The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

by A. J. Jacobs

  Eric's piece began jumping around the board, filling up alarmingly fast with those multicolored wedges. How many feet in a fathom? Six. Who wrote "Stardust"? Hoagy Carmichael. Who discovered Victoria Falls? David Livingstone. Eric occasionally had to think a bit. He'd tilt his head and look at the ceiling, as if the answer were written there. Which it apparently was. Because he'd almost always figure out that Varig Airlines is from Brazil and the like.

  My piece, on the other hand, remained empty. Hollow. If you listened closely, you could hear a tiny echo in it.

  "How many equal sides are there on a scalene triangle?" asked Eric. I sat there trying to remember what the hell my geometry teacher had taught me in ninth grade, but could recall only that he had a thick German accent and a comb-over.

  "I'll give you a hint. It's about the same as your IQ."

  "Two?" I tried.

  "Zero," said Eric, snickering. He actually snickered.

  My next turn, he asked, "What movie character was Elmo Lincoln the first to portray?"

  I drew a blank. I was even flubbing the entertainment category, my supposed strong point. The irritating Trivial Pursuit people loved to ask about old-timey entertainment, the kind before DVDs and stalkerazzi.

  "This character has the same-sized vocabulary as you do," said Eric.

  I knew what he was driving at. "Frankenstein," I said.

  "Nope. Tarzan."

  And so it went. In the end, Eric beat me six wedges to two, but not before asking me if I wouldn't prefer a game more suited to my intellect, like Go Fish.

  I know Trivial Pursuit is just that--trivial. Still, this was a disturbingly effective reminder of my patches of ignorance--which now included politics, economics, literature, history, geography, and anything else you wouldn't find on the E! channel.

  That was five weeks ago. Now Eric's back in Manhattan--along with Julie's mom, her other brother, Doug, and their families--and we're at an Upper West Side restaurant for lunch. I've got two and a half letters under my belt. It's a whole new day. As we sit down, I decide to break the big news to Eric. I tell him about Operation Britannica. I want his approval--and I also want him to feel threatened. But my revelation doesn't seem to affect him either way. It's as if I'd just told him that I enjoy wearing corduroy pants.

  "Yeah, I knew a guy at Harvard who did that," he says.

  "Good, maybe I can compare knowledge with him."

  "You could," says Eric, "except he committed suicide. But I'm sure you'll do just fine."

  The conversation moves on to the choices of appetizers and entrees. Crab cakes seem particularly popular.

  "Ah, crabs. The true aristocrats," I say.

  "What?" asks Doug.

  "Crabs have blue blood. You know, blue bloods. Aristocrats."

  The laughter wasn't quite as deafening as I had hoped.

  "I read it in the blood section," I said.

  "Tell us something interesting you've learned," Julie's mother says.

  "That doesn't count?"

  "No, that wasn't interesting."

  Wow. Tough crowd.

  "Well, do you like a nice macabre story?" I ask.

  "Sure," says Julie's mom.

  "How about the story of Burke and Hare?"

  "We're listening," says Doug.

  "Okay, then. William Hare and William Burke," I say, putting down my menu. "These were two Irishmen who met at a hotel back in the 1820s. One day, an old pauper died in the hotel. But instead of having the corpse buried, Burke and Hare sold the body to the local surgeon for about seven pounds."

  "Merchants of death, eh?" says Doug.

  "But wait. It gets better. That first corpse gave them a savvy business idea. They started enticing travelers into the hotel, getting them drunk, smothering them to death, and selling the corpses to the surgeon. Killed at least fifteen people. Their neighbors finally busted them, but it took a year."

  "And they went to jail?"

  "Hare ratted out Burke and was released. But Burke was hanged. And Knox--that was the name of the surgeon--never got thrown in jail, but had a wee bit of a PR problem."

  I sat back. It was a lively tale, and I told it well. Even Eric had to admit that, which he did.

  "It's a good story," says Eric.

  "Thanks."

  "And of course, you know the poem about it, right?" he asks.

  "Um."

  "You don't know the poem about Burke and Hare?" asked Eric.

  Dammit. I can't believe this. "No."

  "Oh, that's the best part. It's a poem that British schoolboys used to say. It goes like this:

  Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the one who bought the beef.

  The family laughs.

  "That's wonderful!" says Julie's mom.

  "You're scary," says Eric's wife, Alexandra.

  Eric sits back and crosses his arms on his chest, one of his favorite gestures. He looks at me and smiles. He knows he's beaten me. I'm annoyed at the Britannica for not having that poem in it. I'm annoyed at myself for picking Burke and Hare. Mostly, I'd like to smother Eric and sell his body to an anatomist for seven pounds.

  I'll have to keep reading. I'll find things he doesn't know about. I'll find things so obscure he won't know how to pronounce them.

  Charles

  Here's a tip: if you meet a king and can't remember his name, you might as well guess Charles. You've got a pretty good shot. I've arrived at the Charles section and it's a disturbingly long one--forty-eight Charleses, to be exact, spread over twenty-four pages, hailing from just about every European country that could afford a cape with some ermine trim, including Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Holland, Hungary, and Austria.

  It's sort of helpful that a lot of the Charleses have nicknames, which I consider trying to turn into some sort of Dr. Seuss-like poem as a mnemonic device:

  There's Charles the Good and Charles the Bad. There's Charles the Lame and Charles the Mad. There's Charles the Bold and Charles the Fair. Don't forget Charles the Bald. So many Charleses are there!

  But I can't think of anything to rhyme with "Charles the Well-Served." So I just read carefully and hope for the best.

  One thing that strikes me is that this is not an overwhelmingly inspiring group of men. In fact, these twenty-four pages seem a fine argument against monarchy as a governmental system.

  There are the occasional Charleses who founded universities or made judicial reforms--the Swedish ones in particular seemed better than average. But overall, this is a sorry lot of war-loving, greedy, mentally unstable, gout-infected rulers. Not to mention randy. Consider Charles II of England--the man who regained the throne after the downfall of Cromwell. Charles is quoted as saying God would not "make a man miserable only for taking a little pleasure out of the way." Charles II took enough "pleasure out of the way" to produce fourteen illegitimate offspring (and if you recall, inspire the legend of the concerned Dr. Condom). One of the few who did remain faithful was Charles the Whipped (not his real name), who concluded a treaty in Brittany in 1693, only to be persuaded by his wife to break it, which led to his death in battle. He would have done better to sire fourteen illegitimate kids.

  I'm trying like hell to remember which Charles is which, but it's a task that would make anyone as loopy as Charles VI of France, who suffered forty-four attacks of insanity in the late 1300s and early 1400s. I wish the monarchs had a little more creativity when it came to names--though my family isn't much better. My full name is Arnold Stephen Jacobs Jr., after my father, A.S.J. Sr. My father--the jokester--tried to name me Arnold Stephen Jacobs IV, skipping right over the intermediate steps, but my mom put the kibosh on that one, so Junior it is.

  Chaucer, Geoffrey

  The author of The Canterbury Tales was apparently fined for beating a Franciscan friar in a London street. Again with the temperamental artists.

  Cheney, Dick

  Our vice president dropped out of Yale--or was kicked out; it's not clear--and finished at University of Wyomi
ng. Do the Democrats know about this? Seems like they could have made a bigger deal out of it.

  chess

  I wasn't very interested in chess growing up. I'm not sure why, though I think it might have had something to do with all the kings and queens. Even before I read about the barrel of reprehensible Charleses in the Britannica, I was no fan of monarchy. Maybe if the pieces had been presidents and first ladies, or Starskys and Hutches, then I'd be hooked. But as it was, I never caught chess fever.

  Still, it seemed like something that smart people did. So in my quest to boost my intelligence, I made sure to pay close attention to all facts in the Britannica about the ancient black-and-white board game. In my spare time, I started playing electronic chess on my Palm Pilot. After about sixty-three games, I finally beat the computer. Granted, it was on the lowest skill level, the one reserved for first-graders in remedial math courses and Anna Nicole Smith. But that didn't bother me. I beat the damn thing.

  Buoyed by my success, I thought it might be fun to take my game downtown and test it out against the big boys at the Marshall Chess Club. Now, I'm a moderate agoraphobe, so this was an uncharacteristic idea. But I had decided that--for the duration of this project, during this year of self-education--I would try to put my knowledge to the test, to see how it helped me interact with the best and the brightest, so off to the chess club it was.

  The Marshall Chess Club, as I expected, has lots of chess tables and stacks of chess magazines. But I was a little surprised by the makeup of the crowd, which is an odd and varied lot. You've got a minyan of old potbellied Jewish men with their pants hiked up to their armpits; a handful of twenty-something black men; a smattering of Eastern European guys; and a dash of cocky, knapsack-toting chess prodigies in the third grade.

  I introduce myself to the man in charge, Larry, who seems to fall into the old-Jewish-guy category, and inform him I'm here to prove myself. He replies that I picked the wrong night.

  "Tonight is a big tournament," Larry says, shuffling through his paperwork. "You came on glamour night!" I look around. This type of glamour isn't quite the paparazzi's dream, but I know what he's saying.

  "I can't play in the tournament?"

  "No," Larry says. He puts down his paperwork and leads me through the tournament players and into a back room. The Club Room. "Here, you can play in here," he says. "You could play with her." He points to the Filipina nanny of one of the third-grade chess prodigies. Larry then chuckles and leaves.

  Not counting the nanny, there are, in fact, a few potential rivals in the Club Room. Two of the prepubescent players are here, capturing pawns in between bites of their Subway sandwiches.

  "Can I play winners?" I ask.

  They nod, without looking up from the board.

  In the meantime, I spot someone from the high-waisted-pants squad, a man with a Jew-fro to rival the hairdos of any member of vintage Earth, Wind & Fire.

  "Care for a game?" I say.

  "Why not," he says.

  Before we start, I silently review what I've learned from the Britannica: develop knights before bishops, anticipate enemy threats, try to form an overall goal--like a kingside attack--that coordinates the forces. I consider a postmodern opening move--jumping the knight over my line of pawns--but settle instead for a classical opening, and move my pawn two squares. After a couple of moves, the Jew-fro man takes my pawn. I tell myself this is good. A gambit, a sacrifice. But over the next couple of moves I do a tremendous amount of sacrificing. It's not exactly clear to me what the greater purpose of my sacrificing is. But I do have a knack for sacrificing.

  As I'm figuring out where I move my one remaining knight, I put my index finger on square E-4 to mark an option. My opponent looks physically pained, as if his toe had been run over by a cab.

  "You shouldn't do that," he says. "You shouldn't touch the board. It's bad form."

  "Oh," I say, removing my finger.

  "It's not genteel. It's not sophisticated."

  I promise no more board fondling. I decide to attack with my bishop, which I hope will earn his respect. That, and some chess knowledge: "You know, the bishop used to be called an elephant, and it was limited to a two-square diagonal jump."

  He nods. A couple of turns later, he takes my former elephant.

  Caissa, the patron goddess of chess, would be proud, I think to myself.

  According to Nimzowitzsch, you should voluntarily surrender the center. I have surrendered that. I have also surrendered the sides and front. I move my queen. "This used to be called a counselor, and could only move one square in any direction."

  He nods again, and puts his hand in his chin. Good, I'm making him think.

  "You know, I'm considering underpromoting later in the game," I say. I knew it was a long shot, but I thought maybe he didn't know the definition of underpromoting and I could inform him. He knew. It's when your pawn gets to the other side and you choose not to queen it, but instead turn it into a knight or a rook or bishop.

  And then he mates me. He mates me with authority, like the squid that uses a fourth arm to deliver its sperm cells.

  He shakes my hand. The match over, Jew-fro man turns out to be very nice. He takes the time to dissect my game for me, pointing out my many errors, but managing not to be condescending. He even tells me why the hell someone might want to underpromote--if a queen will cause a stalemate, but a castle will force a checkmate, you underpromote to castle.

  And for some reason, after throwing out a dozen chess facts, I finally do impress him.

  "You know, medieval Muslim chessboards were monochromatic."

  "Really? I knew some early boards were monochromatic, but I didn't know they were Muslim." He isn't being sarcastic. He is actually interested.

  "They were Muslim," I say.

  I turn to the third-graders at the board next to me. I'm ready for my match. Problem is, after having seen my lack of chess chops, they've lost interest. I'd be a waste of their time. So I pack my bag and go. I probably knew the gap between information and know-how was big, but I had gotten a firsthand lesson in just how big it can be. On the way home, I kick my Palm Pilot's butt, then explain to it all the mistakes it made.

  Child, Julia

  She once worked in the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Sounds like a good movie: Chef by day, spy by night. I should option that now.

  Children's Crusade

  Here, a major contender for the saddest entry so far. About thirty thousand kids--led by a French shepherd boy--set out to conquer the Holy Land from the Muslims by love instead of force. They never made it, instead falling victim to disreputable merchants, with most being sold into slavery in North Africa. When Julie and I have kids, they will not be allowed to go to the Middle East without supervision. That's a promise.

  choreography

  Julie and I were watching TV--well, sort of watching. I was reading the Britannica and she was doing the New York magazine crossword, from which she looked up to ask:

  "Hey, you know Fred Astaire's real name?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do."

  It's Frederick Austerlitz, I told her. I helped my wife fill in 42-Down--which may not justify an entire year of reading the encyclopedia, but nevertheless makes me feel like spinning Julie around the room in an elegant waltz. I'm a knight with shining information coming to the rescue of my damsel in distress. Excellent.

  Christmas

  Tonight is the Esquire Christmas party. (By the way, Christmas in the Armenian Church is celebrated on January 6; so if you're ever late with presents, just say you're Armenian.) I'll be going to the Esquire party solo, since Julie is working late. Her new job is an interesting one--she works for a company that puts on scavenger hunts around New York City--but it requires night duty once a week. So, alone it is.

  Esquire's party is for our writers and friends in the literary community. But it's not a fancy affair--it's held in our eighth-floor offices, the cubicles draped with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and a wine bar set up b
y the Xerox machine. I arrive late--it's a long walk from my office on the seventh floor, after all--and I spot my old friend Rick a couple of cubicles down. He's talking to a tall woman I don't recognize, but who apparently has a lot to say.

  Rick motions me over. My arrival doesn't do much to stop the tall woman's monologue, which seems to be about how she prefers to read plays instead of novels. Right now, she's going through a Strindberg phase. He's much more complex than his more famous counterpart Ibsen, she explains. I can't be sure, but I think she used the words "criminally overlooked."

  Rick looks less than enthralled. In fact, he looks like he might, at any moment, pull a pillow out of his pocket and curl up on the floor for a quick nap.

  "A.J.'s smart," says Rick, as she pauses momentarily to inhale. "He's reading the encyclopedia."

  "Really," says the woman.

  "Yep, from A to Z."

  "And where are you now?"

  "I'm up to C."

  "But how much are you retaining?"

  I hate that question. Especially the way she asks it, which makes it sound more like an accusation than a question, like maybe I've violated the Mann Act or something. How much are you retaining?

  I respond: "There are a couple of rivers in Bolivia that I'm a little hazy on, but everything else I've got down cold."

  I figured that would shut her up. Of course, I'm retaining slightly less than that. There are also a couple of rivers in Chad that I'm hazy on. And a few other bits as well.

  But honestly, my retention rate is far higher than I imagined it would be. My best gauge of this is those internal dings--the ones that happen whenever my life intersects with the encyclopedia--which have only increased. It's a constant symphony in my head. I'd say at least two per minute.

  So I feel good that something's sinking in. My main concern, however, is that my retention is not evenly spread out among the facts. Instead, my new knowledge is clustered around several themes and trends--and those trends aren't always the most elevated ones in the world. Like syphilis. I'm retaining an awful lot about syphilis. I could tell you that Al Capone's and Winston Churchill's fathers both had syphilis. I could tell you that the French poet Baudelaire had syphilis--and that he caught it from a Jewish prostitute named Squint-Eyed Sarah. I could tell you that some Bedouins have a nonvenereal form of syphilis called bejel, which could be a handy excuse for those trying to explain to their spouses an unpleasant positive test result. "I'm Bedouin, you see. It's not venereal." In a way, syphilis is an appropriate example. These themes that keep popping up are like a disturbingly contagious disease. I don't feel I have control over them. They just sneak their way into my brain, and all of a sudden I'm keeping a tally on the mentions of cannibalism, or following the recurrences of men blinded in one eye.