From the Stevens Point Journal April 7, 2003:

25 years of Trivia and the 'Oz' is still going strong

By Paul Chronis
Journal staff

After 25 years, Jim Oliva still gets a twinkle in his eye when you talk about Trivia.

Since 1979, Oliva has been writing questions for what is now billed as the world's largest media trivia contest. On Saturday, Trivia players said 'thank you' with a surprise party, video tributes and a plaque featuring the logos of the 25 contests written by Oliva, known as "Oz."
Trivia is a fund-raiser for WWSP-FM, the campus radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. In 2002, more than 450 teams and 11,000 players participated. Team registration for Trivia 34: Survivor Trivia, is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. today at the WWSP-FM studios. 

The contest begins at 6 p.m. Friday and runs for 54 consecutive hours, until midnight Sunday.

According to Mike Wiza, a longtime member of the Franklin Street Burnouts Trivia team, there's a huge difference between Jim Oliva and Oz.

"You can talk to Jim about politics or whatever, and as soon as someone talks about Trivia, you can see him turn on the Oz personality," he said. "There's no one else that I've ever met that eats, lives and breathes this contest. It would not be what it is without Oz."

For the past 15 years, John Eckendorf has worked with Oliva to write the 400-plus questions that make up the contest. "The best of it is sitting down in the basement with John, writing the questions; just enjoying that end of it," Oliva said. "The worst of it is when it's over, because it's three months of really digging and working and laughing, and then it's over in a weekend and I have to go back to reality and not be Oz."

For Eckendorf, the fun is in seeing the Stevens Point community come together and embrace the event each year.
In general, organizers ask eight questions per hour, plus there are three music snippet puzzles, the Trivia Stone treasure hunt and two running questions that send players scurrying through the city looking for various clues that Oliva and Eckendorf have laid out.

The pair spend their weekends from January through March writing the questions, and are seen by many as the embodiment of the contest.

"It's kind of like Dorothy and Sophia from the Golden Girls. You can't have one without the other," said Molly Kreuser, promotions director at WWSP-FM. "They back up each other so well, the contest wouldn't be the same without them."

Lisa Koenigs of Menomonee Falls has been playing Trivia for 20 years, the last 14 for Graduates of a Lesser God. To her, Oliva is living Trivia history. "He made it a tighter contest, more fair, more fun and more difficult," she said. "If you are smart enough, if you are clever enough, you can answer any question he asks."

Trivia Memories Trivia has produced some memorable moments for Oliva and Eckendorf. One of the worst was the year that someone moved a farm implement they planned to use as a clue for the Trivia Stone. The Stone is a game in which players are given clues to roam around the Stevens Point area looking for spots where they will be given tickets worth valuable Trivia points. "We work on the Stone the Saturday and Sunday before the contest, then on Thursday we go and check to make sure everything is still there," Oliva said. "This was in Park Ridge; they had just built some buildings and they were putting in the lawn. They had one of these giant field rakes, a farm implement, hooked up to a sizable tractor. It was very visible." When Oliva and Eckendorf last checked that Thursday, the tractor was still parked in the field; but Friday morning, it got moved. Trivia organizers found out in the middle of the night when teams trying to find the tractor got lost. "There were people all the way out to Amherst," Eckendorf said, laughing. "That was insane." Last year, Eckendorf entertained Trivia players by literally falling down laughing on live, public-access cable television during the final reading of the team standings. The culprit: a funny but obscene team name that somehow got past the WWSP-FM censors. A Trivia team member then used the name to get Eckendorf's goat last July at a softball game he was umpiring. "He was the fifth batter, and when they announced him, they used that name," he said. "All of a sudden I hear this name over the loudspeaker, and I just lost it," he said laughing. "We didn't get through a single at-bat together. We were both laughing the whole time." The Franklin Street Burnouts pulled a prank on Oliva by lampooning the 2000 presidential election. "We mailed ourselves empty envelopes a week prior to the contest," said team member Mike Wiza. "When some of the big point questions came up and we didn't know the answer, we'd type them up and put them in the envelopes and seal them up." The Burnouts got into the top 10 that year. When they showed up for the trophy presentation, Wiza gave Oliva the envelopes and told him they were absentee answers, legal and binding because they had been mailed prior to the contest. "When he opened up the first one and saw it was right, the look on his face was precious for about ten seconds before he realized we were messing with him," Wiza said, laughing. "We have it on videotape, so he can't deny it." Oz's hints Here are some hints that Trivia organizer Jim Oliva let out about this year's contest questions during a recent interview with the Journal: * "This year's contest will feature nothing but raw trivia, and after all, RAW is WAR," Oliva said. "Other than that, I have nothing to say. There are no themes, it's just straight-away Trivia, for the Survivor in everyone." * Questions involving music lyrics will have an interesting new twist. "It's in response to someone who's been writing me and saying they were too easy," Oliva said, grinning. * The running questions have been renamed Reward Challenges, in homage to "Survivor," the CBS-TV show that the contest is named after this year. There will be a "Survivor" question or two as well. * Oliva also said to expect a lot children's questions. "I watched a ton of kids' television this year, and enjoyed it," he said with an evil grin.

Help for Oliva and Eckendorf comes from their wives; Kris Oliva sells ads for the contest rule book and helps with its publication. Stephanie Eckendorf, a WWSP-FM staffer in college, has a saint's patience in allowing Eckendorf to spend his time working on the contest, her husband said.

"There's certainly been many moments of time away from her and the kids, and she allows me this folly to go out and play, the way I look at it," he said.

Kris Oliva also plays on a team, Dyslexics of the World Untie, so she competes with her husband for valuable Trivia information. "We will literally race each other at garage sales to get the good old magazines, the cheap music, that kind of stuff," she said.

If there is a downside for Oliva and Eckendorf, it's that Trivia players are so competitive, they will actually spy to gain clues. As the contest approaches, Oliva won't go shopping; he sends Kris.
"When I was single, I had to go at two in the morning, it was getting so ridiculous," Oliva said. "One time, I reached for an item in a grocery store, and I looked in both directions and there were people staring around the corner on both ends of the aisle."

Eckendorf, who watches 100 to 150 movies per year for the contest, said he had to quit renting at one video store after he found out a worker there was checking his rental records.

As for the contest's future, both Oliva and Eckendorf continuously urge teams to get their children involved. Oliva began an intensive effort several years ago to write questions aimed at kids. He also consciously schedules the queries while the young ones are awake, so they can play and learn to appreciate Trivia, hopefully becoming the Trivia contest's next generation.

Although they plan to ask for part-time help for the first time next year in marketing the contest and selling ads, neither Oliva nor Eckendorf plan to stop writing questions anytime soon.
"I just think that we write a pretty darned good contest," Oliva said.

Eckendorf concurred. "Oz has said he'd like to do this as long as Johnny Carson was on the Tonight Show," he said. "I'm kind of his Ed McMahon, so I'll be here as long as he's writing, at least."

Chronis can be reached at 344-6100, Ext. 2512, or at paul.chronis@cwnews.net.