Dr. Rudolph Schilli: Beebe doctor writes the book on trivia

To get the idea of what his new book is about, Dr. Rudolph Schilli comes in and begins with a question. “When the space shuttle Challenger blew up, there was a specific defect. What was that defect?”

Schilli’s approach to trivia is to provide specific musical cues, using popular music, in order to help people find the answer. So for his question, he cues up the beginning of Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer Maker,” which begins with Robert Plant crooning “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,” which leads to the answer, O-rings. 

Another question: “In the 1950s, there was a bread developed that was supposed to help children’s bodies grow. What was the name of the bread?”

He cues up the 1958 hit “Book of Love” by The Monotones, which starts with “I wonder, wonder, wonder who/who wrote the book of love?” The answer, of course, is Wonder Bread.

Schilli, a gastroenterologist at Beebe Healthcare, has written a book called “Let The Music Play: New Notes For Trivia,” which has more than 1,100 questions and musical cues. While the two examples he gives above are fairly obvious, Schilli said some of the cues can be a bit more subtle. Like, “Who won the first NFL overtime game?” and playing “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones (the answer is the Baltimore Colts). 

“The regular games, guys use music that is unrelated so they can tabulate the scores,” Schilli said. “I really do think that trivia doesn’t have to be trivial. I saw how it evolved and I started writing questions for trivia games with groups, and I gradually morphed into this.”

He said while his book comprises questions and clues, he wants people who read the book to be able to form their own questions. 

“That way, everyone can have fun with this and it becomes an intellectual journey,” Schilli said.

An enthusiastic and intelligent man, he said his interest in trivia is sparked, in part, from his background. Schilli’s parents were ethnic Germans who fled the former Yugoslavia during the communist purges of 1944-45. Schilli was born in Austria and moved to the United States when he was 3 years old. 

“I realized language is power, and I became interested in things. There was a show called ‘The $64,000 Question.’ As a kid, I was 5, I didn’t have a clue about the answers, but I thought it would be cool to know stuff. And when I went to medical school, we framed everything in trivia questions,” he said.

Schilli said of his interest in medicine, “I like to talk to people. I’m honored to have this as a profession because, really, what other profession can you have where you walk into someone’s life that you never knew before and be the most important person in their life?”

At first, he wanted to be a psychiatrist, but during medical school at Northwestern University, he became interested in gastroenterology, which focuses on the digestive system. 

He grew up in Chicago – his parents picked it because of the large German population – but spent most of his professional career in Western Pennsylvania until his wife didn’t want to live there anymore. He came to Delaware seemingly by accident: Schilli had a condo in Bethesda and had built a house in Lewes.

“We always thought we would live in Bethesda. But at the same time, we had built the house here, and we liked it here, and my wife said, ‘Get a job.’ And it was easier to get a job here than in Bethesda,” he said. 

With his trivia book out, Schilli is ready to jump into the writing game again. He is working on a novel based on his own story of coming to America.

“The thing is, my first childhood memory is a burial at sea on a boat. Even on that boat, we were in a displaced persons camp – I don’t remember any of that. I knew in America things that happened there [in Yugoslavia] would not happen here [in America],” he said. 

“Let The Music Play: New Notes For Trivia” can be ordered at Browseabout Books, Amazon, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble.