"I love trivia, and need study hints." Broad question. A few thoughts... 1. College Bowl (CB), more than any other format, continually reuses bases of knowledge. In other words, knowing the periodic table, the US presidents, and world capitals will almost always get you points once a tournament. 2. CB is also very current-events tilted - the year Mark McGwire broke the home run record, there was a question on Roger Maris. So know major news stories, particularly from May-December 2000, and what other items from the past are related to them. Example - know a little about the presidential election, as well as previous years with similarly contentious results. 3. CBI tests breadth of knowledge, not depth. Find survey books and glean the major points - the major painters of Impressionism, important battles in major wars, well-known authors, etc. CB looks for the basic answer - you only need to know enough to beat the other team to it. If you can, get a copy of the intramural questions that were used and look at the tossup answers - even if you didn't get them, you probably have heard of the answers. CB's list of clues on George Washington Carver are quite finite, and will almost always include one giveaway. 4. As a corollary to 3, classical music and art are almost universally weak subjects for teams. As such, CB's questions are dumbed down. As such, it's much easier to know almost all the answers to these fields cold than it is to "know" any possible history answers. That's usually 30-50 points a game. Thanks to a book called Instant Art History and a CD called The Idiot's Guide To Classical Music (both heavily recommended, BTW), I immediately became a CBI art and music expert with very little time or effort (The CD also gives you a variety of inspirational snippets - Nessun Dorma, Dies Irae, and O Fortuna - that are useful for playing before games). Hayden
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