*Update - we've taken portions of the original quiz and made a version of our own! You can access it here, or take it below. We're taking it a little easier on you by giving you answers to choose from, rather than forcing you to guess blindly as our critics and authors did. We've also shortened it and rooted out the works and questions that have been rendered obscure by time.

Good Luck!*

Last year, my wife Julie and I suffered through what has to be one of the worst Trivial Pursuit beat-downs in the game’s history. Our opponents, her parents Lester and Debra Maness, were gracious in their victory, but I think we both felt a very real frustration at our rather pitiful performance. Julie and I are decently cultured, even knowledgeable in spots, and while weren’t certain we would win going in, we did not at all expect the drubbing we received. It left us reeling, struggling for answers in more ways than one: Had our wits been dulled by the ubiquity of Google? Did we underestimate the wealth of knowledge stored in our elders? Is a narwhal a whale? Methinks it is a whale... (That's yes to all three, by the way.)

But maybe there was another reason why a victory was not to be. Other evidence had in fact piled up: the board was a little too worn, the questions oddly dated. As it turns, the version of Trivial Pursuit that had been punishing us for hours had been released in 1983. Time had marched on to a stretch of over thirty years. The game stood stubbornly in its trenches. It almost felt like we’d dug out a time capsule, but one left to taunt us, scolding our embarrassing ignorance of the state-of-the-world in 1983.

Great literature, the topic of this quiz, is thankfully timeless.

This 1953 recording from the inaugural WNYC Book Festival pits ”the Critics” - Charles Poore of The New York Times Book Review alongside Columbia University Professor of Philosophy Irwin Edman -  against “the Authors” - Alfred Kazin of The New Yorker, paired with Jan Struther, the creator of “Mrs. Miniver” - in a challenge of their knowledge of literary pursuits.

Questions provide a tour of the five boroughs traversed via book title, a round of literary "potent potables" and Yummy Books, and notable first and last lines of English literature - fans of schadenfreude will be pleased to note that these literary lights miss entirely the opening line of one of the best known and most acclaimed writings in the history of the English language - "Who's there?"

Perhaps one day Julie and I will revenge our foul and most unnatural loss, until then it's nice to know we can hone our trivia skills on the job.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

WNYC archives id: 150182
Municipal archives id: LT2776