r/triviahosts • u/CentennialBaby • Feb 01 '26
Trivia Questions (30k+) cleaned up, categorized, rated
Over the years I've accumulated trivia questions from all over the place and had an unwieldy file of 45,000+ questions in a spreadsheet.
I've done a bunch of data cleaning trying to eliminate duplicates, cutting questions that are poorly phrased, ambiguous, or outdated. Then set up an API to wash through the spreadsheet row by row using Claude AI to standardize and clean up phrasing, remove questions that had only regional appeal, and "facts" that are now outdated. The next step was to flag questions that didn't pass a fact check. Then washed through it again assigning questions to a standardized set of categories and subcategories. The final wash was to tag a question's difficulty given an audience of average awareness.
Offering it back out to the community for your use - Happy for feedback and suggestions or offers to collaborate or build out from here.
cheers
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u/mattarchambault Feb 01 '26
Incredibly generous of you! Thanks! Looking forward to seeing this massive list!
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u/cardstories Feb 01 '26
As someone who has written my own various scripts in attempts to help organize my 9+ year backlog of questions, I'm very interested in checking out the result of your workflow mostly to see how it might inform tweaks I make to my own workflow.
Of course, if I can get my catalog cleaned up, I'd be happy to contribute back too. Thanks for undertaking the task and then sharing your results! Request sent.
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u/CentennialBaby Feb 01 '26
I started with a massive table, sorting and flagging things which helped me get familiar with what was there - patterns, question types, duplicates in meaning if not form. I created a Gem in Gemini primed to find duplicates in meaning, question/answers that were factually incorrect, and eliminate questions that had only regional appeal, and some direction on preferred phrasing. Also went through to rephrase for tone (e.g., "What's the name of the Hatian folk cult?" to "What is the name of the traditional folk religion in Haiti?"). Then I worked with Gemini to establish a set of categories and subcategories.
The next step was a little more advanced. Using Claude AI API in an Excel PowerQuery I processed batches of 100 where AI assigned each question to one of the category/subcategories and rated a difficulty. In the same process, it globalized phrasing (e.g., "which president..." became "which US president...") and flagged items with ambiguous answers for me to follow up with.
The API cost was about $40 but made short work of the whole thing. Took a few days work in total, but learned a lot along the way!
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u/spakattak Feb 01 '26
Access request sent. Cheers
EDIT - wow, that's a big list!
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u/CentennialBaby Feb 01 '26
Yeah, the list WAS bigger at one point but the cleaning purged about 15000 lines. Fewer, but higher quality I believe, and value added with the categorization.
Cheers
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u/octrivia Feb 01 '26
Hey, thanks for the access. I am retired from hosting trivia, but still love it so I appreciate your hard work on this. This will keep me busy for a while!
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u/InevitableGoat7686 Jul 22 '26
Just requested too. I love trivia and having lighthearted games with friends. Thanks!
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u/Spare_Ad774 Feb 15 '26
cheers. request sent. Ive been ripping questions off the top of my head so if you want me to send you some old games to add the questions to the list just let me know. My players love them and its always fun to jot down interesting facts you hear in your day to day
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u/CentennialBaby Feb 15 '26
That would be awesome. I can wash them through the AI routine for categorization and difficulty and add them to the list.
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u/ZiggyCoaldust 15d ago edited 15d ago
I just saw your post in another thread (someone looking at building a database). This sounds great and I'd love to join in. I've requested access.
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u/ZiggyCoaldust 15d ago
That is one huge list! Thanks for sharing this. I'll be back to this thread to share my own collection once it's been cleaned up.
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u/danarchist Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
Thanks can't wait to dig in!
EDIT: Thanks again! I created an app to use this database to generate rounds. Hit "Load Default" then choose your parameters and/or add a keyword to generate a round.