Not trivial: Lawrence contest on the arcane marks 50th

APPLETON, Wis. (AP) - When J.B. deRosset returns to Appleton this weekend, he'll finally come clean on the "real" story behind founding Lawrence University's Great Midwest Trivia Contest.

Or could it be just another off-the-wall way to generate a quirky trivia question for the contest's 50th anniversary?

We're betting on the latter.

The Great Midwest Trivia Contest runs this weekend through midnight Sunday. Teams with the highest scores are declared the winners in on-campus and off-campus categories, and receive prizes such as pink plastic flamingos and stainless-steel bedpans, Post-Crescent Media reported (http://post.cr/1ukjlc3).

"It doesn't matter who wins. It's all about having fun," said this year's Grand Trivia Master Weronika Gajowniczek, 22, a senior from Morton Grove, Illinois.

Gajowniczek and a host of trivia masters have spent the last few months writing questions whose answers are tucked away in the deep recesses of the Internet.

"For me, I often know the answer before I know the question itself," Gajowniczek said.

"Radio to drink beer by," is how deRosset, 71, a suburban Miami attorney, describes the annual ode to all things obscure. This year's 50th anniversary, he said, will feature some interesting twists.

"This one will have some new wrinkles and the main wrinkles will happen at 10 p.m. on Saturday night, including the 'real' story on how this contest was founded," he said. "...The truth can come out. Good Lord, it's important."

Rumor has it, deRosset said tongue-in-cheek, it's not the result of his relationship with a beautiful Beloit College student named Sue Hildebrandt, who he met at a scientific retreat. On a purported visit to see Hildebrandt in January 1966, his senior year, deRosset wandered through Beloit College's student union where a "pathetic" trivia contest was being held.

When deRosset returned, he talked about hosting a better contest at Lawrence with friends, including junior Dave Pfleger, who worked at WLFM (now with an Internet-only format), the school's student-run radio station. During that cold Appleton winter, the group put together impossibly difficult questions and sprang it on the campus that May.

"It was a rip-roaring success," deRosset said. "They didn't know what hit them. It was great. On campus, it was a really big time."

Or, was it? Stay tuned to find out.

Pfleger, Grand Master in 1967, is the No. 1 reason the Great Midwest Trivia contest began in 1966 and remains a great way for people to come to Appleton and have a great time with friends, deRosset said.

The legacy continues thanks to Lawrence students who step up to the challenge each year and teams who continue to dig for answers.

Kevin Brimmer, 52, and his team are celebrating 30 years of participating in the trivia contest. The core group of guys from five states met while attending Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. They return each year to Brimmer's Grand Chute home to compete in the contest with several second-generation players who now are among the fold of 20 to 25 team members.

"It's kind of our thing," Brimmer said. "I've got this bizarre ability to remember just weird crap that doesn't do me any good for the vast majority of the year but on that one weekend having the ability to recall useless information and look it up has become somewhat important."

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Information from: Post-Crescent Media, http://www.postcrescent.com