This coming weekend, I’ll participate in the fifty-fifth 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, in that contest and now from another weekend-spanning events of quirky questions.

When I say that I’m privileged to write questions for KVSC’s Trivia Weekend, the real truth is that the lucky opportunity extends to both members of our household. My partner in all things largely grew up in Stevens Point, so her history with the contest is even longer than mine. An engineer by schooling, she’s especially adept at analyzing how questions work, both individually and within the scope of an entire contest. We’ve had many conversations over the years about what makes a question memorable. And we’ve talked about the kinds of pop culture that are often underrepresented in these marathons of minutiae, particular television shows and movies that have women as the target audience. I think all of that factored into her crafting of one of my favorite questions that appeared in this year’s KVSC contest.

The question reads: “A small-screen marketing executive has a pet parrot with a name inspired by its green color. After her boyfriend consults an app, she decides the parrot needs more contact with people so she takes it in to work with her at a New York City publishing house. What is the name of that pet parrot?”

The KVSC contest allows for teams to call in multiple guesses without penalty, so the answers start flowing in right away. For about the first half of the allotted time for the question, most of the teams were calling based on little more than straightforward conjecture from “inspired by its green color.” They tossed out options like emerald, juniper, and olive. Then, the right answers starting coming, like popcorn kernels exploding in a pan that’s just reached the proper temperature. It took roughly the same amount of time for the dozens of teams playing to sort out that the question was asking about the television series Younger.

The question includes plot points involving the character Diana Trout (played by Miriam Shor) in an episode that first aired almost ten years ago. Inspired by the Broadway hit Wicked, Diana has named her parrot Elphaba, a detail newly pertinent thanks to the blockbuster film adaptation. I’m especially fond of questions where the answer gives the people playing the contest a little moment of amused recognition, a quick so-that’s-why-they-asked-that-one beat. I hope Elphaba did exactly that.

More info about 90FM’s Trivia can be found at its official website or at the radio station’s online home. More info about KVSC’s Trivia can be found at the radio station’s website.