What is Trivia?

The KVSC Trivia Marathon is an annual contest where the lovely people over at the Saint Cloud State University radio station, 88.1 on your FM dial, start asking eight to ten trivia questions for fifty hours straight. This whole event begins at 5:00 on a Friday evening and culminates at the award ceremonies 8:00 Sunday night, an hour after the questions stop.

The Neo-Maxi Zoomdweebies’ inaugural year, 1998, was the year of the phenomenal “Trivia Sells Out” theme. We placed 28th out of 57 teams with a score of 7795. We fared better during the “Trivia Renaissance” year, with a placement of 19 and 8440 points.

To get the essence of Trivia Weekend, the following is an excerpt fromteam member Matthew Kilanowski’s former blog:

It’s only August, and already I’m thinking of Trivia Weekend next February. Obsessed? Me? Damn right. But this’ll be the last you hear of Triv (as we affectionately call it up here in Central Minnesota) until December. That is, if I can restrain myself.

First, an explanation of what exactly Triv is. Triv is a 50 hour long trivia marathon where the campus radio station broadcasts 8-10 questions an hour for the various teams to answer. Any teams calling the station with the correct answer receive the predetermined point value. Teams can be of any size from anywhere and can get their answers from any source except for the Triv workers and other teams. The team with the most points wins the travelling trophy, aka The Urn. The contest takes place the first weekend of February, starting at 5 pm (Central Standard Time) on Friday and ending 7 pm on Sunday.

My team, the Neo-Maxi Zoomdweebies, will be running for a fifth year come next February. Yes, since my senior year in high school I have been a part of this annual celebration of sleep deprivation, caffein addiction, and useless knowledge. Long nights, dumb questions, the stench of people glued to books and computers for 20-hour shifts… It’s all great. We’ve been in the top 20 the last two years, and this last contest we were able to hang in the top 10 for the first 20 hours.

Now, why have I brought this up? Well, as I said, I’m obsessed. Completely hooked on this event. And so, I can be found doing something related to this blip on the yearly map any any given point in time.
Take, for instance, my team’s website, which I am the webmaster of. It is currently in a state of major overhaul (none of which I have posted yet, being as I’ve focused mainly on my personal site). One of my teammates, a web designer by trade, was kind enough to redo all the graphics. So anyone interested can take a look to see how the new look develops. (And since I promised not to mention it until December, you may have to keep tabs on it yourself.)

But the main reason that I’ve had Triv on my mind is because of my team’s lack of a home. For the first three years we were able to infest the house of our two sibling founders, but with the younger of the two graduated their parents are less than willing to host. This last year we were able to secure the newly purchased home of yet another team member, but the mess and expenses proved to be too much to convince her of a second go.

On a completely related note, Kim and Chele have just moved into their new semi-spacious apartment. Or, spacious enough to host a Triv team. *Wink, wink* See where I’m going here?
And so, after a very short discussion, the Neo-Maxi Zoomdweebies are set as far as a headquarters goes. Convincing them was easy, considering three things:

1) There’s enough space.
2) Kim and Chele have never participated in such a thing, and they think it’d be terribly amusing to watch us scramble for such inane things as the company that sold the most coffee in 1956.
3) They want me to move in to replace Angie, and if that goal isn’t achieved by then, well, we’re thinking that 30 weary bodies floating in and out of the apartment will be enough. But more on that later…

Now, before I click on ye olde “Submit” button, you may be saying to yourself, “Gee, this sounds Like a lot of fun, but too bad I’m nowhere near Minnesota.” Well, mope no more. You, too, can be like Alferd Packer’s Posse and partake in the madness from such non-Minnesota places as Colorado, Seattle, or even England if you so choose. And, while the long-distance teams have yet to fare well, you’ll be applauded and revered back here in the Triv Motherland just for simply putting points onthe board from thousands of miles away!

Just follow the simple checklist provided:

__ Call up some friends, tell them about this, and then spend some time convincing them you’re not crazy.
__Go to KVSC.org for the registration information. There is a $30 (US) fee for registration. Along with registration you will receive a visual trivia packet, which is a collection of images that will have questions about them. Register early enough and you get two Triv posters.
__Determine what time zone you’re in and what time the contest will be played in your own area. Remember, we’re in the Central Standard Time Zone (Which is 6 hours off of Greenwich Mean Time). Take off of work accordingly so as not to miss any of the contest.
__Find a location for your team. When the hallowed weekend approaches, load up this location with the necessities of trivia: Mountain Dew, Shock Coffee, frozen pizzas & random munchies (or hire a caterer), books of all sorts, computers with internet access, dark corners to sleep in, and a telephone. Note: the higher the quality of the food, the better the team seems to do.
__When the big day comes, you will need to go to KVSC.org to hear the web broadcast of the contest. Enjoy in the sleep-deprived madness that us Central Minnesotans have had for the last 22 years!
__When the contest is over, relax. Take a few breaths. Maybe start sorting out what people will take with them when they leave the house. But leave the web broadcast on if you want to listen to the award ceremonies. Hell, if you want to go all out, try and contact someone in Minnesota to show up with a laptop and a webcam so you can “be” there yourself through the magic of internet videoconferencing or even send a representative. Smile when your team is cheered for, being as the long-distance teams always get the more arousing applause. The consumption of alcohol is encouraged because, hey, it’s not like you’re going to drive to the award ceremonies or anything.
__Clean up and go home. Many teams go about this in different ways. The most common being that of those who have to leave immediately (due to their own distance from the headquarters) grab their shit and dash. Those who reside locally can stay and clean up.. ie, replacing furniture, taking down makeshift bookshelves, emptying the trash, sorting the recylcing, and waking the people in the basement who’ve been missing for the last few hours. Other methods include leaving the mess for a day or two and returning when refreshed to clean up, or just dumping the whole job on the host. The final method is suggested for teams playing out of hotel rooms. Soothing music is reccommended.
__Look in horror at your phone bill after calling the answer line 600 times.

-Matt Kilanowski, August 8, 2001