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| The 1990s... This is the page where you can read about CNOF’s history and team member recollections ordered by contest year. By the 90s, we were consistently using CNOF as the basis for our team name. In 1998, we merged with another long playing team, Hour 54. If you would like to contribute some history to this archive, please drop me a note with the details. |
Select a year to view highlights and lowlights of the contest
| 1990 Triviasaurus Rex: CNOF at TKE 1991 CNOF: Kinder, Gentler and Heavily Armed 1992 CNOF: Intravenus DeMilo 1993 CNOF: Branch Trividians 1994 CNOF ’94: The Next Generation 1995 CNOF ’95: The Nightmare Continues 1996 CNOF: Unplugged 1997 CNOF: Always a Bridesmaid 1998 CNOF: The Hour Has Come 1999 CNOF54: Runnin' Outta Time |
1990 Triviasaurus Rex: CNOF at TKE
| “Earth Games Are Easy” with the grand experiment of playing at a fraternity house. Great weather, great location next to the campus, but no place to sleep. Reportedly, Pat Spang was spotted sleeping, but in a standing position. Another 2nd place finish with 7190 points. |
1991 CNOF: Kinder, Gentler and Heavily Armed
| Iraq has been bombed, burned, and blown away as we play trivia at Chris Roth’s mom’s place. Doug Regan misses the contest again, this time because his daughter was about to be born. Slipped to a 4th place finish (7600 points) most likely due to the proximity of Belt’s soft serve ice cream. Palindrome questions reign in “The Year of the Palindrome.” |
| Madonna-inspired “Trivia or Dare: It’s Vogue”. We played the 53-hour contest (1 hour shorter because of Daylight Savings Time) at Sandy Wiegert’s home on Dixon Street. Improvement to a 3rd place finish with 6855 points. The Trivia Kickoff movie tradition starts this year with a showing of Slacker (1991). The Redford question was “Who was the author of the exciting wild west book titled Outlaw Trail: A Journey Through Time?” We were not in the top five for the entire first half of the contest. Answering “What silent feature was the film debut of actor Kenneth McDonald?” got us 500 points and 3rd place in hour 26. The answer was “Slow as Lightning” (1923). In hour 37 we reached 1st place by answering “Parker Shoe Company” on another 500-pointer: “In the movie I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, what was the place of employment of James Allison when he returned from World War I?” Unfortunately, we dropped out of first in hour 45 on a 200-pointer and never recovered. Two teams jumped ahead of us by answering “Lucy” to the question “What was the name of the 66-foot tall elephant that became a National Historic Landmark in 1976?” We need Al Gore to invent the Internet so we can get these questions correct! |
| We play “Trivia in Point” again at Sandy Wiegert’s home with 7510 points and another 3rd place finish. I believe this was the year that Bill Pollock’s sleeping hours vs. awake hours during the contest actually meet at the even 50-50 milestone (I would like to thank Mark Jurgella for providing the meticulous data records, EDS for providing the computing resources, and the American Medical Association for funding this important research). I’m not exactly sure when we started the Chump of the Hour thing, but this was the first year that we tracked “the Chump” on our scoring sheets. The very first official Chump of the Hour for Hour 1 of Trivia 24 was (drum roll please): Pat Losinski for showing up late for the contest. Bonus historical fact: The day after the contest, former CNOFer David Koresh torches the compound in Waco. |
1994 CNOF ’94: The Next Generation
| On to Chris Roth’s home across from Trinity Lutheran Church. We finish 240 points out of first with a then team record 11,395 points and a 2nd place. This year, question values were calculated using 2000 points as the base instead of 1000 points causing scoring inflation. The Trivia Stone questions become extinct after one final contest in “Trivia Park”. This is the first year that we use some form of the Internet to get answers. In reality, it was more like dialing into a news subscription service, but we stayed connected for most of the contest and used the online databases very effectively. In hour 11, Tom Lewandowski and his knowledge of his favorite band (The Hollies) got us 400-point and 185-point music questions. We were leading this contest from hour 2 through at least hour 50 (when point totals were no longer being broadcast) only to run into trouble in the last few hours. In the final five hours of the contest, nine questions were asked where point values were 285 point and higher. We nailed only one question of those nine—the 335 point Lysol Disinfectant Dionne Quintuplet question. We still would have won if not for the controversy of the decade: Question 8, hour 53, the complaint line officially closed, “What company brought ‘Food-o-Rama’ to America’s kitchens?” The answer was ‘Kelvinator’, but The Oz caves to Network’s plea to accept a parent company name as the correct answer also. That question, worth 285 points, erases our lead and puts us into second place. And, Network accuses us of "whining." |
1995 CNOF ’95: The Nightmare Continues
| Oliva publicizes his hip replacement in “The Six Million Dollar Contest.” Our first year at Pat and Pat Pavelski’s home on Heffron Loop. Good trivia facilities and a gun cabinet handy in case we start to lose badly. Our dynasty as a 2nd place team is firmly entrenched in Trivia history. We score 10,070 points in a contest that includes the Music Medley question for the first time. We could have been champions, but Carrie Pfefferkorn went to Europe during the contest ensuring another loss. |
We remember Jerry Garcia in Trivia 27, “What A Long Strange Trip
It’s
Been”, played at the Pavelski home. Our legacy continues with a 2nd place finish.
We  could have been champions, but Bill Pollock missed
most of the contest because he was sick (ensuring another loss). Jim Oliva is quoted as
saying “the Internet won’t help teams” as City News finishes with a new
team record 11,425 points. The Oz also replaces his “favorite question”, (refer
to 1983), with a new favorite: “Name the fictional
theatrical production presented in ‘Storch Surround’.” The answer is (and
always will be) “Phantom of the Opera” from the TV show Married With
Children.
This was the year where some fiend got into Terry Wiegert’s movie notes, changed a
bunch of the facts around, and caused us to miss three big point questions in the final
few hours of the contest. The final question of the contest slips through our fingers as
our source with the answer is unreachable by phone. The question was regarding the
board game Dollars A Second and we had a contact who knew the answer.
Unfortunately, when we needed to “name the three cards shown on the box”, we
couldn’t get past a telephone busy signal. The question was worth 500 points and we
lost by 255 to Substation. |
1997 CNOF: Always a Bridesmaid
“Mission: Trivia” at the Pavelski home. Many players are back,
but we barely have enough manpower to cover the numerous PCs, phones, and other  equipment we used this year. The stoic Oz is accused of being
clueless when he decides to stick with Hamilton when the entire planet knew it was
Horowitz. Now we’re going to have to put up with numerous teams in 1998 using that
event as the basis for their team’s name. As usual, we led for much of the contest,
but lack of people and perhaps Tiger Woods led to blown points. We miss our comfortable
2nd place finish by five points giving us a 3rd place trophy and 9545 points. Kubark runs
away with the contest with a total of 11,515 points. Jon Miskowski, our lone trophy pickup
guy, gives a moving speech as we add more hardware to the collection. |
| A supercharged and Hour 54-injected CNOF team races to a second place finish in “Trivia 29: On the Road.” A Sunday evening surge allows the team to power past the defending champion Operation Tin Man (formerly Kubark). CNOF finishes with 9945 points—910 points behind first place Network. For most of the contest, CNOF was locked in third place, but a strong finish moved us past the 1997 champs. This year will be forever remembered as the year we merged with Hour 54, a team with a rich history of playing World’s Largest Trivia. Jim Krueger, Dave Custer, Gene, Mike, John and Sarah Kemmeter, Rob Whitmire, Art Biermeier, Dick Pliska, Tim Binder and Gary Brilowski added critical Trivia skills to a combined team overdue to win this contest. In a contest heavily sprinkled with Hamiltons and Horowitzs, the Trivia Stone questions returned for the first time since 1994. We played this contest in our finest digs yet: a wrestling gymnasium complete with mats, basketball hoops, locker rooms, vending machines, and most important, plenty of space. This was also the year of the “conservative complaint line;” Very few questions were tossable or tossed. |
1999 CNOF54: Runnin’ Outta Time
CNOF finishes the 1900s with a long-awaited first place finish in Trivia
30, “Trivia Like It’s 1999.” Everything seemed to click in a contest with
frequent lead changes and close competition right up to the end. We even nailed a
500-pointer (first time since 1992) when Jim Krueger determines that
Florsheim introduced “The Lo Top.” Jack Wimme picked a good year to film the contest as
he will be editing footage that captured our first win as a City News/Occupation:
Foole/Hour 54 partnership. Friday night, the first night of the contest, Jay
Leno mentioned this contest during his Tonight Show monologue.
He described the contest and added “if you know where Stevens Point,
Wisconsin is, then you are probably on the winning team.” We believe
his theory is correct as over 80% of CNOF team members know where Stevens
Point is.
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