QI, which stands for ‘Quite Interesting’, is a BBC panel knowledge game show like no other. I cannot begin to describe how much I enjoy finishing off the day with any past episode of the 10 seasons that this abnormal quiz has completed so far. Last week the new season started, so get ready for some more fun while learning opportunities from this ‘oh so British’ idea of a game.

QI is presented by the wonderful Stephen Fry and 4 panelists play each time, with Alan Davies being a permanent one. It is a general knowledge (and ignorance) quiz game with an amazing twist: The panellists gain points by providing, yes, the right answer but also by coming up with an Interesting one, whilst they lose points if they give an obvious or boring reply and they do not lose (or gain) any points at all if they give flat out wrong answers.

As QI says on their website:

“We live,  they say, in The Information Age, yet almost none of the information we think we possess is true. Eskimos do not rub noses. The rickshaw was invented by an American. Joan of Arc was not French. Lenin was not Russian. The world is not solid, it is made of empty space and energy, and neither haggis, whisky, porridge, clan tartans or kilts are Scottish. So we stand, silent, on a peak in Darien a vast, rolling, teeming, untrodden territory before us. QI country. Whatever is interesting we are interested in. Whatever is not interesting, we are even more interested in. Everything is interesting if looked at in the right way. At one extreme, QI is serious, intensely scientific, deeply mystical; at the other it is hilarious, silly and frothy enough to please the most indolent couch-potato.”

Curiosity is the driving force of QI, which has now grown to be more than just a comedy panel quiz show. Now it is a podcast channel, a series of books, etc. Check all these out on their website, where you can also find their Manifesto. But don’t miss the actual QI show! Here is an episode from series C (all series are available on youtube):