James Walton’s Who Killed Iago?: A Book of Fiendishly Challenging Literary Quizzes is, as the title implies, a book of trivia tests about literature, trending heavily towards classics and Brit lit. It’s based on a radio program in England called The Write Stuff which, in the tradition of British quiz shows, makes the typical American quiz show look like Chutes and Ladders*. I’ve read plenty of the classics and know a little bit about nearly all the classics I haven’t read, and I struggled to score around 50% for the book as a whole – which, of course, makes it fun.
*I’ve been to England once, when I was 17, and we caught a game show on British TV called Cross-Wits, on which contestants were given clues to a cryptic crossword puzzle and roughly 8 seconds to solve them, which they did with shocking frequency. This was my introduction to cryptic crosswords, now one of my favorite types of puzzles (albeit one for which I rarely have time). Even at the time, none of us could imagine a US television network airing such a program, given how much more difficult it was than any game show we’d ever seen in the U.S., and given the enduring popularity of the ultimate game show for morons, Wheel of Fortune, I feel confident that even the reach of the long tail won’t bring a cryptic crossword show to American airwaves any time soon.
The book comprises ten quizzes, each in five parts. One part revolves around a featured author, with subjects in this volume ranging from Jane Austen (I only scored 5/10, missing two easy questions on my two least favorite Austen novels) to Stephen King to Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling. One part comprises questions in the form of lists of four things – authors, titles, characters, what have you – leaving you to determine the connection between them. The other three parts of each quiz vary in theme, although literary errors pop up a few times, and he runs through some obvious ones like literary firsts and lasts and, my favorite, a set of questions on last lines of famous but long books that most people never finish (2/6, and I’ve never finished either book).
If you’re into literature across the ages, Who Killed Iago? should be up your alley, but it is understandably lighter on contemporary literature with only occasional forays into pop fiction (even Twilight appears once). It even included, in reverse, a Shakespeare question I’d seen before in an online trivia challenge a few months ago – “Which stage direction explains the disappearance of Antigonus from The Winter’s Tale?”
Oh, and if you’re wondering the answer to the question in the book’s title, highlight the line below:
Trick question: Iago is alive at the end of Othello, although he’s being dragged off stage to be tortured.