Trivia Answer

The answer (of course) is that Haney quit his job to spend a year on the Costa del Sol (with a stack of reference books) writing questions for Trivial Pursuit. According to the Wikipedia entry, the game was released in 1982 and sold over 20 million copies in 1984. The game's rights were purchased by Hasbro in 2008 for $80 million.

I remember that it seemed as though everyone I knew received the game for Christmas in 1983. I never really enjoyed it that much -- although I did appreciate all of the various incarnations and knockoffs. I also remember creating a set of questions one week in the mid-1980s for a game night at my mom's house -- the categories were all about our gang of friends.