What is Cognition?

"My typical Daily double wager is only a couple thousand or so. I believe the technical Jeopardy! term for that kind of wager is 'wussy bet.' Some of that is strategic--why risk a lead when you don't need to?--but much of it is just cowardice."

-Funny, because Ken tended to have the betting strategy that I most agreed with. He almost always took advantage of the Daily Doubles (betting more than he could make on the board), but he didn't bet too much for the risk involved.

"Often I'll bet an amount that will give me a nice, round score if I answer correctly. This too is partially strategic--it tends to make the math easier--but it's mostly anal-retentiveness and superstition. I do the same thing at restaurants, making sure the tip neatly 'evens out' the total tab."

-See! I'm not the only one. I'll bet he folds his shirts department-store-style, too!

I don't want to copy down the entire quote about how he comes to the eventual correct answer to this clue in 'Literary Pairs':
"The film title Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes from a poem about these ill-fated medieval lovers."
but I think he does an excellent job of describing the thought process to get to the answer of a really, really hard clue.

Incidentally, the correct question is: "Who are Heloise and Abelard?"

"If the solving of trivia feels a lot like the solving of an intelligence test (and this coming from someone who's weird enough to sort of enjoy both), does that mean that I was wrong all this time? Could trivia acumen actually be related to, well, intelligence?"

"But trivia can provide an easy, intriguing introduction to any topic you feared might bore you silly. Let's take someone like me, who strongly suspects that ballet is boring, despite Mr. Rogers's many attempts, during my childhood, to convince me that ballet was cool because football players like Lynn Swann took lessons. If you corner me at a party even today and try to give me a speech on the beauty and wonder of ballet, you're wasting your time. My eyes will glaze before you even get to second position. But give me a good trivia fact about ballet...and you've got my attention...Similarly, baseball bores Mindy silly, but I nursed her through the 2004 World Series on a steady diet of Red Sox lore and 'Curse of the Bambino' trivia. Maybe she was faking it, but she almost managed to seem interested at times. Trivia, in other words, is bait on the fishing rod of education."

-I got this for some obvious reasons (though not the ones that are going to make you yell at me).

"Not all trivia facts are trivial, and even the trivial ones might come in handy someday...Even trivia like 'Opossums have thirteen nipples' might mean something to somebody. If nothing else, it's a matter of life and death to the thirteenth baby opossum."

-I think that information is valuable and that it is the purpose of language to share what we know with others so that we can help each other live better, more fulfilling lives. That's why I never lie and why I think lying is so detrimental to society. It's hard to even conceive of lying as a use of language because it really contradicts the purpose of its own medium. It must be a trick of the Devil. Only he could make such a contradiction in our world.