Great Midwest Trivia Contest

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The Great Midwest Trivia Contest, or Midwest Trivia Contest, is held each year in Appleton, Wisconsin, broadcast over Lawrence University's radio station, WLFM. Beginning with Trivia XLI in 2006, the contest went to a webcast-only format after WLFM ceased FM broadcasting.

The contest was founded in 1966 by James Bailey 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.)

Most questions are worth 5 points each, with a few more difficult questions worth more. The final, most difficult question – dubbed the "Super Garruda" – is worth 100 points. 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.

The Great Midwest Trivia Contest is known as the "World's Longest Running Trivia Contest" because of its custom of asking the previous year's garruda as the first question of the next year's contest.

It may also be the oldest college-based radio trivia contest in the United States. Lawrence's inaugural edition was on April 29, 1966, which predates both the presumed May debut of the biannual Williams College Trivia Contest by a week or so and the February 1969 debut of the Stevens Point Media Trivia Contest by three years. However, the precise date of the first Williams contest is not known; before its playing schedule was standardized, spring semester Williams Trivia games were sometimes held as early as February and March. The distinction is appropriately trivial.

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."