APPLETON, WIS. — Ladies and gentlemen, start your (search) engines.
Once again, copious amounts of insignificant knowledge and advanced Internet skills will be put to the test when the 43rd edition of Lawrence University’s annual Great Midwest Trivia Contest — the country’s longest-running salute to all things trivial — kicks off Friday, Jan. 25.
The 50-hour marathon of minutia that simultaneously challenges the brains and tickles the funny bones of hundreds of players on campus and around the country with its grab-bag of questions, eclectic music and off-beat humor, begins anew at precisely 10:00.37 p.m. and ends at midnight Sunday, Jan. 27. For the third year running, the contest will be webcast on WLFM, the Lawrence campus radio station, at www.lawrence.edu/sorg/trivia.
During the contest, questions of varying point values are asked in three-minute intervals via the Internet while teams call in their answers to the WLFM studios.
From its armadillo mascot to its first-place prizes unfit for even the cheesiest white elephant exchange, the trivia contest is steeped in tradition. Following one of the more time-honored ones, Lawrence President Jill Beck will open the weekend’s trivial pursuit by asking the contest’s first question, which, also by tradition, is always the final question of the previous year.
After two years as a participant and one year as a mere master, James Prichard carries the coveted mantle of “Grand Master” for this year’s contest.
“You’re the most important person on campus for 50 all-too-short hours,” said Prichard, a senior from Northfield, Minn. “President Beck gets to ask the first question, but then she has to abdicate to the trivia masters for the next 49 hours and 57 minutes.”
After some gentle tweaking, Prichard promises a 2008 contest that will run “smoother than ever. We’ve really worked on the logistics.”
Prichard is hoping to make more of a connection this year between current students playing on campus and the legions of trivia fans participating throughout the Fox Cities and beyond by offering some new “theme hours” during the weekend that focus on landmark events from previous year’s contests.
“I think some of the people who have been playing trivia for a long time will really appreciate it and enjoy it,” said Prichard. “And I hope current students get a little better sense of some of the long traditions of the contests.”
Two trivia teams have dominated the contest in recent years the way the Boston Celtics once ruled the NBA and UCLA owned college basketball. Amid whispers of retirement, the Bank of Kaukauna juggernaut, winners of seven straight off-campus titles, returns with its high-tech collection of computers with multiple direct connections and load balancing routers, a customized data management repository and even its own specialized score management system.
Employing a considerably less technological tack, the Yuai community has racked up five straight on-campus crowns. With a team typically numbering around 20 — both current students as well as past team members who make a late January trek back to campus — the Yuais approach to its trivia rivals is simple and straight forward according to team member Robby Sutton: destroy.
“Most of us take trivia very seriously,” said Sutton, a junior from Appleton. “My trivia needle is definitely on fanatical. That’s where it needs to be or else we lose.
“Remember,” Sutton added, “it’s all fun and games, unless it’s trivia. Then it’s war.”
The Lawrence trivia contest still serves as a mid-winter siren call to Appleton for many die-hard players, but the switch to a webcast format has turned the contest into a world-wide event. Last year answers to questions arrived from as far away as Europe and Japan.
The contest has undergone its share of changes, mostly technological, since making its debut in 1966 as an alternative for students who didn’t participate in an academic retreat with professors. But one thing that hasn’t changed over the past four-plus decades is the no. 1 rule of the entirely student-run contest: have fun.
“It’s a project that you can really get into,” said Prichard, explaining why he devotes so much of his time to planning and organizing the contest, as well as writing a fair number of its questions. “It’s easy to become consumed by it.
“If at the end of the weekend, everyone who played, everyone who just listened in for a while, all the volunteers who asked questions and answered phones can say they had a great time, then we’ll be able to say ‘mission accomplished.'”
While no team came up with the correct answer to last year’s final brain teaser — the traditional “Super Garruda” — any trivia team worth its clever name will pick up an easy 100 points when that same question reopens this year’s contest. Make a note: Francis Scott Key, Mary Pickersgill, Major Armistead, Rebecca Young, Carolyn Pickersgill, and Neighborhood Cat are the six caricatures framed on the wall of the children’s interactive learning room in the Jean and Lillian Hofmeister building of The War of 1812 Museum.
