Secret Stuff: Trivia on Trivia

Trivia World

All-purpose excuses for a bad trivia performance

Get your gluteus maximus handed to you? Clip and save these handy all-purpose trivia excuses, then toss them around liberally after you have shamed yourself. Some are more pitiful squeeks, suitable when you must beg for mercy. Others are based on attacking the masculinity and/or integrity of the winners, which is useful when the best defence is a good offence. Many of these, incidentally, are variations on excuses I have actually heard.

I was never any good at the subject, so I never took it in school.
I haven't been sleeping well lately. I didn't have breakfast. I'm feeling ill. I need a smoke.
What kind of stupid questions are these, anyway?
Well, I may not know this trivia, but at least I know how to fix my car/get a date/chug a beer.
People who memorize this kind of stuff obviously have no friends and/or too much free time.
I used to know all this stuff when I was a kid, but I've forgotten it all now.
It's not that I don't know it, it's just that I don't know it instantly.
Really, what good is this kind of information, anyway?
I think the winners were cheating somehow.
Not enough questions about my favourite TV show/my hometown/what I do every day at work/the obscure subject on which I wrote my thesis.

A warning: if you actually use any of these excuses, particularly in a crowd of trivia fiends, in all probability you will be the subject of their derision for months, and probably behind your back, too