throw people is the word giucho (spelled givocho in the text) seems to indicate games (from modern Italian). However, after
looking at the text for a couple of hours, it hit me that the book was very secular for the time (I could not find any God or Jesus references, and no
biblical trivia appeared in it as far as I can tell). So I'm wondering if the use of giocho in this context was one of "stuff to play around with."
In other words, non-serious stuff (as opposed to stuff related to your eternal soul). The book did have a lot of text about virtue, honor, and love, but
this seemed more like advice column type comments. And you have to admit that a sonnet to Mount Etna is pretty secular.

Anyway, the one chapter that I really got into was Chapter VI, "Givocho d'ell Celeste Figure" The list consisted of names like Cygno, Scorpio, Libra, Orione,
and the text after them contained a lot of phrases like "quartro stella" (four stars). So this section was about constellations and the text following the list
of constellations was about features that can be identified. Given that I could compare this stuff with a modern English astronomy guide, I figured that this
chapter might be the easiest to decode. So I am having the library photocopy these pages and they will mail them to me. "We don't like to have our valuable
texts touch the same machines on which freshmen Xerox their butts," said the head librarian. Actually she said something else but that was the general
gist of her comments.

As a disclaimer, I have had one year of conversational Italian at night school at a local Community College, and spent three weeks in Italy and only
misordered at a restaurant once (an unrelated but interesting story). So I am not really an expert at this stuff. I could not evaluate any of the poetry,
for instance, since the only poem in Italian that I know is about "Un uomo d'all Natucketo."

I'll work on the text when I get it mailed to me, and maybe pass it by someone I know with a BA in classical Italian. Heck. I may even post the text here,
if I get it scanned.

[Ken Jennings]

Wow, very cool! Can't wait to see the scans from the special, non-ass copy machine.

I guess it's possible that the book could be, essentially, a cultural literacy guide, and still be designed for parlor games--the idea being that you could use the lists of this-goes-with-that facts to create your own question-and-answer games.

I know quiz games do exist in Italy to this day...I remember we were sitting in a little trattoria in Florence last year when some Millionaire-style game came on the TV. Even with my limited Italian, I could tell that the contestant was being asked to give a list of animals that have been Olympic mascots, so I wowed Mindy by predicting some of the contestant's answers.

[ArtVark]

When we were in San Gimignano, a store owner was listening to a soccer game on the radio. I could recognize words like left, right, and phrases like "dangerous play" and "he's in pain." So I told my wife that I could understand what was going on in the game. She asked to translate a few lines.

Just then the announcer shouts "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!". "Someone just scored," I said to my wife.

She was not impressed.

[Le Master]

Wow, what does a 16th-Century book smell like?