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St. Cloud State University
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Diversions
Teams outlast KVSC trivia
By Ashwin Raman
Published:
Monday, February 10, 2003
Media Credit: Adam Masloski
Pictured from left, Jeremy Thiel, Dave Lee, Phil Jeon, Jim Olander and Steph Spencer are on the air broadcasting KVSC�s annual trivia weekend.
A record number of 75 teams consisting of around 2000 individuals competed in KVSC-FM's 24th annual trivia contest.
The 50-hour trivia marathon themed "Viva Las Trivia" began 5p.m. Friday and ended at 7p.m. Sunday.
The results were later announced at 8p.m. at the Ritsche Auditorium to a crowd of 400 contestants and KVSC volunteers.
Most of the teams hailed from the St. Cloud area, but there were 17 teams that were from other regions in the state, as well as, five teams from Wisconsin.
A group of 10 individuals who called themselves "The Mime Radio Conspiracy" emerged as this year's winner with a grand total of 15,995 points. Rob Fesenmaier of "The Mime Radio Conspiracy" said that his group's secret to success was the ability to just have fun throughout the contest.
"We all were in one house and took turns to sleep," Fesenmaier said. In second place was a group that came to the awards ceremony brandishing fireman helmets called "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women."
The team consisted of 20 contestants and was the winner in 2000 and 2001 and they narrowly lost this by a margin of 30 points.
Tim Lyon, group leader for the "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women," said that this is the 14th year that he has participated in the event, and a key to playing is to take it seriously throughout the duration of the whole contest.
He also added that most of the members in his team had deprived themselves of sleep since Friday and consumed lots of coffee.
The contest kicked off at precisely 5pm on Friday evening with nine questions being broadcasted by KVSC every hour. Each question had different point values that ranged from 10-400 points. The topics of the questions varied from history to pop culture, sports and movies. An example of a question based on history that was asked during hour one of the contest is as follows: "Give the first and last names of the three attorney-generals that served under Martin Van Berun for 20 points."
One of the music questions that contestants were asked was "what band instrument was incorporated for the first time in a major orchestral score in Symphonic Fantastik." Each time a question was successfully answered by a group, the deejays on KVSC would announce it and give the answer to the benefit of other listeners. Most groups used many different kinds of resources to help them answer the questions. Lyon said that his group did their best to not rely solely on online information but instead on books, magazines and phone calls.
"Some of (the) answers we knew offhand," added Lyon. Some of the question writers at KVSC agreed that online sources were not the best. Peter Hamerlineck and Nicole Spier-Hamerlineck said that there were instances when groups would call in and dispute over an answer to a question. "They, however, would have the wrong source," Hamerlineck said. He also added that for each question in the contest, they had it backed up with two or three sources. "We also considered printed sources to be more valuable than online sources."
