This coming weekend, I’ll participate in the fifty-fourth staging of The World’s Largest Trivia Contest^TM. As per tradition, this week is filled with idle reminiscing about trivia answers that have been especially memorable for me over the years.

WWSP-90FM’s Trivia contest has gone through a major change recently. After literally decades at the helm, the two fine gents who wrote all the questions officially retired from those roles. For the first time since the late nineteen-seventies, the Stevens Point contest has a new head writer, who goes by the moniker DAC, and he’s partnered with a current University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student, which is itself enough to merit applause. In these early stages, I will also give the new duo credit for demonstrating quick mastery of one of the trickiest arts to crafting material for this sort of endeavor: making questions that are entertaining regardless of whether the hunt for the answer is successful.

During last year’s contest, the following question was asked: “In a movie with two young girls who find a mermaid and befriend her, the mermaid eats ice cream in a bathtub. What is the brand and variety of ice cream that she eats?”

In the manner of modern radio trivia contests, the identity of the film is not flatly stated, but there’s enough information in this instance to allow listeners to discern quickly enough that the bigscreen endeavor in question is the 2006 family comedy Aquamarine. From there, it’s easy enough to shake the internet hard enough to dislodge the answer.

The difference here is that the answer, Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food, is pretty funny. Weirdly, it’s funnier in the context of a radio station on-air trivia contest than it is when it shows up as a gag in the movie. The answer has that quasi-magical quality of sounding like it could have been — should have been — arrived at as an inspired guess. These questions work best when it feels like it could have been arrived at with some clever mental gamesmanship. The current writers know that, and it’s a pleasure to see them put that philosophy into action.

More info about 90FM’s Trivia can be found at its official website or at the radio station’s online home. There’s also a feature documentary about the contest, but it’s fairly hard to come by these days.