From the Stevens Point Journal April 13, 2008:

Trivia keeps Point alert

Participants compete 24 hours a day  

Lights, for one. Throughout town, scattered houses would have been lit up as people milled about their living rooms, some chatting happily, others bent over computers, obviously focused on some kind of Herculean challenge.

Ice cream, too. Even though a belated snowfall has made Stevens Point a wintery wonderland, Belts' Soft Serve is still open for business, offering flurries and sundaes to residents at a time of night usually reserved for a glass of warm milk.

Trivia players search downtown for answers during the "running question" at 7 a.m. Saturday in the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Trivia Contest. THOMAS KUJAWSKI/STEVENS POINT JOURNAL

What's going on? Is Stevens Point celebrating some kind of strange nocturnal holiday?

Yes, actually. Stevens Point is deep in the throes of the world's largest trivia contest, or "Trivia," as it's known to locals.

For months, residents have been stockpiling candy wrappers and taking notes on television shows, both of which are known to serve as fodder for the hundreds of questions written by Trivia overseer Jim "Oz" Oliva. Questions are read over University of Wisconsin-Stevens Points radio station 90FM every few minutes and range from the obscure to the downright impossible.

"If a team really wants to get into the top, say 100, it takes a couple of years -- I'd say between two and five years to start accumulating a good collection of notes," Oliva said of the preparation that goes into the 54-hour contest.

Casey Rutta searches the Internet on Saturday for an answer to a Trivia question. THOMAS KUJAWSKI/STEVENS POINT JOURNAL

If this sounds more like preparing for a doctoral exam than a weekend holiday, don't be fooled. As good, clean (and, let's face it, weird) fun goes, Trivia has it by the barrelful. The contest draws people from not only across central Wisconsin, but it brings wayward Stevens Point natives back from across the world.

"Trivia has a lot of magnetic pull for Stevens Pointers," said Tim Kung, who comes back from his California home to play for the team "Tin Man" with a group of high school friends. This year, Kung's brother is actually joining the team remotely from Shanghai, China, manning the night shift for the round-the-clock contest from an opposite time zone.

So does a Trivia victory carry any clout with people from other parts of the world?

"It helps that it's the world's largest trivia contest, so at least you can say that and it has a little bit of cachet. But do other people really understand what this place is like, how it turns the town upside down?" Kung asked. "No ... the Dodgers winning the world series doesn't really turn the town upside down -- much less a radio contest."