School of Trivia

What is School of Trivia?

Hi! I’m Alex Jacob, 2015 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner, and I love trivia and learning new things. I created School of Trivia in December of 2021 for other knowledge lovers like myself.

School of Trivia is both a trivia newsletter and a quiz league. On Monday through Friday, I write about a trivia topic that leads into a themed 5-question quiz due at the end of the week. I grade the quizzes using a unique scoring system (more about that at the bottom of this page), tabulate the results and various stats on the leaderboard page, and each month the top scorers move up a division while the bottom finishers move down (so you end up competing against players of a similar skill level). Of course, you can still enjoy the newsletter without playing in the league — in fact, about 15% of paid subscribers don’t play the quizzes.

How much does it cost, and what do I get?

Paid subscribers get 20 quiz newsletters per month and can play in the School of Trivia league. My ultimate goal is that you’ll look forward to receiving your daily dose of trivia! New seasons of the league start up each month (Season 21 begins on Monday, September 4), but you can jump in and start reading and playing at any time.

It’s $8/month to subscribe, or you can get a free month by subscribing annually for $88/year.

Subscriber feedback

“I've been loving School of Trivia… Prior to signing up for SoT I had never done any sort of organized trivia at all, and this has been a fun and accessible entry point! A number of clues during the Tournament of Champions were super similar to SoT questions from recent seasons - further proof that doing SoT actually was a good ToC prep choice.” —Mattea Roach, 23-game Jeopardy! champion

“My review of School of Trivia: it's fun, the questions are well-written, and it clear that @whoisalexjacob has put a lot of thought into this. 10/10 with rice. Highly recommend.” —@lydia_ski

“I love playing trivia and I can't tell you how many times I've known something because, ‘I learned that from School of Trivia!’ I may not excel but I love the challenge, and I know I'm facing some real powerhouses which is cool as hell.” —Lindsey K

“The thing I love about @whoisalexjacob‘s School of Trivia is that my passion for Blues and professional sports can compensate for my total ignorance of both geography and Star Wars.” —@pheebsc2001

“School of Trivia is a fun league — and true to its name, teaches you a lot of facts that come up regularly in other trivia contexts as well. (that means...if you get it wrong here, you'll hear it again and you'll get it right later!)” —Rowan Ward, Jeopardy! Second Chance co-champion

Can I try it before I join?

Yes, free subscribers receive the “Sunday School” quizzes! This is basically a once-a-week version of School of Trivia, so you can get a feel for how it all works. If you enjoy the Sunday quizzes, I hope you’ll consider joining the league! We’re hundreds of players strong, and thanks to all of them I’m proud to say that School of Trivia has earned the official “Bestseller” checkmark on Substack.

You can play the Season 1 quizzes here:

Sunday School - Season 1

And here are some unlocked past newsletters:

Season 1, Day 8 - "The Floor is Baklava"

Season 7, Day 16 - "Sublime Rhyme"

Season 8, Day 5 - "How's the Weather Up There?"

Thanks for reading!

Email any questions to schooloftrivia@substack.com or ask me on Twitter, and click below to subscribe. Hope to see you there!

How does the league scoring work?

When you submit your answers, you will also rank your answers by your confidence level. 5 points for the answer you're most confident in, 4 points for your second-most confident answer, and so on down to 1 point for your least confident answer.

Then, imagine going head-to-head against everyone in your division and tallying the results. That's what the adjusted score is: (the percent of players you win against) + one half of (the percent of players you tie). For example, if you beat 60% of players and tied with 20% — your adjusted score would be 60+1/2*(20) = 70. Players in each division are then ranked by total adjusted score (the sum of all of their daily adjusted scores for the season).

Here's the idea behind the adjusted scores: they are on a scale of 0-100, with 50 being an average performance. So your score reflects how well you did against your division, rather than how well you did against the quiz writer (me).

To see the scoring system in action, check out the leaderboard page.