Great Midwest Trivia Contest
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The Great Midwest Trivia Contest, sometimes known simply as the "Midwest Trivia Contest," is broadcast over Lawrence University's radio station, WLFM (91.1 MHz). The contest was founded in 1966 by James B. deRosset, '66. Each January it offers 50 consecutive hours of questions such as "What was Holden Caulfield's middle name?" and "In 2004, which nation drank the most coffee per capita?"
(The answers are "Morrisey" and "Finland," respectively.)
The Great Midwest Trivia Contest is known as the "World's Longest Running Trivia Contest" because of its custom of asking the last and most difficult question – the so-called "Super Garruda" – from one year as the first question of the next. It is also the oldest college-based radio trivia contest in the United States, predating the biannual Williams College Trivia Contest by a few weeks.
The Lawrence trivia contest has been written about in Playboy, USA Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Chicago Tribune, and most of the newspapers in Wisconsin. The 1984 Trivia Master, John Landis, '84, appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America."
The endeavor is governed by the Trivia Credo: "Trivia is meant to be entertainment and should be perceived solely in that light." Nevertheless, competitive fervor runs high. The contest begins at 10:00:37 p.m. on the Friday of Trivia Weekend; at midnight on Sunday, teams with the highest scores are declared the winners in on-campus and off-campus categories, receiving prizes such as pink plastic flamingos and stainless-steel bedpans.
External Links:
- Lawrence Official Site (http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/trivia/)
- Trivia Asylum (http://www.triviaasylum.com/wlfm/wlfmmain.html)
- http://sunbird.ece.unm.edu/trivia.html
- Trivia XL (http://www.framingbusiness.net/triviacontest40.htm) - one man's log of the 40th Lawrence Trivia Contest