STEVENS POINT - Two local men
were on the winning team this weekend in
the world's largest trivia contest, beating
out 519 other teams.
From 6 p.m. Friday until midnight Sunday, thousands of contestants were holed up in basements around town armed with reference books, computer databases and plenty of chips, dip and soda in a quest to answer questions relating to TV, movies, sports, current events and food.
The objective was to answer eight questions an hour with only two hourlong dinner breaks Saturday and Sunday.
Ray Hamel of Madison and Barry Heck of Middleton are longtime members of the toughest team in the annual 54-hour Stevens Point trivia marathon.
Their team name is always a derivative of the name Network, which has become too conspicuous and alarming to other contestants.
This year the team chose an acronym, "No Easy Trivia When Oz Reads Kerouac," a play on the theme of this year's 29th annual contest. "On the Road."
Network just makes it look easy. A sample question:
"According to some printed VISA card ads in 1989. what is the answer to the following question: Why is the American Express card green''' (Answer: Envy.)
It is said that nearly half of this central Wisconsin city of 23,000 takes part in the marathon, if not playing directly, then helping friends and family or volunteering at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point ratlio station, WWSP, which sponsors the event and broadcasts it over its airwaves. Some come from Chicago, Milwaukee and as far as Australia. The 11,800 participants also included a large contingent of Madisonians, especially University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point alums.
Hamel doesn't fall in that category. No, Hamel, who makes his living writing trivia games for publications including the New York Times and Games Magazine, was recruited for obvious reasons.
Hamel admits he knows his minutiae and, without boasting, calls his memory sharp. "Sticky not photographic," says the 10-year contest veteran, who acknowledges that he has trouble remembering names and faces of people he meets. Yet he can see an actor once and remember his name for the rest of his life.
The contest is not won or lost, however, on mental acuity or vast resources alone, says Hamel. "It's not what you have, it's knowing what you have and how to use it."
Jim "the Oz" Oliva has been organizing the event and writing most of its questions for the last 20 years.
Though he owns a Stevens Point computer store, the former junior high algebra teacher tries to discourage the use of computers in the contest. Most players, he says, use computers only to verify answers.
"The kind of question we're writing," he says, "is the kind of question you are not going to find on a computer because no one cares to put it on the World Wide Web. "
Besides making the questions challenging, Oliva's main goal is to make the contest fun.
"I want the team in 300th place to get an answer right once an hour to keep their spirits up," he said.
Many view the weekend as a chance to see old friends -- brain draining is just the excuse.
Heck, 36, of Middleton, works for the computer company Electronic Data Systems Corp. and is one of about a dozen other players on the Network team.
"It's a chance to see my high school friends," he said, "For us it's a real homecoming event, the only time we get to see each other all year. It substitutes for the real homecoming event."
Dressed with a blue robe over his clothes, Heck estimated that he'd get a good 4-5 hours of sleep during the 54-hour marathon.
"I've never seen this level of involvement of any town for any event of any kind," he says. "Half the town is involved with it."
Network and other top teams have constructed elaborate libraries and even their own card catalogs. Most of the serious teams use a couple of computers. One linked to the Internet, another to a homemade database. Each team hordes vast numbers of books, magazines, games and CD-Roms.
A team that calls itself Astro Wolf Pack even keeps a plastic garbage hag with 1,000 empty candy bar wrappers for the difficult food questions.
Astro Wolf Pack came in ninth this year. It is made up of lawyers, a doctor, a mortgage loan officer and a singer in the chorus of the Chicago Lyric Opera.
The team also has a numher of local contestants, inchlding Madisonians Kris Knoopke and John Szalkowski and Bob and Ann Szalkowski of the town of Vermont.
Knoepke, a family physician in Madison, takes part because she likes trivia and gets to see people she only sees once a year.
"We happen to like trivia. You have to like trivia. We have friends who have gone and think it's the most ridiculous thing."
Does her medical expertise ever home in handy?
"Almost every year there's one or two medical questions but they are not phrased in such a way that they make much sense to me."
Teammate Brenda Weyer of Sun Prairie sits in the basement of the Astro Wolf Pack headquarters wearing headphones connected to a boombox recording all the questions verbatim.
Weyer has been participating since her college dormitory, days 20 years ago.
She is as competitive as the next trivia nut but the main reason she drives the two hours to Stevens Point each year is mainly for the camaraderie and community spirit.
"It's a great chance to see old friends and a great chance to regress to college age," she said. "I pull stuff out of the air and I help find things and I whine a lot. Oh, and I cook things."