This weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. I’m a little preoccupied with preparations for that, including some significant travel. To provide some sense of the madness of minutiae that dominates my mind this week, I’ll share some of the most personally memorable answers from my many, many years of involvement with the contest. Every one of my teammates has stories like this. These are mine.
Part of the odd appeal of being a devoted player of the Trivia Contest in Stevens Point is solving the puzzle of what material is going to be deemed suitable fodder for questions by the two guys who have been writing the thing for decades. This was even more clearly the case back in the days before the Interweb provided every team with a vast database that readily provides previously difficult to find information about sports feats, record album track listings and the comical histories of fictional TV characters. For example, I remember watching an episode of Frasier in which Daphne Moon, the physical therapist played by Jane Leeves, explained that as a girl she had played a role in a BBC TV series called Mind Your Knickers. As soon as she said it, I flatly knew this was going to be an answer. It wasn’t. At least not that spring when the next contest came around. It was several years later when the on-air DJ finally read the pertinent question. By this time, my team was a reasonably formidable contender in the contest so we had all sorts of notes and books, but this answer came right out my head. I can’t even provide my cell phone number without looking it up, but I have stuff like this at the ready in my brain. This sort of knowledge may only be useful once a year, but it sure feels good when my mental flotsam and jetsam converges with the questions in the contest.
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More information can be found at the official Trivia site or try to get your hands (and eyes) on a certain documentary. You can also listen in to the radio station that hosts the contest. In order to see how things are going with the team I play on, Twitter is your best bet.
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Love this! And remember that as soon as it was asked, 1/2 dozen of us were like, “Dan KNOWS this!” It’s always a perfect storm moment when that finally happens.
Mine, much less memorable (except to me and probably PK)…one year we were singing along with John Stewart’s “Gold” and mentioned how its lyrics would make both a great but debatable question (“How much does Jim Bass make for pumping gas?” The line in the song is either “he makes 2.54 an hour” OR “he makes 2.50 for an hour). I think it was a good three or four years before the question was actually asked, but when it was…we giggled like little kids.
I really like that story. It’s also a reminder of the odd way all those Trivia Weekends tend to compress into one endless celebrations. Even though it was several years later, I’ll bet in that moment it felt like you’d just had that conversation
The year was 1990,91,or 92. I was post collegiate and Hymie Cakes came into being. Every one was asleep/passed out? I answered a question in a stupor (I can’t remember the question, but I do remember getting it right). I woke everyone up with my excitement, the rejoicing lasted 5 seconds, then we all fell asleep again. Good Times!
In storied Caker lore, that answer was “Evian.” Your legacy lives on.
WOW!, thats crazy scarey that you remember that. Do they still do Trivia Focus? I’ll always remember trying to find the coolest sound bed for those. Enjoy the weekend, down a POINT for me.