Trivia is an excellent resource for teaching language. Although I wouldn't really call myself a true trivia buff, I think that trivia's potential in ELT has been overlooked. In my own teaching, I have been seeking ways to utilize trivia and trivia-based materials and activities. This page introduces some of these ideas. Feel free to copy and use anything that you might find useful. As always, comments or questions are welcome: 
1. Jeopardy
Jeopardy is a popular TV game show in North America. In the show, three contestants answer trivia questions from six categories. Each category has five questions, ranging from $100 to $500. As you can probably guess, the higher the amount of money, the more difficult the question. I have adapted Jeopardy for use in the classroom, and have used it in a wide variety of settings. Almost without fail, I have found that my students love it. To play the game, I put cards with magnets on the back on the blackboard. I write the category above the cards, divide the class into three teams, and start the game. Below are some of the categories of questions that I have written for use with university students here in Japan. Feel free to copy and use the questions in your own classes. By the way, I haven't included the answers to the questions. If you want the answers, please e-mail me and I will send you a list of all of the answers. Also, for more information about this classroom adaptation of the game, please have a look at two articles I wrote that present information on this activity (as well as other trivia-based activities):
Article 1 - Teaching conversation with trivia. English Teaching Forum, 40 (2), pp. 20-26, (2002). PDF (365K)
Article 2 - Developing listening subskills with trivia. The Language Teacher, 25 (5), pp. 10-13, (2001). (co-authored with Tim Powell) PDF (80K)
Question categories for the classroom version of Jeopardy (added April 1, 2004)
Note: In the TV version of the game, the questions are read as statements and the contestants must answer in the form of a question. This is a bit complicated for English languauge learners, so here I have listed the questions in the form of questions. Also, instead of ranging from $100 to $500, the questions are just listed as number 1 - 5
Cars / Central Asia / Charles Darwin / Chicken / Chocolate / Clocks / Clothing / Computer Hardware / Cuba / Dance Fever
Death and Afterlife / Deserts / Dracula / Electricity / English Vocabulary / Expressions with "Day" / Gambling / Georgia / Hong Kong
How Many? / Indonesia / Insects / Languages / Mexico / New Capital Cities / -ologies / Scotland / Shapes / Tag Questions
Toiletries / Twelve / Turkey / United Nations / Words beginning with "I" / Words beginning with "Q"
Words that rhyme with "think" / Words with silent letters
2. Info gaps
Information gap activities are widely used in communicative language teaching. Like many teachers in the field, I often make my own info gap activities based on my students' areas of interest or the content of the classes I'm teaching. In doing so, I have found trivia to be an excellent resource for making these kinds of activities. Below are examples of some of the ones that I have created. Feel free to download and use any of them. The info gaps in the first group are designed to be done in pairs. Those in the second group are designed to be done as "serial pairwork," in which students walk around the classroom and collect information from a number of people.
Pair info gaps
Class info gaps
3. Online quizzes
The site Funtrivia.com is a great place for trivia buffs to test their knowledge. One nice thing about the site is that anyone can submit a quiz. After being approved by the site moderators, quizzes are placed online for everyone to play. Making a quiz and submitting it to the site is an enjoyable activity for students. Here are links to three quizzes made by students of mine. (Warning: occasional popups)