This coming weekend, I’ll participate in the fifty-sixth staging of The World’s Largest Trivia Contest^TM, as staged by radio station WWSP-90FM. As per tradition, this week is filled with idle reminiscing about trivia answers that have been especially memorable for me over the years — from both the 90FM Weekend and a kindred contest that takes place on the other side of the Mississippi.

After years of involvement with the WWSP contest, I got the chance to expand my trivia horizons a few years ago. I am lucky enough to work with the students who run KVSC-FM, the noncommercial radio station at St. Cloud State University, in Minnesota. KVSC has its own weekend-long trivia contest, which is modeled on the event staged in Stevens Point. It was started nearly fifty years ago at the suggestion of a student who had transferred from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point to St. Cloud State University and correctly theorized that the marathon hunt for minutiae would work at his new academic home.

There are a few differences in the stations’ contest models. At KVSC, there’s much more of a team approach to writing questions, so I pitch in on that side of contest prep. It’s been fun to concoct these queries, and I am particularly pleased any time I can come up with an offering that rewards those teams who are most invested in the broader culture of the contest and the station. (I will concede that pleasure stems in part from a lingering resentment about the amazing number of players of 90FM’s Trivia back in the day who had little regard for the students who ran the station. It’s worth noting that brand of slight is far less of an issue with top teams currently.) With that in mind, after we held a station event last fall to reveal the theme of the then-upcoming KVSC Trivia Weekend, I was certain of at least one question I would contribute:

When Jim Gray announced Wild West Trivia as the theme of KVSC’s 47th annual Trivia Weekend during the annual Theme Reveal Party in September, he was accompanied by his faithful steed. What was the name of the horse who stood by Jim as he announced Wild West Trivia as this year’s theme?

The answer, as attendees of the event knew, is Yarn. I used my influence to ensure that the question was scheduled during the on-air shift that was cohosted by the member of our student director staff who was one of the two individuals inside of that costume. She was also the person who selected the name of the horse. After the answer was read, she joyfully recounted the inspiration for that equine moniker, an explanation that included her essentially doxing herself to the audience by briefly dropping her usual on-air alias to reveal her real name.

It wasn’t the toughest question I wrote this year. It probably wasn’t even my favorite that I submitted to the question kitty. I do think, however, it accounted for one of the moments of the weekend that exemplified the communal excitement of participating in one of these Trivia Weekends. Silly as it might seem to those outside of it, there are times when the simple cycle of questions and answers can make everyone involved feel a part of something bigger that they’re all in on together.

Thanks to Joe Bigelow for the above photo, which I cropped for my purposes here today.

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.