Yan Tyan Tethera

So I've been trying to tackle some of my areas of general knowledge weakness. I know there areas in which I need to improve. There are a lot of them. So step 1 has been to identify those areas. Step 2 is to collect together all manner of resources that can help me to improve in those areas. Now these resources can come from all over the place. The internet is of course a great resource but table-spoons full of salt need to be taken with every nugget gleaned from a less than gold-plated source.

Therefore I have also been building up my library of reference books. Here's a quick rundown:

For Christmas I got the following:

Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Now this is a corking book that gives you the origins of words, phrases, sayings etc. Fantasitically useful and incredibly comprehensive it was however a little disturbing to find that the first entry I stumbled upon was wrong. The Duke of Wellington is known as The Iron Duke. According to Brewers it is due to his "iron will". Which is utter garbage. Wellington was nicknamed the Iron Duke because in 1829 he forced through the Catholic Emancipation Act and due to its unpopularity he put iron shutters over the windows of his London home (Apsley House) lest they be smashed by an angry mob.

Still nonetheless a fantastic book - but a reminder that just because something is in print it is not necessarily more reliable that an internet source.

England in Particular
At the risk of being accused of parochialism there is much about England that I don't know. Whilst international general knowledge is still firmly on the agenda it would be foolish not to brush up on local knowledge. After all, Euro and World Championships aside UK general knowledge remains a staple of quizzes from pub level through to Grands Prix.

Whereas the first nugget I stumbled on in Brewers was a disappointment, the first in this book was a corker. In Yorkshire, Cumberland, Cornwall and Suffolk sheep farmers count their sheep using numbers derived from ancient British languages. All have enough similarities to one another to indicate a common ancestor language. "Yan Tyan Tethera" is 'one two three' in Cumberland whereas "Hant Tant Tethery" is the equivalent in Suffolk.

Some people can learn general knowledge from lists. I can't. But I can learn when something is interesting, which is perhaps why I am more of a general knowledge magpie. As a magpie I will remember this nugget about sheep farming.

101 World Heroes
As I don't learn well from lists I like to learn by placing information into its context. On the face of it this book looks like a kids book. 2 or 3 page potted histories of key figures from history illustrated with nice pictures. However the text is aimed at adults and provides the context around key events not just in the individual in question's life but also the age in which they lived. Context. As I write I have it open at the write-up for Brunelleschi. I know his name and I know one of his claims to fame. Through this I hope to understand more of his story and in doing so set additional information into context in my mind. It won't necessarily help me in a buzzer-quiz or Quiz League of London environment where speed of recall is important. But this method has definately helped me in Grand Prix events, where I come at an answer by recalling something else from the contextual story and gradually piece it all back together until I get the nugget I want. Other people may find all this easier. But as I'm not blessed by autism or aspergers I have to find long hand ways of learning.

Whitaker's Almanac 2008
Current affairs is another area of knowledge that you simply can't ignore. Yes the internet is a fantastic source for this knowledge, but Whitakers has it all in one place. Having said I don't learn well from lists, sometimes it is unavoidable.